A Guide to Child Culture for Out-of-Touch Adults: Why Is Everyone Obsessed With Grimace?
This week, the kids are eating rat snacks, staying off Reddit, mulling over their “canon events” and finally asking the big question about Grimace, McDonald’s mascot’s inexplicable abomination.
Grimace memes are taking over the internet
To celebrate Grimace’s 52nd birthday, McDonald’s introduced psychedelic purple cocktails this week. They are part of pre-cooked meals, have a berry flavor, and are reported to be very sweet in taste. It’s amazing and all, but what is a grimace? We know he’s purple and some kind of monster who doesn’t wear pants, but what does he do all day? What is it about ? Questions like these have inspired the weirdest corners of the internet to create hilarious grimace stories to fill in the backstory.
Twitter user @jpbrammer tweeted : “Drinking the Grimace cocktail binds you to his will.” In the words of @notsofiacoppola , “every McDonald’s has a grimace that screams in pain while being milked.” Ben Rosen notes that “June 12th birthday suggests that the grimace may have been conceived on September 11th”. And Nathan Robinson tweeted : “He’s a bourgeois parasite, fuck that fat purple turd that will be dealt with properly when the time is right.” (Since we’re on the subject of McDonaldland, why hasn’t Hamburglar been prosecuted?)
What are “rat snacks”?
According to TikTok, “rat snacks” are unusual combinations of foods that you hungrily eat like a hungry little rat. (You can also think of it as “the food I eat when I’m high.”) Some rat snacks are quirky favorites that only one person loves, such as french fries dipped in Grimace shakes, a Pringles cheeseburger , or macaroni. with peanut butter (it’s almost like Thai food!). Another type of rat snack is more rat-like, dishes made from what lies around, such as pasta sauce with potato chips for a sad approximation to salsa chips.
I’m a big fan of the rat snack spirit. Proudly eating rat snacks is a critique of the preciousness and fussiness of gourmet recipes, but it’s a little more creative than just eating processed snacks straight out of a can. However, I find the name a little unsettling; real rats literally snack on garbage.
Reddit shutdown explained
If you’ve noticed that Reddit, intended for online message boards, is looking a little different this week , that’s no mind trick. Users of the site openly protest against the leadership of Reddit. Some 6,500 communities protested Reddit this week by shutting down the store, leaving more than 12 million Reddit users with nothing to look at online.
The fight is over Reddit’s API, which essentially means access to its data. Since its launch in 2005, Reddit has made it possible for anyone to use its API for free, allowing the creation of third-party applications with a user experience based on Reddit, but the company recently revealed that it is joining Instagram, Twitter and Facebook by charging license fees. fees for using your API. For some apps, that will be a hefty price too: Christian Selig, CEO of the Apollo app on Reddit, says the license will cost him $20 million a year . Reddit moderators are especially angry: they are volunteers, and some say third-party moderation apps are necessary to keep doing their unpaid work.
It’s like Reddit is maturing for me, making the transition from the open internet atmosphere it used to have to a real company. And real companies generally try to make a lot of money. The purpose of Reddit seems to be to redirect people from third-party apps to the site itself so they can watch all those weird Jesus ads. For now, Reddit is standing firm despite the uprising, as are many of the site’s users: the protest was supposed to last two days, but many subreddits are still dark .
TikTokers Discuss Their ‘Canonical Events’
In this summer’s animated mega-blockbuster Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, “canonical events” are moments that happen in every part of the Spider-Universe: for example, each iteration of Spider-Man is bitten by a radioactive spider. and if anyone had prevented it, this particular incarnation of the Spider-Verse would have been destroyed. But this week the idea of canonical events moved from the screen to real life when tiktokers began to share their own canonical events – that is, things that make people who they are, and which should not be interfered with, even if they seem very bad. These moments include giving up on parents , accepting a job offer on the spot even though you’re told the company is ” family “, and creating ” the most terrible PlayStation Network username of all time”. ”
Viral video of the week: “Identical twins switch places AGAIN”
YouTuber geniuses Brooklyn and Bailey are identical twins, and in this week’s viral video, they try to fool people close to them by switching places. Twins switching places to fool friends and family have been a comedy staple since at least The Patty Duke Show, a twin-swapping sitcom that premiered in 1963 (I’m Very Old). But it’s different when it’s not done with editing and special effects.
Of course, I know that identical twins are a completely normal genetic variation, fully understood by science, but there remains a primitive part of my brain that sees two completely identical people and thinks: “it should not be like this.” Their voices are the same. They have the same gestures. This is simply wrong .
The twin videos are lighthearted and fluffy, and it’s kind of funny to watch people try to figure out what’s going on when they’re talking to the “wrong” one, but my brain refuses to fully accept that there could be two people looking and talking. so similar. The fact that they will try to deceive others makes it all the more unsettling. How could you be sure you were talking to the right twin after they tried this? What if they themselves are confused? How do they know they didn’t change identities dozens of times when they were babies? It’s too much for me to deal with.