A Guide to Children’s Culture for Out-of-Touch Adults: Why Is Everyone “very Modest” and “very Attentive”?
See how I open my weekly column explaining youth trends to older people? Very attentive. Very modest. I tell people who Reagan, the Olympic Destroyer, is, and what bubblegum dystopia means. But I’m very humble. Very nice. Very attentive.
“Very modest, very attentive,” explained
A few weeks ago, TikToker Jules LeBron, a self-proclaimed beauty influencer and fierce diva, posted a pair of videos explaining how to present yourself at work . “Do you see me putting on makeup for work? Very modest. Very attentive,” says LeBron. “I don’t look like a clown when I go to work. I don’t do too much. I’m very attentive while I’m at work.”
Something about repeating and singing the words “very humble, very considerate” caught people’s attention and the catchphrase was born. Nowadays everyone describes everything as “very modest.” Very attentive.”
My first question was, “Is LeBron doing something or is it legal?” All signs point to “it’s not much” but it’s really good. This got some great responses. Like this description of very modest, very conscious shameful behavior and these two who eat sandwiches very consciously and very modestly . One of the two people running for president is very modest and very attentive, while the other wears too much makeup. But this riff on “humble” made me laugh more than any other . I don’t even know why, but it’s very modest; very attentive.
Biggest Viral Star of the Olympics: Reagan
The woman pictured above, Australian Olympic B-Girl Rachel “Reagan” Gunn, went from total obscurity to ubiquitous online celebrity/athlete over the weekend due to her disastrous performance at the inaugural Paris Olympics breaking competition.
NBC controls its clips very carefully, so I can’t embed Ragan’s entire performance, but news reports , mocking tweets , and parody videos went viral everywhere immediately after she danced, and showed little sign of slowing down.
Raygun’s dance was unusual (to be charitable), but she’s still a much better dancer than I am, and she’s far from the first person who’s bad at her sport to manage to make it to the Olympics . Unlike some others, she got there. to be fair, winning the Oceania qualifier (somehow). She’s also a cool person. She has a Ph.D. She holds a BA in Cultural Studies and is a researcher and lecturer at Macquarie University in Sydney, where she studies the ‘cultural politics of breaking’.
However, it would be a shame if people’s perception of Olympic breaking was based on Raygun’s performance when the rest of the competition was pretty much the same .
Breaking was the highlight of the Paris Olympics for me – a breath of fresh air, energy and joy in an organization that is often mired in self-seriousness. It’s also good to see that the “Olympic rules version” of mainstream sport remains close to how the sport is actually practiced. (For a counterexample, see Olympic street skating or surfing, which could hardly be more different from the way people actually skate and surf.) And the combination of artistic expression and athleticism is consistent with other Olympic sports such as rhythmic gymnastics and artistic swimming. .
I hope we see breaking at the 2032 Brisbane Olympics and I hope Ragan comes back and shocks the world by winning gold on his home turf. I don’t think that will happen, but it would be cool.
What is the “Bubble Gum Dystopia” and are we living in it?
The words “gum dystopia” have been popping up a lot lately, so let’s dive into what we’re talking about. The phrase was originally coined to describe the look of Terry Gilliam’s 2013 film The Zero Theorem , where the bright colors barely hide the rot beneath the surface of Gilliam’s world. But writer Steven Notum expanded on that definition in a recent TikTok video.
“A chewy dystopia… is ruled by a totalitarian entity that makes the world bright and comfortable but empty,” says Notum. “Citizens are reduced to consumers as their core identity. Products often completely replace art and media.”
Notum suggests Fahrenheit 451 as an early example of bubblegum dystopia in literature, but I think Brave New World is probably closer. Other examples from arts and entertainment include Brazil (again from Terry Gilliam) Wall-E , Barbieland in the movie Barbie, and most episodes of Black Mirror.
Whether we are living in a bubblegum dystopia in the United States in 2024 remains an open question. Of course, there is a lot of bright nonsense that distracts people, but, on the other hand, nothing prevents them from ignoring it. But if it’s a bubblegum dystopia, I’d prefer it to a surveillance state dystopia like East Germany during the Cold War, an anarchist dystopia in Somalia, or a totalitarian dystopia in North Korea. We have better food and video games than any of those places.
Viral Video of the Week: I Built a Trampoline Park at My Home!
Speaking of bubblegum dystopias, this week’s viral video looks like something that would be broadcast into every home in such a place. I built a trampoline park at my home! This is an example of a subgenre of Youtube videos, very popular among children, in which the presenter attempts to build complex and impractical additions to their homes. Video about how I built a secret McDonald’s in my room ! And we built a water park at home ! and I built a shopping center at home ! have millions of views. Their titles always have exclamation points in them, and the thumbnails always feature someone with a blank grin and an open mouth, so you know what to expect before you hit play.
“I Built a Trampoline Park” is exhausting to watch. Flashy presentation, clearly written “real life” drama, unoriginality (there’s already a YouTube video called ” Let’s turn my house into a trampoline park !”), relentless manic energy bordering on hysteria – it feels like someone screaming “I’m having fun! ” “In your face for hours. But the videos are popular anyway. Ben Azelart has almost 30 million subscribers on YouTube who love going to the (very real) trampoline park in his (very real) house.
These videos are obviously aimed at children, and the charitable reading of them is that they are the embodiment of drawings we’ve all made in the study room of our future dream home, with an airplane parked in the garage, a roller coaster in the backyard, and robot maid. They also have a hidden meaning: “What if my parents were fun ?” I wish them fulfillment of their wishes. I think I understand why they are popular. But are they harmless? I don’t know, I guess? Is their shrillness and ruthlessness proof that it is becoming increasingly difficult to distract people from the ugly reality just beneath the surface of the modern world? I don’t know, maybe?