A Guide to Children’s Culture for Out-of-Touch Adults: What’s “Cheese”?
I’m absolutely crazy about Mixtape , but I’m not so crazy about AI-generated cat videos on TikTok. Diving! If that doesn’t make sense to you, this week’s “Out of Touch” column offers an enlightening and inspiring article where, depending on who you ask, the secret world of youth is either explained or misunderstood.
What does “cheesin” mean? And how is it different from “cheesing”?
The slang word “cheesin'” refers to a smile, especially a wide, goofy one. It comes from the common phrase “say cheese!” when taking a photo. Here’s an example of “cheesin'” used online:
The word “cheesing” with a “g” ending often means the same thing, but can also refer to the practice of throwing pieces of cheese at cars and/or people—the cheese sticks, and it’s quite funny. I know you shouldn’t do this— who’s going to think about cars? But it’s still funny. Here’s an example of the second type of “cheese throwing”:
Throwing cheese at cars is nothing new online, and it never seems to have been a widespread trend, but this week it caused such a stir that a Topeka teenager was arrested and charged with two counts of aggravated assault following a cheese-throwing incident. The unnamed teenager allegedly threw cheese at someone, and when the victim tried to stop him, he pulled a gun. In response, the Topeka Police Department issued a statement reminding the public that “social media trends and pranks can quickly escalate into dangerous situations with serious legal consequences.” Thank you, Topeka Police Department!
Gamers are outraged by the mixtape.
Gaming culture is getting weird again. On May 7th, Annapurna Interactive released Mixtape , a story-driven adventure game about the challenges and beauty of growing up. Mixtape is to Call of Duty what Boyhood is to Avengers: Endgame . Professional game critics, being generally sensitive, love the game , but many “real” gamers are not thrilled with Mixtape . People are calling it pretentious , boring, “too progressive,” and questioning whether it can even be called a game . So far, the backlash has been limited to complaints and funny memes , but the fact that Annapurna Interactive was founded by Megan Ellison, the daughter of the ultra-wealthy Oracle founder Larry Ellison, is being actively played up online, leading to accusations that the game exists solely through nepotism, and that its high scores are a sham or the result of critics’ fear of angering a wealthy man. It’s starting to feel like Gamergate 2.0.
There’s something about gaming culture that compels people to choose the most ridiculous arguments worth dying for. Moviegoers don’t engage in moral outrage or launch campaigns of data disclosure and harassment just because critics prefer The Quiet Friend over Transformers: Beast Rise . That doesn’t mean they won’t release the next Madden just because Annapurna Interactive wants to make another subtle walking simulator.
What does “Scuba” mean?
I don’t know why I know this offhand, but “scuba” is an abbreviation for “self-contained underwater breathing apparatus.” However, to young people, that’s not what it means. In slang, “scuba” is a verb. “Scuba” means to dance the “scuba dance” (sometimes called the “scuba juke”), which I’ll just show you instead of trying to describe:
So, videos of this simple dance have flooded TikTok. The trend is credited to Deshaun Hawk Logan-Russell —he directed the first Scuba video, and this is his sound bite—but to me, it looks more like a variation of the 1960s Swim dance. If you ever think, “These online dance trends are so silly,” remember that the Swim was incredibly popular.
Viral video of the week: cats vs. vegetable-based artificial intelligence.
This week’s viral videos offer a glimpse into a dark and disturbing future. A subgenre of AI videos featuring anthropomorphic cartoon cats doing disturbing things is wildly popular on TikTok. Channels like @cat_mind6 , @the_meow_minute , @giselecat, @mixcat804 , and dozens of others regularly post AI videos of human/cat chimeras stealing each other’s eyes , getting hit by trucks , drugging drinks , and generally behaving in an utterly creepy way. These videos regularly go viral, racking up tens of millions of views. The bizarre video below has been viewed over 120 million times .
It’s unlikely that humans had any involvement in the “creative” aspect of these videos. Artificial intelligence creates the videos, posts them, analyzes what works and what doesn’t based on view counts, and then refines and perfects the formula for the next video, giving us a vague idea of the combination of humanity’s collective unconscious and TikTok’s algorithmic programming. Meanwhile, the AI itself is extracting secrets from the human soul, studying how we interact with this nonsense. This is how all entertainment will be created in the future; because this is what many, many people most want to watch, even if they’ll never admit it. This video has garnered over 148 million views:
A few weeks ago, something mysterious happened, and cat video accounts began posting videos of sentient fruits and vegetables being destroyed instead of cats. The last cat video from @cat_mind6, in which a catwoman is sexually assaulted by a catman and a rabbitman , was dated April 24th and had been viewed less than 150,000 times. But the next day, the channel posted a video dramatizing an applewoman’s struggle with severe diarrhea, which has been viewed over 13 million times. The last cat video from @the_meow_minute, in which a kitten is raised by gorillas , was posted in March . After that, all attention shifted to the abusive relationship between a zucchini guy and a peach woman.
At the end of the chain between AI agents and TikTok video viewers, someone is making a fortune. A video with 128 million views can earn between $60,000 and $100,000 from its creator through TikTok’s creator rewards program. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg, as this profit is enticing hundreds of newcomers to try to join the process. They probably won’t make any money, but they will be putting it into the pockets of the AI companies that create the software for these videos.
Now I’ll find an ice floe to float away on.