This week’s tour of the world of young people’s culture takes us from the heights of public service announcements that signaled a positive shift in cultural perceptions of Down syndrome to the depths of the new incarnation of Gamergate. Along the way, we'll look at some memes about Timothée Chalamet and learn why the music was really so much better when he was younger.
Timothée Chalamet: The most meme-worthy actor of a generation
The 28-year-old actor Timothée Chalamet starred in "Dune", "Wonka" and "Dune 2" and has won an Academy Award, three Golden Globe Awards and three British Film and Television Awards Nominated for an Academy of Arts Award. But he looks like a shoe.
As early as 2020, people started pointing out the similarities between Chalamet and footwear. "Timothée Chalamet looks like a pointy Italian shoe that was cursed by a witch and turned into a real boy," read the first tweet about the phenomenon. Check out this video and see if you agree. Or these side-by-side photos.
However, shoes aren't the only thing Chalamet looks like. The first photos were released last week of the actor dressing up as a young Bob Dylan in the upcoming biopic Total Unknown , and he looks like this:
According to the internet, Chalamet looks a lot like Fievel Muskiewicz in "An American Tail." Or like "every character is actually in love." Or like he's "becoming a governess to a sea captain with seven children. Seven!" Or like "a Charles Dickens character and a jam band."
I don't usually celebrate online bullying, but it was all well-intentioned and he did look like a shoe; plus, if Chalamet gets mad, he can cry into a pile of money.
This is why you hate youth music
Have you ever had a young person play you pop music and it sounded wrong and terrible? This happens to me all the time. My teenage kid will pull up the Soundcloud of some underground rapper or bedroom producer he likes, and my (unsaid, because I’m not an asshole) reaction is usually something along the lines of, “How could anyone like this shit? ?”
It’s not necessarily the music itself; This is production – mixing. The drums are too low. The voice is hoarse. There is no separation. "Why would anyone release something that sounds like this when professional production tools are readily available to anyone with a PC?" I thought. But I think I've found the reason.
Since at least the 1950s, young people have enjoyed music partly because older people hate it. The distorted, dissonant guitar sounds of rock music and the razor-sharp minimalism and obscenity-laden lyrics of hip-hop all sound wrong , like something wrong or dangerous to squares and parents, so artists pile it on .
But at some point, the musicians ran off the runway. For rock music, I'd say Big Black's Songs About Fucking, released in 1987 Marks the moment when a recording no longer contains any distortion or noise, and it can still legitimately be called "music." You could also pick a similar, arbitrary date for hip-hop. Maybe NWA's first album. Despite their extreme content for the time, "Songs About Fucking" and "Straight Outta Compton" were both carefully crafted.
Big Black's Steve Albini went on to produce Nirvana's culture-defining album In Utero, the album that today's parents grew up on, one that made "noise and distortion" never offensive. NWA's "Straight Outta Compton" is actually a throwback to 2024 nostalgia. But in a glorious work of teenage subversion, young artists have recently (perhaps unconsciously) learned that they can still make music that sounds wrong and bad to people like me, even if they can't make it through the noise or swearing to do this. The ingenious solution is a muddy, imperfect, unlistenable mix of today's underground music. So the next time you find yourself thinking about how music has become so much better in your time, remember that it's really just your old ears; When your kids grow up, it'll be played at the dentist's office.
Is Gamergate making a comeback?
If you were lucky enough to miss the first "Gamergate" in 2014, I have bad news. A second version of a harassment campaign masquerading as activism is brewing in the fetid halls of a new generation of online weirdos and assholes. Gamergate 2.0 abandons false concerns about "video game journalism ethics" in favor of opposing what it deems "woke," but the strategy remains the same: pick a target, make up something about them, then start harassing people with water hoses and Fire a death threat cannon. This time, the focus of the outrage is a small narrative design company called Sweet Baby Inc. The cover story on the Gamergate harassment campaign dealt with the belief that the 16-employee company was deciding editorial choices across the $214 billion gaming industry, including deciding the race of the protagonist in Alan Wake 2 , Kratos’ choice, and basically every non-white, non-heterosexual character in all games.
Encouragingly, the industry seems to be responding more positively this time around, with the head of a game development company pointing out that Gamergate assholes don't understand how the games industry (or any other industry) works because companies hire consulting firms because They want the services they provide; consulting firms don't dictate terms to employers. So if Sweet Baby offers a wake-up feature, it's to satisfy an industry that wants more wakefulness, not less. Another encouraging difference between this and the original Gamergate: The movement appears to be much smaller and sadder, with the Discord server organizing the harassment only having about 2,000 members.
Cheating in the Internet Era
I have no sympathy for them, but today's cheaters have a harder time covering up their indiscretions than any previous generation. The number of apps and platforms that leak your information is increasing all the time, and one small mistake can give the game away. You can even workout through the fitness app Strava.
In a recent video, TikToker meg.c.mcgee told the story of how she found evidence of her husband's infidelity by running a map on Strava. His jogging route led directly from the home he shared with his wife to an illegal partner's home half a mile away, without the unknown guy setting it to "private" or deleting the data. Commenters on the post recounted using Airbnb, Venmo, AMC apps (where he watched too many movies she hadn’t seen), and secret calculator apps (apps that look like innocent math aids but act as hidden photo repository) to catch cheating partners. .
Viral video of the week: If I could
The video that went viral this week was a public service announcement from the National Down Syndrome Society, and it really struck a nerve — the ad has been viewed nearly 30 million times on TikTok and even more on Instagram many. It challenges viewers to consider how the limitations we place on people with Down syndrome can become self-fulfilling prophecies. "Coach, you don't think I can hit harder," actress and model Madison Tevlin says in the video, "so you don't train me to hit harder."
The ad basically plays like a standard PSA that might get 5,000 views, but then Tevlin tells us she can actually "recite fucking Shakespeare." After a pause, she asked, "You think I can't swear, right?"
I don't think so, but I do think that people who make PSAs about Down syndrome are infantilizing their subject matter in the name of good taste or respectability, so they refuse to do so and instead admit that swearing, drinking, and It’s refreshing and powerful that sexuality is not the prerogative of neurotypicals, nor is it something we should ever talk to someone with an intellectual disability, but is a basic human right that everyone should choose to enjoy.
