Taylor Swift released a new album this week. Although the singer is 34 years old—almost middle-aged—her music speaks directly to young people, and they respond. Less mainstream young people are becoming loyal fans of a Chinese industrial chemicals company. Read on and I'll explain why.
The Internet Reacts to Taylor Swift’s ‘Torture Poets Ministry’
The Ministry of Tormented Poets was released this week and people are having their say . Swift's 11th studio album offers 31 new songs to listen to, analyze, love or hate. Critics were almost unanimous in their praise, but were they intimidated? Paste magazine gave Tay-Tay’s latest work a negative review but did not name her in its post, “because when Paste reviewed ‘Lover’ in 2019, readers who disagreed with the work sent violent threats to the author.”
Fans seem to like the new album, too, but some of Swift's lyrics have sparked mild controversy. First up is this line from "I Hate Here": "My friends used to play a game in which/We would pick a decade/We wished we could live in instead of this/I would have said the 1830s, but Not all racists." This led some to speculate that Swift was secretly racist, a popular theme among far-right nerds. TRUTH: This line is not offensive in context.
Then there’s “You Won’t Last An Hour in the Mental Hospital They Raised Me” from Who’s Afraid of Old Me? Some pointed out that the fact that Swift's father was a bank president and that she grew up in an upper-middle-class family was like a huge "trap." But this is art; hurry up. Some critics also took issue with this line from "So High School": "You know how to play ball, I know Aristotle/Brand new, full throttle/Touch me while your brother plays Grand Theft Auto ," Isn't it so ridiculous to point out that Swift has been 34 years old for several years now? But this is a song about high school. (Now that I've defended Taylor Swift, I'm going to use her fans as my personal army because they owe me.)
Why is TikTok obsessed with “food grade glycine”?
This is one of those jokes that can be unraveled by explanation, so before I ruin it, I’ll wait for you to check out Chinese manufacturing company Donghua Junlong’s TikTok. The chemical company recently set up the account to post heartwarming videos about the many uses of glycine, an amino acid. There’s something about them that appeals to TikTok’s sarcastic crowd, with videos like “Stronger Piggy Starts with a High-Quality Iron Glycinate Supplement!” "Food Grade Glycine: Indispensable in Everyday Life" went viral online, with fans of Donghua Junlong posting hundreds of hilarious comments expressing their admiration for the company and the food-grade glycine it produces. (See how my explanation made the joke less funny?) Fans started posting fan videos. This guy visited the factory. The following is an interesting response from a Chinese woman to a grassroots cultural exchange.
The company finally took note of the attention and released a video for fans the other day. They look happy but confused by all the attention, which may mean this trend is over as future Donghua Junlong videos will be made with this new audience in mind and will likely lose interest The appeal of outsidership.
Watcher Entertainment is the latest departure of old-school YouTubers
This week, popular YouTube users Steven Lim, Ryan Bergara and Watcher Entertainment founder Shane Madej announced that the channel will be leaving YouTube and moving to a subscription platform. The news sparked an uproar among fans, prompting the company to announce that it would not eventually leave YouTube and would instead publish videos on YouTube a month after posting them on its subscription site.
Watcher helped develop and popularize YouTube's professional production style in 2024 with hit series like "Ghost Files" and "Muppet History." Its semi-departure is just the latest departure of “conservative” content creators. The once ubiquitous, multi-million-subscriber stars of Pewdiepie, Tom Scott, MeatCanyon, MatPat, Seth Everman, and more have recently left YouTube for varying reasons, but the most common theme in the “I’m an outsider” videos I’ve seen It's simple: "I". I'm tired. "Creating, maintaining, and marketing a popular video channel has always been a 24-hour-a-day job, but the market is more competitive than it was a decade ago, which means more work needs to be done for less money. Since YouTube has the ability to cancel at will videos and/or change its recommendation algorithm on the fly, "YouTube influencer" becomes a precarious, stressful job that can burn you out if you're over 20.
The rise of AI imitating music
I'd like to say that art produced by AI is terrible and hopeless, but a few YouTube channels have made me reluctantly admit that AI might be able to make interesting parody music. Obscurest Vinyl uses artificial intelligence to create dirty songs in the old school genre. "I Glued My Balls to my Butthole Again" and "This Baptism Fucking Blows" are vulgar, but they're hilarious. There I Ruined It took a different strategy and used artificial intelligence to "ruin the music you love" by approximating it to sound like Elvis Presley covering "I Like Big Butts," Beach Boy singing "99 Questions" or NWA playing October Music, I'm not a fan of this music but I can't deny it makes me laugh (either). On the other hand, attempts to delve deeper into the genre show that imitators' AI covers are almost universally bad, so the AI doesn't give us a "fun" button, it's still up to the creator. The joke wasn't told by an AI, but if I were Weird Al Yankovic, I'd be worried.
Viral Video of the Week: Deadpool & Wolverine Trailer
Things aren't exactly "breaking the internet" as they once were, but if they were, the trailer for Deadpool vs. Wolverine would send the place into chaos. On its first day alone, the Marvel Universe team-up garnered more than 21 million views on YouTube. The movie looks like a superhero odd-couple story, with the ruthless Wolverine providing a righteous foil to Deadpool's smartass. The intense interest in Deadpool vs. Wolverine , and the similar reaction to the trailer for DC's Joker Folie à Deux released a few weeks ago , suggests that the superhero genre may not be as dead as some believe. Instead, audiences seem to be tired of "traditional" superhero stories like Aquaman and the Fallen Kingdom and Marvel , but are still interested in popular characters presented in new ways. Whether the two films will live up to their pre-release publicity is uncertain. Hitting the artistic/commercial bullseye when putting a comic book hero in an unfamiliar setting may seem a lot harder than making another formulaic movie, but even if they don't work, at least the resulting movie will be an entertaining failure.
