The Out-of-Touch Adults’ Guide to Kid Culture: Are You ‘Kenough’?

It is undoubtedly Barbie’s world, and we all (just barely) live in it. The movie has completely dominated the frothier side of the cultural conversation since it was released last week, crushing movie rival Oppenheimer and earning rave reviews and (to date) more than $530 million.

The online world reacts to Barbie’s success

Barbie has been in theaters for about a week and the internet has some deep feelings about it. Interestingly, Ken is getting at least as much attention as the main character, at least in meme-world. Here are some of the more widespread and interesting Barbie memes, reactions, and attitudes.

“I am Kenough.” The movie might have been about Barbie’s journey, but Ken’s acceptance of his Ken-ness was a moment that struck a nerve as well, inspiring some internet dudes to embrace their own Kenergy. You can buy the official “I am Kenough” hoodie Ken wore in the movie from Mattel, or look around for a knock-off.Many Barbie viewers recognized something of their own relationships in the phrase “long-term, long-distance, low-commitment, casual girlfriend relationship.” Twitter user TechnicallyRon won the internet this week simply by pasting the text of angry men’s 1-star reviews onto Barbie’s poster, like so:Speaking of angry men, right-wing cranks are big mad over Barbie for reasons I’m not even curious about. Example: Failed screenwriter Ben Shapiro threw a 40-minute tantrum in his review video of Barbie and Oppenheimer that I didn’t watch. It begins with him lighting Barbie, Ken, and their pink jeep on fire. A very normal reaction!A reasonable person might conclude that the success of Barbie shows that Americans are thirsty for something original, and that studios can get rich releasing well-crafted films with thoughtful messages wrapped in breezy, hilarious packages. Instead, movie studios concluded people want more movies about toys. Look out for future “adaptations” of Hot Wheels, Polly Pocket, Rock ‘em Sock ‘em Robots, Magic 8 Ball, View Master, Uno and more. I didn’t make those up, by the way.

Viral videos of the week: Glorb’s AI-generated Spongebob Squarepants raps

Content creator Glorb is gaining popularity on YouTube and TikTok for their hip-hop/comedy videos. Sung with the voices of character from SpongeBob Squarepants, Glorb’s videos have racked up tens of millions of views, and it’s all seemingly done with as little human assistance as possible. Everything in the videos Glorb posts are purported to have been created by artificial intelligence. The claim can’t be confirmed, but the beats, bars, and videos are so generic, they really might be all-AI.

That AI can create mediocre music and make barely funny jokes is amazing, but young people seeming to actually like these songs enough to watch and share the videos is just depressing. I’m not the target market, however. Check out Dankton-STD or SpongeOpp - FUN to form your own opinion.

“World of Warcraft (WoW) Players Excited for Glorbo’s Introduction”

Glorb should not be confused with Glorbo. Glorbo is a fictional feature (or character) created by Reddit’s World of Warcraft subreddit in order to trick artificial intelligence.

Here’s how Glorbo came to exist: This week, Reddit’s WoW fans began to suspect that an app called Z-League (“the gaming super app”) was using AI to write articles based on comments in their subreddit. So they hatched a plan to test the hypothesis.

User kaefer_kriegerin wrote a post entitled “I’m so excited they finally introduced Glorbo!!!” Which was heavily up-voted on the site, with comments containing tons of made-up details and opinions about Glorbo and other fictional World of Warcraft lore and characters.

Within days, Z-League’s robot took the bait, and posted a hilarious story with the headline, “World of Warcraft (WoW) Players Excited for Glorbo’s Introduction.” The article reports that “The highly anticipated new feature has sparked a wave of positive sentiment among players, who are eagerly awaiting its impact on the game.”

But not everyone loves Glorbo. According to Z-League: “Reddit user tensam expresses concern about Glorbo being overpowered and accuses Blizzard of being inconsiderate towards non-Glorbo players,” and “One aspect of Glorbo’s introduction that has sparked differing opinions among players is the mandatory item Klikclac.” People just don’t have time to farm the Zoop you need for the Klikclac.

This experiment proves once and for all that it is dumb and bad to replace internet writers with artificial intelligence, so I’m sure all efforts to do that will be halted at once.

What does “delulu” mean?

“Delulu” is the Gen-Z way of saying “delusional.” The word originated in K-Pop fandom a few years ago and has since spread into the larger online world. Some people may even being say it in real life.

According to my teenage son, the popularity of “delulu” is the death-knell of Zoomer coolness. He sees this as the first sign that Gen-Z has begun its inevitable decline into the cheugy-ness of millennials.

Grimace meme boosts sales, inspires corporate lameness

The internet’s hilarious reaction to the release of Grimace shakes last month helped McDonald’s sales go up 14 percent last quarter to $2.31 billion in net income.

“This quarter, if I’m being honest, the theme was Grimace,” McD’s CEO Chris Kempczinski said in a conference call.

The problem with making memes about big corporations is that encourages them to try to make fetch happen. Like this painfully unfunny, “How do you do, fellow kids?” Hamburglar “Attenzione Pickpocket” meme from McDonald’s Instagram. The only funny thing about it is imagining the frustration of McDonald’s marketing department when the corporate suits yell at them to “just do that Grimace thing again.”