The Out-of-Touch Adults' Guide to Kid Culture: 'Bama Rush

We’re studying the extremes this week in popular culture, from Riverdale’s alternative sexuality, to the anti-nudity wing of the Youth of Today, to the uniquely disquieting rituals of ‘Bama Rush.

What the hell is “‘Bama Rush?”

A new school year is starting, and that means another year of ‘Bama Rush. The recruitment process for sororities at University of Alabama has gained worldwide attention thanks to TikTok videos like this, this, and this. Straight from the deep, Gothic South, these clips feature elaborately choreographed dance routines starring dozens of future pharmaceutical sales representatives and second wives.

My life and lives of everyone I’ve ever liked are so different from these young women’s lives that I can’t grasp what’s happening here. I’m in favor of sisterhood. I can’t deny the talent it took to make such complex, well-produced dance videos. Everyone looks like they’re having a lot of fun—check out how hard they’re smiling. I can’t find anything negative to say about ‘Bama Rush. But still. It’s all a little unsettling—they’re smiling very hard and they all have such straight, white teeth.

Riverdale’s batshit ending divides fans

I can relate to the degenerate characters and murderous insanity of TV’s Riverdale much more easily than the ‘Bama Rushers. Based (very) loosely on the Archie comics popular in the ‘40s and ‘50s, Riverdale is known for its batshit storylines—Jughead flayed someone, Archie fought a bear, a bomb blew the teens into an alternative universe, etc. So fans were expecting something unexpected for the series’ final episode this week, and they definitely got it. (Here’s where the spoilers start so be warned.)

The final episode begins with 86-year-old Veronica looking over her life and revealing the fate of all the show’s characters, except the four leads, Betty, Veronica, Archie, and Jughead. Even back in the 1950s, the tension of Archie comics came from the romantic triangle of Archie and Betty and Veronica. Riverdale put Jughead into the mix to make a romantic rhombus. So the main question of the finale is “Who ends up with whom?” The answer: Everyone ends up with everyone. Betty, Veronica, Jughead, and Archie enter into a polyamorous quad relationship that lasts through their senior year, after which they go their separate ways.

Reaction from fans was mixed, not unusual for a series that is so ridiculous and over-the-top. Some saw it as a lazy way out of answering the core question, while others asked, “How else could it end?”

The story of Spider-Man: Lotus

Nerd fandoms bring out both the best and worst traits in young people. Serious nerd-fans are intelligent, passionate, and amazingly dedicated, but they can also be arrogant, short-sighted, and have a tendency not to bathe enough. The recent release of fan film Spider-Man: Lotus illustrates the dual nature of fandom’s elite perfectly.

It began with the dream of Rancho Cucamonga, California high school outcast Gavin J. Konop. Konop and his online friends loved Spider-Man, but they also hated Spider-Man with the blinding intensity nerds feel when the feel someone isn’t doing justice to “their” stories. The consensus among these diehard Spider-fans: recent Spider-Man movies suck because they’ve strayed too far from the source material. With the arrogance of youth, they started to believe their own shitposts, specifically, those famous last words: “I could make a better movie myself.”

So they tried. Their Gofundme raised $112,000, and they spent three years making Spider-Man: Lotus. It is an ambitious project, and just finishing a superhero flick for 100k is amazing. A lot of what they did is technically outstanding for first-timers, and yes, Lotus does stick very closely to the comic book source material.

But it’s just terrible. Not because of the low budget—if they had $200 million it would still be bad—but because it’s dull. It’s boring like the ideas of arrogant know-it-all fans are always boring. Who but an uncreative person would spend years making a movie about characters someone else created, using plots lifted directly from the “source material”? You can watch Spider-Man: Lotus here to see what I mean.

Konop and company are young, so hopefully Lotus will serve as a lesson in humility for its young filmmakers. I wouldn’t ordinarily trash young people for a swing-and-miss creative project, but through the course of Lotus’s production, it was revealed that Konop and the film’s star shared racist and homophobic messages with each other and were generally unpleasant jerks. Bigotry is another too-common trait among hardcore nerds; maybe they’ll learn a lesson about that, too.

Viral video of the week: Oppenheimer Sex Scene Woman

TikTok user Jourdan became the internet’s main character this week when a video she shot about historic biopic Oppenheimer was posted to Twitter. In it, Jourdan explains the unique way she and her husband watched the flick.

“If we go see anything, a concert, movie, or event, we have a game plan,” she explained. The plan for Oppenheimer was for her husband to close his eyes when actress Florence Pugh’s breasts were visible. “It didn’t ruin the storyline. It didn’t change anything,” Jourdan reports.

The video is not a joke or parody. Jourdan has posted many clips on her channel detailing the negative effects of “corn” (that’s “porn” to you and me) on her husband, who is a porn addict, and her marriage. She’s not alone. Jourdan is only the most visible member of a growing movement of young, anti-porn activists. They gather on hashtags like #FightforLove and message boards like Reddit’s pornfree. Some are religious, some are not. Some are men. Some are women, but they all share a similar philosophy: Porn addiction is real and harmful. It destroys marriages, saps ambition, and is breaking down for society.

I get it. I don’t agree with Jourdan and her ilk, but I’m sympathetic. I don’t doubt that pouring all the porn in the world directly into a Puritan society has had some negative cultural and personal outcomes. It’s a lot for some people to deal with—maybe it’s the porn itself, maybe it’s the shame people feel because of their upbringing and social conditioning, or maybe it’s because so much of porn is so misogynistic and creepy. The speed of change wrought by technology has turned society into a massive social experiment that no one is controlling, Covering your husband’s eyes during Oppenheimer is hilarious (and sort of kinky, in a way), but I understand the inclination to try to put the genie back in the bottle, even if it’s bound to end in failure.