The Out-of-Touch Adults' Guide to Kid Culture: Is 'Zepotha' a Real Movie?

It’s too damn hot to do anything interesting, so all the young people are staying inside and scum saving in Baldur’s Gate 3, talking about scary movies that don’t actually exist, visiting the planet of the bass, and not walking around with their labia minora hanging out of their dresses.

Zepotha is the scariest movie of the 80s, but is it real?

Horror movie TikTok is going crazy for Zepotha, a shocking scare flick from the VHS 80s that doesn’t exist. It was created by TikToker Emily Jeffri as a clever troll—in a video, she recommended that people leave a comment for thirst traps that says, “you look exactly like that one girl from Zepotha.” Jeffri goes on to predict that main characters would emerge and lore develop, and that’s just what’s happening. First thousands of comments about the film started showing up on people’s TikToks, which actually did freak people out when they looked all over for information about the film and found none. Then footage of Zepotha was posted. A Zepotha subreddit formed. People shared their Zepotha cosplay ideas. Some claim to have a VHS copy and offer photographic proof and a screenshot from the film. Lore did develop. If this all sounds familiar, you can read about Martin Scorseses’s “lost film” that doesn’t exist, Goncharov, here.

TikTok’s labia minora trend explained

Labia minora are all over TikTok. Kind of. In a recent video, TikToker jessica_ann_pin, says, “I notice a trend where a lot of women are showing their labia minora, like, hanging down in a see-through dress, and whenever I see this, I only see positive comments from men.”

The response from other users of TikTok was summed up by @badbroad who said: “…Who? What? What are you talking about?” Or, as shesmytranquility1 asked, “What side of TikTok is this on? Where can I find it?”

The answer, as far as I can tell, is that it’s not on any side of TikTok. There are no videos of this type. At first I thought Pin’s original video was a clever conceptual joke about the way weirdos race to TikTok to figure out what’s going on if a new trend has anything to do with young women’s bodies, like the idea is to make people search videos that aren’t there. But that’s not it. Jessica Pin is sincerely into talking about women’s genitals. She has dozens of videos on the subject, and her message is a simple one: Pussies are good. It’s cool if they’re large-lipped, or small, and no one should be shamed for vagina or vulva-related reasons. But she seems to have made up the part about the minora-hanging videos.

What is the EggCrackChallenge?

It’s usually young people doing TikTok ill-advised challenges, but the EggCrackChallenge proves that parents can do dumb crap for clicks too. The EggCrackChallenge hashtag has over 16 million views, and it’s full of videos of parents smashing eggs on their surprised children’s foreheads. Some of the videos are kind of funny, particularly when the kid seems to get the joke, but some are a little mean, with children who are too young to understand what’s happening looking confused and betrayed, or earnestly asking “why did you do that?” It’s not the end of the world or anything—it’s not child abuse—but it’s like a 3 on a 10-point scale of disturbing things parents do. Also, as this mom demonstrates, it can take a fair amount of force to crack an egg.

Baldur’s Gate 3 brings back “save scumming”

“Save scumming” is saving a video game right before a random event, so you can restart to get the result you want. The practice (if not the phrase) probably dates back to the first save feature in video games, but it’s enjoying a resurgence thanks to the popularity of Baldur’s Gate 3. Like the classic pen-and-paper RPGs it’s based on, BG 3 features a lot of (virtual) die rolls, so tweaking the odds is taking off. Is it cheating? Maybe. But who cares? It’s a single-player game so no one is being cheated but yourself—plus, if there’s a DM alive who hasn’t fudged rolls occasionally to make a game more fun, I don’t want to play D&D with them. Story trumps randomness every time.

Viral video of the week: Kyle Gordon - Planet of the Bass (feat. DJ Crazy Times & Ms. Biljana Electronica) [Official Video]

The official video for Kyle Gordon’s “Planet of the Bass (feat. DJ Crazy Times & Ms. Biljana Electronica)” is taking over the Internet. The song is a generic 90s style euro-dance track with ESL lyrics like “When the pleasure is a dream. On a secret love, And the people wanna make a fun, We are losing control on a floor tonight, Take your heart into a unicorn” sung by parodies of try-hards who are not pulling off the look they’re going for at the club. It’s all a broad conceptual joke. I don’t think it’s a very funny joke. It’s from the “I noticed something about pop culture in the past” school of comedy with no payoff. But I’m clearly in the minority, as the video has been viewed more than a million times in the two days since its release.