The Out-of-Touch Adults' Guide to Kid Culture: The Song of the Summer

Credit: Billie Eilish - YouTube

Summer is coming on fast, and young people seem to be turning their attention away from weighty topics like "would you rather be trapped in the woods with a bear or a man," to more lighthearted concerns—like unhinged home design videos, candy salad, and Billie Eilish's new song "Lunch."

Viral video of the week: Billie Eilish—Lunch

I'm calling it now: Billie Eilish's "Lunch" is the song of the summer. The 22-year-old pop star dropped the video this week, and in its first three days online, it’s been played 16,697,734 times. The "Lunch" video feels like one of those generation-defining things. It's just Eilish. There’s no big concept; there's not even a background. It's just a performer singing her new song—but her look, the song, and the moment seem to be coalescing. The look is '90s suburban-gangster throwback—baggy jeans, snapback ball cap turned to the side, silver grill. And the song is an fearless celebration of lust. Eilish sings “It's a craving, not a crush,” and “You need a seat? I'll volunteer.” 

Eilish, who came out as lesbian in Variety last year, said this about the song in a recent Rolling Stone interview: “I wrote some of it before even doing anything with a girl, and then wrote the rest after. I’ve been in love with girls for my whole life, but I just didn’t understand—until, last year, I realized I wanted my face in a vagina.” 

What does aura mean?

In Gen-Z slang, “aura" means something like presence. It's a little like the '70s meaning, but saying someone "has aura" defines them as mysterious, powerful, and cool. The term was first used widely in connection with Dutch soccer player Virgil van Dijk to describe his ineffable charisma. It stayed in the sports world for a while, until the question “Can you be fat and still have aura?” caught on in March. The answers—which mentioned people like Tony Soprano—provide some nuance to how the word is generally used. First, it’s almost exclusively applied to men. Secondly, it’s not the same as saying someone is attractive (in a traditional way). It’s similar, but not the same, as “rizz.” Rizz describes more of a “good with words” person, where "aura" seems like the non-verbal part of being cool.

Another aura-related trend that took off recently are TikToks featuring “The Most Amount of Aura I’ve Used on a Level 1” where aura-filled subjects “use” their aura on “lesser” people, often described as “lvl 1 crooks,” or “low vibrational people.”

Unhinged home design

The “unhinged home design” trend that’s taking over TikTok refers to CGI videos that purport to be home-design tutorials, but quickly devolve into absurdly complex space-saving ideas, or just complete insanity.

The trend started with a TikTok account called @designer_bob that began posting earnest design videos like this a couple years ago. They would occasionally layer in some absurd elements, and people started noticing things like children being pushed through walls. Then other accounts, most notably @homedesign369, started posting videos that are all absurdity, including adding a weirdly intense AI narrator that describes the rooms and the people who build them. Videos like “building a bedroom for 100 kids" started becoming popular, and repeated phrases from the videos, like “galvanized steel” and “eco-friendly wood veneers,” became catchphrases in the comment section and the videos themselves. It doesn't seem like anyone knows if these accounts are run by the same person/people, but they have a similarity in style that suggests they could be. 

New culinary trend: candy salad

I don’t know if it’s “cooking” exactly, but aspiring chefs on TikTok are making “candy salad.” As you could have guessed, candy salad is made by taking a variety of different candies and mixing them up in a bowl. This wholesome activity is often done as a group thing, with each person saying their name into he camera before adding their sweet of choice to the communal bowl. Some folks get a little extra and do things like make a green-candy-only salad for Saint Patrick’s Day, but for the most part, it’s just chucking some candy in a bowl. Of course, which candies you combine says something. Commenters on these videos offer their opinion about how the different sweets complement or clash with each other. Like you wouldn’t mix sour candy with chocolate, unless you were bold. 

The first breakout star of the candy-salad genre is the kid in this video, He’s adorable, talks in that “kid who’s out of breath style” and he brought two kinds of sour patch kids. But the real draw is that he says his name is "Ander Dingus," which is enough to make you internet-famous for 15 minutes.

Why is everyone "looking for a man in finance."

Speaking of 16 minutes of internet fame: In a recently posted video, TikToker Girl On Couch threw out the chorus to a song, and asked “Can someone make this into an actual song plz just for funzies.“ Something about the way she says “I’m looking for a man in finance. Trust fund. SIx-Five. Blue Eyes” caught a lot of people’s attention. Some people added the music she requested (An alternative take. Or this one.)  Or used her video as an excust to brag about their own “man in finance.” Or made parodies. Some dudes used it as an reason to be assholes. Some people used it to be like, “I don’t want a man in finance.” This lady did the math and made a Powerpoint to explore the likelihood of actually finding a man who fits those exacting criteria. In her video, Girl on Couch also suggests she may have written the song of the summer. She didn't, but she did write the song of the next couple of weeks.