“A point in the horizon, a melting scene from your childhood. Your mortality is showing.”

For just 20 bucks, you can purchase an experience so unpleasant, I can only describe it as rotten meat infested with brain parasites in video game form. By all means, it’s an absolute steal. The consensus around “Cruelty Squad” is that it’s a fantastic game that is torture to play. A majority of the people who bothered to review this game seem to have really enjoyed it. That doesn’t really make sense at first. Let me explain. 

“Bitter tears. Lust for power. This is where you abandoned your dreams. You are a high net worth individual, an expanding vortex of pathetic trauma.”

My fateful first encounter with this game was a videogamedunkey video, and I’m too absorbed in the absolutely baffling experience to listen to Dunkey’s commentary or bits. The textures are … wrong? It looks like the game’s code has been changed as a joke to look like absolute garbage, but this is just how it’s supposed to look. The game looks colorful, and I mean that in the worst way possible; all the colors clash so much I can feel their visceral hatred for each other. There’s a strange, slick, fleshy intestine-like border around the screen that says “CRUELTY SQUAD” in crooked letters at the top, just in case you forgot what game you were playing. In his playthrough, Dunkey leaves his flesh car and opens the door to a pizza place that is a soulless, hollow face modeled after my sleep paralysis demon. He walks up to a person, gun in hand, and they reply unprompted: “I really look up to people who are good at violence.” They’re gunned down mid-sentence. This bone-dry black comedy matched with the game’s brain-numbing aesthetics had me hooked. Who the hell would intentionally make a game this awful? Why am I slowly falling in love with it? 

“The value of Life is negative. The balance of being is rotated by 38 degrees. The surface is full of cracks, a turgid light shines through. Fleshy primordial bodies sluggishly roll down the slope. Only you slide upwards, with a celestial step. You become beautified, a saintly figure.”

“Cruelty Squad’s” gameplay is simple. Each level gives you targets to take out, you eliminate them, and then you get out. Upon level completion, you are given a rank that you can try and improve by replaying the mission and improving your time. Secrets are stashed throughout each stage, like hidden equipment and levels. That’s not to say the game is designed to be mastered. It can be incredibly tedious and grindy the further into the game you get, as you start earning money for techno-dystopic cybernetic upgrades (like an appendix grappling hook, the Grappendix), investing in the stock market or even buying a million-dollar house. 

Enemies can be easily killed with a headshot, but your character is no super-soldier. If you’re not paying attention, you can be easily disposed of. This game is spiteful and abusive, refusing to be an enjoyable experience for every player. Even the game’s writing seems to have the same unabashed off-putting quality. The dark humor I mentioned earlier can very quickly turn into convoluted pontifications on the nature of humans as flesh mechanisms, firing synapses and running on neurotransmitters, mixed in with philosophical statements about power, opportunity, value and life itself.

“Sit on the throne of contentment and ferment. Inspect the eternal blue skies of your kingdom. You come to a realization. You pick up an onion and begin peeling.”

I wasn’t exactly clear what “Cruelty Squad” was satirizing at first glance. It has a clear satirical tone, but my senses were so overwhelmed I had no clue what to make of the game. Is it a deconstruction of the first-person shooter genre, in all of its glorified violence? Kind of, but that’s not devoted enough attention to be the point. Is it an examination of the reductionist attitude toward viewing humans as nothing more than flesh and brain chemistry? Getting warmer. “Well, when in doubt, assume it’s a critique of capitalism,” I hear you saying. Bingo, right on the money! 

“Onion layer one. Onion layer two. Onion layer three. Onion layer n^n. Aeons have passed and the onion is fully peeled. Nothing remains. It’s perfect. You get lost in the point that remains where the onion used to be.”

So how does “Cruelty Squad” criticize modern-day capitalism? For starters, we’ve already touched on the delightfully sardonic dialogue, and the reduction of humans to flesh. Your boss who contacts you offering you a job at Cruelty Squad as gun-for-hire describes it as “the sort of work that you enjoy but you’ll have to adjust to a more corporate mindset.” When you die, the ending screen has a line that says, “BODY RECONSTRUCTION: -$500.” Despite destroying your body by becoming a cyborg and experiencing repeated deaths that leave you a mangled corpse, it’s all reduced to a $500 invoice. Your victims’ bodies can be relieved of their organs, which can be sold on the stock market, conveniently reducing what was once a functioning human to a paycheck. As your targets are repeatedly resurrected to repeat each mission, life itself becomes a high-supply, low-demand commodity as expendable as a plastic wrapper, and death an irritating inconvenience.

Some of the missions take place in corporate and consumerist hellscapes, including a gated community built on an ancient mass grave, a casino with a gun slot machine and, of course, an office. The non-player characters are caricatures of the people you’d find in these environments. For example, the gated community has someone praising you for being an open-carry gun owner, despite the fact that you’re just a detached, homicidal maniac. The casino level has people openly acknowledging the self-destructive process of gambling, with one claiming the atmosphere is fancy enough to make them feel rich even when they’re not. The office is filled with exasperated workers swearing like sailors and using incomprehensible tech jargon. 

The missions themselves are delightfully cynical as well. One involves killing the Cruelty Squad’s head of the pharmaceutical department, who has been embezzling company funds and flies into fits of rage and vomiting blood. Another is to kill the CEO of Sin Space Engineering because he’s increased the survival rate of a mission to Mercury meant to be a sacrificial mission to satiate the appetites of higher-ups, hungry for mass human sacrifice. Another still is annihilating the chief of police, who was initially enforcing the Cruelty Squad’s will on the public but has become violent and incoherent because of the experimental steroids supplied by the narcotics unit. “Cruelty Squad” paints an exaggerated parody of the corporate and consumerist world, every single aspect of its critique as cynical as possible.

“Synaptic cascade, neurological catastrophe. The point becomes infinitely dense, the universe condenses into a unicellular being. It screams sin. It craves happiness. It’s done with this world. Sad pathetic mess. You feel pity and disgust but in a way only a being of pure grace can.”

Video games are often used as an escape from the mind-numbing grind of earning a living for people of various backgrounds and circumstances; games filled with feel-good mechanics and beautiful visuals give a player more agency than they will ever dream of being afforded in their waking lives. There are so many times when the “grind” in a video game unintentionally drives players away, but “Cruelty Squad” uses this grind as a tool for its purposes. Rather than painstakingly crafting an experience tailored to the consumer, “Cruelty Squad” turns a mirror on the toxic grind mindset that has poisoned us. A mindset that turns a blind eye to union busting and poor working conditions, as well as the exploitation of overseas workers. The modern-day worker has been taught that their worth is their productivity, that to attain their dream of settling down — of the good life — they must work themselves to death. No pain, no gain, and the more you hurt yourself the better. But this is a lie. The million-dollar house is a lie. Even if you achieve this dream, you are left empty, because to achieve the dream, you give up a part of yourself you never get back; it was sold away with your hours upon days upon years of labor. Self-worth is not found in a salary. You are more than the flesh you put to work and the brain that moves that flesh.

“The living organism, in a situation determined by the play of energy on the surface of the globe, ordinarily receives more energy than is necessary for maintaining life; the excess energy (wealth) can be used for the growth of a system (e.g., an organism); if the system can no longer grow, or if the excess cannot be completely absorbed in its growth, it must necessarily be lost without profit; it must be spent, willingly or not, gloriously or catastrophically. – Georges Bataille”

The more observant among you will have noticed the cryptic quotes scattered throughout this article. They are snippets from the third and final ending of the game. To reach this ending, the player must complete a level called “Trauma Loop,” which is exactly as painful to beat as it sounds. The ending itself is a disturbing cocktail of distorted, compressed sounds and angry red visuals that is “Cruelty Squad’s” magnum opus. The quote directly above this paragraph is the last one — a quote from French philosopher George Bataille, from his book, “The Accursed Share.” Death is supposed to be a driving force in our lives. We as humans are tragically finite, but we have the energy to grow and thrive. Yet, our briefness is no longer a priority when wealth becomes the new deity to which we bow. “Cruelty Squad” encapsulates the quote perfectly. It revels in our perverted understanding of worth and wealth, it basks in our scarcity and worships our mortality by creating a world that is utterly desensitized to death and flesh and all things disgusting.

“The third Triagon was born of death. It saw the world was radiating excess energy. It wanted to put great things into motion. But it saw that greatness wasn’t possible without value.”

I have a confession to make. Despite falling in love with the aesthetic of “Cruelty Squad,” and feeling inspired to write an entire article about said game, I refuse to play it. In a sentiment hardly unique to me, I’ve become all too familiar with the ever-increasing dread that accompanies the knowledge that I have become reliant on my career and productivity for my self-worth, which will never truly fulfill me. One more exam to ace. One more internship to find. One more dollar to earn. And I’m by no means in the worst position: I’ve been blessed with the opportunity of higher education and avenues to engage with my creative side. Even worse, those who have disabilities that impact their ability to work face extra obstacles on top of our current hustle culture. Helplessly watching my deaf parents get gray hairs from their increasingly demanding jobs out of fear of getting laid off is a soul-crushing experience on its own. I can never imagine living that life. But as I divide my free time into sparse rations, I have to min-max my joy; “Cruelty Squad” is not a risk I’m willing to take. I would rather spend one single hour researching the game, watching gameplay and analyses rather than spending double-digit hours immersing myself in the experience — an experience that could break me in its merciless criticism of the lifestyle I have fallen into.

“YOU ARE A FLESH AUTOMATON ANIMATED BY NEUROTRANSMITTERS.”

Sometimes it seems like this dilemma is not one I can overcome by myself. Maybe I am destined to be a slave to the very thing “Cruelty Squad” mocks. This game takes joy in ridiculing anyone who deludes themselves into thinking their wealth brings them power or satisfaction, that they can rise above the very system they exist within. Financial ambition is a fool’s game, and denying oneself their own identity is nothing more than a short-sighted misstep into a dizzying cycle of burnout and regret. “Cruelty Squad” cackles at me with its moist, phlegmy laugh. It has a sadistic, toothy grin and its gnarled finger is pointing my way. Sometimes, all I can do is laugh along with it. Rise and grind, my fellow flesh automatons!

Daily Arts Writer James Johnston can be reached at johnstjc@umich.edu.

The post Set goals, invest and get in the CEO mindset with ‘Cruelty Squad’ appeared first on The Michigan Daily.

“All art is communication of the artist’s ideas, sounds, thoughts; without that no one will support the artist.” — Lionel Hampton

Since the inception of the Arts section, we have written extensively about works of art. Through what we process, see, hear — all of these elements of all of these works have been dissected endlessly by our writers in order to bring you the finest we have in arts criticism. Before there were arts, however, there were the artists. These individuals put pens to paper, frames to film, stanzas to song, all in an effort to be understood. Here at the Arts section, we hear them. From the arts we appreciate, this series centers on the artists we adore: the individuals we’re inspired by.

I’ve never really had any heroes. For some people, it’s their dad or Danny DeVito or themself, but I never thought it was a good idea to put that much stock in one person. There were people that inspired me, sure, but I can’t recall a time when I looked at a solitary person and thought, “Yeah, I want to copy their life trajectory.”

Then, about four years ago, toward the end of my freshman year, I ran across screenshots of a lanky man in a suit with an elaborate array of Sonic the Hedgehog details, á la the Pepe Silvia conspiracy, pinned to the wall behind him and captions like “Either Sonic is a god or could kill God, and I do not care if there is a difference!” running across the bottom of the screen. Was this oddly well-dressed young man immediately my hero? No. But I was intrigued by him and his hot Sonic takes. 

After a brief deep dive into this strange, loud man, I found his name, Brian David Gilbert. I also found where the screenshots had come from: the “Unraveled” video essay series for the entertainment website Polygon, which Gilbert hosted. Each video introduced and analyzed a different video game and a piece of its culture with “absurd specificity,” incredible amounts of research and simultaneously intelligent and ridiculous acting. I have a long history of existing on the fringes of gaming, of consuming video game knowledge and culture without much hands-on experience, so “Unraveled” catered perfectly to my pre-existing interests and obsessions. And, as a creative writing major with a drama minor and a tendency toward absurdity, Gilbert’s highly literary and performative video essays drew my interest in a way nothing had in years. I would go so far as to say that “Unraveled” videos affected me in the same way novels did as a child — they were undiscovered territory, something that inspired and excited me deeply and, above all, something that I felt I could be a part of.

What was even more surprising was that “Unraveled” was actually considered journalism. Brian David Gilbert was, for all intents and purposes, a journalist with a camera, a budget and a lot of free time. It wasn’t long before I let myself be consumed by media and games journalism. I spent much of the end of my freshman year and the beginning of the pandemic watching Gilbert and exploring the rest of Polygon’s content. The more I lost myself in this content, the more I couldn’t believe that people could write funny articles or make absurd videos about video games, internet culture and entertainment at large for a living. I have always been both a writer and a deeply analytical person, and it seemed to me that Gilbert represented the perfect intersection of these two traits. I suddenly felt that he presented a path different from the literary ambitions I’ve had since childhood — I could combine my writing, my media interests and my theatrics to maybe, possibly, become a journalist like Gilbert. But where does a girl with no journalistic experience start?

After leaving another student organization at the end of my sophomore year, I heard about The Michigan Daily Arts section through my friend and former Managing Arts Editor, Elise Godfryd. I thought to myself, yeah, I can write, I like art and I have a lot of opinions about it — so why not? And, to my very pleasant surprise, Arts had a fledgling Digital Culture section. Upon browsing, it seemed like this section produced the kind of content that I had been consuming and wanting to create for the past year. So I applied with an article about how good video game movies are impossible and, somehow, some way, I got hired. When I first met my former editor, Mik Deitz, they informed me that they hadn’t intended to hire anyone that round, but had liked my voice in my application so much that they decided to take me on. Call it what you like, but I can’t help but believe that that was divine intervention at its finest. 

Because, almost two years later, I’ve decided that I want to do this forever. Sure, I still want to write that novel and publish that poetry book, but this absurdist journalism, this Brian David Gilbert-esque joy over “things that have very little meaning” can’t be matched for me. This work and the people that do it with me, that share in this joy with me, have become essential to who I am and my life trajectory. In fact, up until about two months ago, I thought I wanted to go to graduate school for creative writing, but one lanky man on the internet and one college newspaper have so essentially changed me that I want to abandon my old ambitions and give professional, silly journalism a try — at least for a while.

In December 2020, Gilbert made his last “Unraveled” video and left Polygon. It was, in a parasocial way, devastating. But he didn’t disappear altogether — he continued to make content on his personal channel about cutting his hair and teaching his son how to use a camcorder. Gilbert’s videos remain intricate and theatrical, and I continue to follow his work despite its deviation from the journalistic style I had originally followed him for. He continues to inspire me as a writer and a creative, and he introduced me to Polygon, which still serves as a workplace and culture I aspire to insert myself into. 

As I prepare to leave The Daily, I realize that by just being here, I have inserted myself into this culture. I became a part of something bigger than me — a part of an incredible community of journalists who treat their artistic work and opinions with immense curiosity and intensity. Brian David Gilbert led me to this place, and this place led me to my life. After a pandemic The Daily gave me my passion back, and it gave it to me for the foreseeable future. I may not know what’s coming next anymore, but I do know that, like I followed Gilbert, I will continue to follow The Daily. I will continue to credit both with offering me a new life path. And I will continue to credit Brian David Gilbert for being my first hero. 

Daily Arts Writer Maddie Agne can be reached at maagne@umich.edu.

The post Inspired by: Brian David Gilbert appeared first on The Michigan Daily.

This year’s Game Developers Conference packed a lot of action into its five days. From March 20 to 24, San Francisco’s Moscone Center saw attendance top 28,000, “Elden Ring” win Game of The Year and “Betrayal at Club Low” take home the grand prize at the Independent Games Festival Awards. The conference’s full return after the pandemic was a roaring success of robust events, huge attendance and multiple reports of harassment and roofieing. Oh, sorry, did I forget to mention that part?

After GDC, several allegations of assault and drink spiking began surfacing on social media, with at least four women and two men being roofied at various events and two women being “lured up to a hotel room by a man in a position of power for a ‘pitch,’ where he then assaulted them.” These incidents largely happened at offsite networking events, and they are not the first of their kind to come out of GDC in recent years. But we should be used to this — women have been abused and endangered in the video game development industry for years now.

There were reports of roofieing at PAX East in 2018 and 2020. Activision Blizzard made headlines in 2021 when the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing filed a lawsuit against the video game holding company for promoting a “frat boy” culture and subjecting female employees to “constant sexual harassment, unequal pay, and retaliation.” Bobby Kotick, current CEO of Activision Blizzard, was known to be both aware and defensive of perpetrators. In 2018 Quantic Dream — the studio responsible for “Detroit: Become Human” — was accused of supporting a sexist, homophobic and racist work environment, and it was reported that studio head David Cage made extremely misogynistic comments. Oh, and who could forget Gamergate, the 2014 online harassment campaign that saw female game developers doxxed, harassed and threatened with assault and death?

So how did we get here? Well, it’s no secret that the programming industry has a reputation as a boys’ club. In the United States, approximately 30% of currently employed programmers are women, while the remaining 70% are men. Despite women historically pioneering programming, men, around the end of the 1960s — in a bid to advance the field and their own careers — began excluding women in the career by creating new educational standards to enter the industry. This exclusion has translated over to video game programming in similar waves. As of 2021, about 24% of game developers in the U.S. were women, and 71% were men — despite women making up 46% of the U.S. gaming demographic. Unfortunately, this exclusion lends itself to intensely sexist and hostile work environments for female developers.

Let’s take a look back at the aforementioned Gamergate as an example of what these environments mean for women in the industry. At a base level, it makes it difficult for women to enter the game development sector. Okay, fine, certain careers have always been difficult for women to enter — that’s unfortunate, but not new. Gamergate started, however, when an ex-partner of Zoe Quinn, developer of “Depression Quest,” alleged that Quinn slept with a games journalist for good reviews of her game. It was later proved that the journalist never reviewed or mentioned “Depression Quest” at length while with Quinn. Okay, fine, an angry ex spread a rumor about a woman — that’s unfortunate, but not new. This soon sparked the Gamergate hashtag on social media under which users could dox, threaten and harass women in the gaming industry under the guise of defending journalistic ethics. Okay, fine, women got harassed online — that’s unfortunate, but not new. Then, online forums composed mainly of men began forming to systematically dox and plan attacks on outspoken, feminist opponents of Gamergate. And given that Gamergate began in 2014 — two years before the election of Donald Trump — the movement was systematized, public and political. Mainstream media, however, failed to take it seriously because it occupied the gaming niche, and Gamergate soon “gave way to something deeper, more violent, and more uncontrollable.”

Okay, fine — that is unfortunate and new. The waves of Gamergate have not stopped, but the original movement paints a fairly comprehensive picture of what it is to be a woman in the modern video game industry. It is not only mentally and emotionally taxing, but it can pose unprecedented, unchecked dangers. Female developers are a threat to the homogeneity of their careers — that is white, cisgender, heterosexual men making games — despite the fact that the diversity they offer to the field is essential to the progression and innovation of video games. 

I don’t write this to discourage — in fact, one of the first lessons I learned in journalism was not to write something bleak without then offering a horizon. So, who’s working to reverse sexism in the development industry, and is that even possible? At the root of the issue, developers like Ubisoft and Riot have made commitments in recent years to overhaul their HR departments and workplace cultures. Electronic Arts released a statement imploring “anyone who has experienced any kind of harassment or sexual misconduct in our community to come forward,” including both players and employees. 

And while all of this is well and good, top-down industry politics like this don’t always work. Meghna Jayanth, writer on “Sunless Sea,” remarked for The Guardian that “I believe it is time for radical change rather than reformism,” and she’s right. Changing HR processes isn’t going to stop a man from roofieing a woman at a games conference he doesn’t believe she belongs at. But it is the fact alone that women are being empowered to come forward about these incidents that promises change. As the gaming industry becomes increasingly mainstream, so do the voices of these women, and this hopefully means that GDCs in the future will be a safe place for all developers.

Daily Arts Writer Maddie Agne can be reached at maagne@umich.edu.

The post GDC and the boys’ club of game development appeared first on The Michigan Daily.

Six or seven years ago — when hoverboards were still Casey Neistat’s primary mode of transportation, YouTubers published books they barely wrote and famous internet personalities identified as “creators” instead of “influencers” — a niche group of travel vloggers ventured to North Korea and posted about it. 

For decades, North Korea has invited foreign journalists into their country, but not without taking extreme precautions to ensure Western media coverage doesn’t chafe against the idealized, harmonious propaganda the country promotes. After exiting customs, North Korean officials distributed a 10-page document to a delegation of 130 foreign journalists visiting the country in 2018 for the 70th anniversary of its founding. The document outlines the rules and regulations surrounding foreign journalism, which explicitly outlawed “distorting realities,” “violating stability and common interests of (North Korean) society” and “violating the interests of (North Korea) and its citizens and defaming the latter.” Defiance of these laws, according to this document, constitutes a criminal act and is publishable by up to 10 years in “reform through labor.” 

These are anything but empty threats. Two American journalists were detained in 2009 and sentenced to 12 years of hard labor after publishing critical observations of North Korea in 2009. In 2016, a BBC journalist was detained and interrogated for 10 hours after visiting a hospital and claiming, “Everything we see looks like a setup.”

However, unlike the journalists who have risked punishment to maintain a strict code of ethics that demands truth, accuracy, independence and impartiality, YouTubers operate under a different ethos. YouTubers have never really denied that what you see on camera is vastly different from what happens in real life.

Long-time YouTuber and former Buzzfeed employee Steph Frosch claimed that, “People are only seeing an act. They don’t see the panic attacks people have, they don’t see people losing relationships because they always have to be on their phone, they don’t see that side of it … These young kids, they just want to see these people they aspire to be having these successful, lavish lives, and thinking they can have that too.” 

It shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, then, that in 2016 — the same year they detained the BBC journalist — the North Korean government started inviting YouTubers to document their highly-choreographed visits. After all, there were truly no better candidates to share romanticized portrayals of North Korea than vloggers who built their platform on deluding viewers into buying their fake, idealized fantasies.

Enter Louis Cole of FunForLouis, a 39-year-old travel vlogger who’s been documenting his global adventures since 2012. Cole traveled to North Korea with an organization that runs surf camps for local tour guides and children. But well before his feet reach the sand, Cole documents a carefully-choreographed tour of Pyongyang, which highlights the decidedly fun aspects of North Korean life: Cole rides a massive slide at a crowded water park, he lets the bellboy at a swanky hotel ride his skateboard, at one moment the waitresses at his dinner service are serving food and the next they’re singing and dancing. He goes to the library and marvels at a copy of “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets” that he’s shown (flag that for later), he rides his skateboard to upbeat lo-fi tunes and he turns an English class into a dance party complete with a conga line and everything. Cole provides few indications that North Korea is unlike any of the other exciting, lovable and “awesome” countries Cole visits year-round. 

But even when Cole does encounter abnormalities between him and the North Korean citizens he befriends, it becomes a spectacle rather than a cause for concern. While recording a North Korean woman’s vocals, Cole’s American musician friend Lane Terzieff tells her to “pretend you’re Justin Bieber,” to which the North Korean woman replies, “Huh, sorry?” Cole and Terzieff laugh as the North Korean woman stares at them in complete confusion. Terzieff says, “Wait a minute, do you know who Justin Bieber is?” She shakes her head and says, “Beaver?” Stunned, Terzieff looks at the camera and says, “Wow, this is awesome.” 

By his eighth vlog in the country, Cole adds a disclaimer at the beginning of his video after garnering criticism for his idealized portrayal of North Korea. In it, he states: “Please do your own research on North Korea and watch these vlogs as part of a broader narrative. My aim is to show the beautiful people that live here and help strengthen the fragile bridge of peace and diplomacy through surfing. This was an organized tour showing only some places in the country and I’m sharing what we were shown.”

This disclaimer harkens back to a passing comment Cole made at the end of his first vlog, where he claims that “Obviously, I can only share and show you guys what we’re getting shown. And there may be a whole other side to different things that we’re not getting to explore here but that’s the same in a lot of countries we visit. So I’m just gonna focus on the really cool things we see and the really positive stuff.”

Ironically, just moments after making this claim, he jokes with his friend about how “They might be listening now.” Grinning, Cole adds, “If you’re listening, good job. I love the country so far. Great place. I’m happy to be here.”

According to a report from Human Rights Watch from 2022, North Korea “remains one of the most repressive countries in the world.” Under the authoritarian regime of Kim Jong Un, the government participates in efforts to prohibit pluralism by banning all forms of free expression, peaceful assembly, association as well as religious and secular belief. The government maintains “fearful obedience” by sending dissenters to “kwanliso,” a network of North Korea’s secret political prison camps where prisoners are subjected to “torture and other ill-treatment, starvation rations and forced labor.” In addition to wielding “threats of torture, extrajudicial expectations, wrongful imprisonment, enforced disappearances and forced hard labor” to silence disobedience, the North Korean government also fails to uphold the economic rights of its people by sustaining its economy through compulsory uncompensated labor, which the government thinly disguises as “portrayals of loyalty.” The resulting impoverishment limits the people’s access to health, food and adequate standards of living. A 2021 report by the Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Food Programme revealed that 10.9 million North Koreans, or 42.4% of the population, are food insecure. 

Cole was evidently aware of the problematic side of North Korea’s oppressive, dictatorial regime. However, in an effort to maintain his brand of easy-going, adventurous, synthetically optimistic content, he ignored it. How convenient. 

In 2022, North Korea surpassed its previous efforts to exploit YouTube as a platform for highly-idealized content. Instead of targeting foreign YouTubers as the vehicles of propagandistic messaging, the government curated its own group of North Korean influencers who document their everyday lives. On the surface, Song A is like any other eleven-year-old girl. In her first video, entitled “I am Song A,” she introduces herself as a fifth-year primary school student from Pyongyang. She proclaims that her favorite book is “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone” by J.K. Rowling. Remember, this is the book series Cole is shown when he visits the public library on his tour of Pyongyang. This choice was calculated. Unsurprisingly, when Song A holds up her copy, it’s in mint condition — the spine isn’t cracked and the pages aren’t even dog-eared. For someone who claims this is her favorite book, it hardly looks like she read it. But none of this matters — by merely planting this book on Song A, the producers of this video make the consumption of foreign media look like a reality that’s accessible to most North Koreans, when in reality nothing could be farther from the truth. In 2020, the North Korean government passed an “anti-reactionary thought” law, which made smuggling, distributing or encouraging the group viewing of foreign media from “hostile” countries punishable by “reform through labor for life or the death penalty.” Upon closer inspection, Song A’s copy of the novel was printed in China and includes both Chinese and English text. By this fact alone, Song A isn’t the rule but the exception. 

If it wasn’t clear by the first video that the producers of Song A’s videos have subtly infused positive North Korean messaging into her content, by her second video, it’s blatantly obvious. In “Quarantined at Home,” she contracts COVID-19 alongside her mother and expresses her concerns about recovering because “the medicine was running out.” As though it was an act of divine, or rather state, intervention, two military doctors show up to Song A’s door in the nick of time. Alongside clips of the men administering medication, Song A’s narration paints them as saviors: “They were here to deliver medicine to all of the people who were sick. At that moment, me and my mom just cried and cried like a baby. Then after three or four days later, we recovered. So from that time on, they became like my brothers.” Song A’s swift triumph over COVID-19 with the aid of her uniformed “brothers” stands in stark contrast to the many North Korean children who died because the virus exacerbated their poor nutrition and they were given adult doses of prescription drugs like Paracetamol and Dimedrol. Not to mention, Kim refused to vaccinate the population because the vaccines North Korea received were donated by China.   

In her third video, Song A ventures to Okryu Children’s Hospital because even though she could’ve gone to a local clinic to treat the “corn on my toe,” her “heart was pumping with desire of going (here). So I have begged my mom to come here … to look at the pictures more than to be cured.” The pictures she’s referring to consist of cartoony state-sponsored imagery that line the walls of the hospital. Along with b-roll of the empty hospital, the camera alternates from a frontal selfie view of Song A to clips of someone literally filming her while she vlogs with a selfie stick. If the scripted formality of her voice wasn’t enough to suggest that this isn’t just an eleven-year-old girl vlogging her daily life, these third-person views of Song A demonstrate how these are full-scale productions. This fact is further evidenced by the selective censorship of people’s identities. In some shots, including one in this video, a random passerby appears to be completely blurred out. This occurs in contrast to other unidentified individuals in the background whose appearances are completely unobstructed. If some individuals are blurred and others aren’t, then perhaps these visits to public places are entirely staged. The camera, therefore, only shows those who have been strategically placed in the frame. The way that the people in the background interact with the camera serves as further confirmation of this theory. To them, the camera is practically invisible. There are only a few instances in which someone other than Song A is staring at the camera. If you’ve watched any vlogger in public, you’d know this is abnormal. 

The rest of Song A’s videos portray North Korea in a tone not unlike Cole’s: She has fun at the same water park, she eats shaved ice at a local store, she soaks in beautiful scenery at Moran Hill, she goes to school for the first time without a mask and she visits a 4D cinema at the Great Hall of Science and Technology. North Korea through Song A’s eyes is exceedingly fun, even normal.

To maintain this illusion of normalcy, the editors of Song A’s videos even went so far as to blur out a family portrait that briefly appears in the background of one of her videos. They did this because Song A is related to famous members of the North Korean elite. Her father is a diplomat who worked in the North Korean embassy in London. Her grandfather is currently the vice minister of foreign affairs. And finally, her great-grandfather was a high-ranking military commander who was in charge of guarding the Kim family. There’s not a single instance in any of Song A’s videos where she alludes to her family background. However, her family’s close ties to the government lead many experts to believe that Song A’s videos are produced by a North Korean propaganda agency.  

Despite her status, the efforts on the part of North Korean producers to portray Song A as an average girl harken back to the reason why they appropriated vlogging as a form of state propaganda in the first place. Vlogging creates the impression of authenticity through low-production value and close face-to-face interaction between the viewer and the vlogger. Through vlogging, Song A’s videos don’t only portray this highly-idealized North Korea as normal but also authentic. What’s more, Song A’s videos appear on YouTube Kids, a platform for kids to freely access exclusively family-friendly content. It’s scary to think about how adolescent viewers probably can’t differentiate Song A from the other vloggers they watch. In this way, YouTube represents a new age of propaganda where the state can not only normalize idealized depictions of their country but also market this vision to an audience of increasingly younger viewers. 

Daily Arts Contributor Bela Kellogg can be reached at bkellogg@umich.edu.

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It’s 2012. The family laptop, which we traded in our old desktop computer for, is burning my legs as its fans try to wheeze in all the air they can. My hands are on the trackpad, wearing grooves into it and tearing away at the rubber-coated mouse buttons. I’m 10 years old, and I’m about to beat my fourth island in the free-to-play browser game “Poptropica.” I have 15 minutes of parent-mandated screen time left, and life is good. 

Suddenly, my character freezes mid-jump. Mozilla Firefox pops up an error message, letting me know that the laptop has finally reached its computational limit. Just like that, the last 10 minutes of progress I’d made, the parkour jumps that I’d finally mastered (playing without a mouse was hard!) and all the backtracking I had done was gone. As was five minutes of my screen time as I waited for Firefox to relaunch itself. 

For those of you who are now entering your early 20s, this scene might sound a bit familiar to you. A mid-range computer struggling to run a Flash game, with middling DSL internet connections and load times that felt like an eternity — but the computers were still faster than the previous generation of technology. Maybe you had a console of some sort, and played online matches in games like “Call of Duty” or “Halo.” Or maybe you had a computer that could handle running “Minecraft,” and you spent your time playing games such as “Hunger Games” or “Bedwars” on a server. 

Many of our childhoods were heavily influenced by these online experiences, and yet they’re only getting harder to return to. Sure, it’s good and normal to outgrow parts of our childhood, but in a culture so dominated by nostalgia, it can be nice to go back and visit some of these formidable digital playscapes. It’s like going back to your elementary school playground: remembering old games of tag, friends that you’ve lost track of, times you laughed and times you cried. 

But what if that playground got bulldozed over, or started charging you (Man, what a failure of public school funding that would be) to visit it? Those memories would still be with you, but dragging them out of your subconscious would be much harder without that physical reminder. Remembering is one of the things I value most in life, and thinking about losing the ability to do that really freaks me out. 

This is where ’80s kids have it good — and also bad. The ’80s and early ’90s were a time of physical media, such as game cartridges, records, VHS tapes and some totally tubular toys. Growing up in the early 2000s, I had most of these technologies as well, but they were beginning to give way to more and more online content. In recent years, the prices of many of these items — especially video games — have spiked, as Gen X and older millennials have scrambled to get their hands on bits of their childhood.

As for the “Fortnite” kids — I have no clue what your nostalgia will look like. When (or if) the “Fortnite” servers eventually shut down, that will be the end of it. Maybe there’ll be a “Fortnite 2,” or something similar, but people will never be able to return to the original as a point of nostalgia. The same goes for other online games like “Apex Legends” or “Call of Duty: Warzone.” Once their online components are shut down, they will cease to exist. Memories wiped away forever.

Some games have tried to combat this, either through remakes or fan-lead preservation. The popular massively multiplayer online role-playing game “RuneScape” has survived for the past two decades thanks in part to the 2013 release of “Old School RuneScape,” which reverts the game back to its state as of 2007. Although more modern versions of “RuneScape” have been released in the past decade, a majority of players still wanted to be able to keep playing the game they were familiar with. Updates are also based on user polls, giving players a sort of control over the nostalgia they want to live. It’s an interesting method of preservation, an example of something where returning to “the good old days” actually worked. 

On a larger scale, the death of Adobe’s Flash software and its accompanying browser plugin was something that struck fear into the heart of anyone who spent their time in the high school computer lab playing browser games from websites called something like “studyhallfungametoplay.com.” Sites like Newgrounds and CoolMathGames found themselves facing the possibility of all of their content becoming unplayable. Thousands of animators would have their work swept away, their thumbnails left like fossils that future generations could only speculate about. 

Thankfully, this apocalypse has been headed off with the development of the Ruffle emulator. Those previously mentioned sites, along with the Internet Archive, have utilized the emulator to keep their content running without a hitch. On a larger scale, BlueMaxima’s “Flashpoint” platform has created a downloadable archive of more than 150,000 games and 25,000 animations. These efforts have kept an entire genre of content alive, thanks to the efforts of some people who truly cared about preserving them for others to enjoy.

Even the game that I started this article talking about, “Poptropica,” has seen efforts to preserve itself. Although the main website moved from Flash to HTML-5, that transfer resulted in the loss of many of the game worlds I had played as a kid. Luckily, they have since released a standalone offline version of the game on Steam with the lost content — although it does now come with a hefty $20 price tag.

All of these examples are positive examples of how the internet has found ways to preserve itself. And yet, I find myself still worrying that someday I’ll lose it all. Especially as the internet transitions from a treasure trove of individual creation to a collection of conglomerates and copyright, I fear we may reach a point where preservation becomes nearly impossible. The game company EA recently announced that they would not only be shutting down the servers for two of their Battlefield games, but completely delisting them from storefronts. This means they will disappear forever unless EA decides to bring them back (which I seriously doubt will happen). Sure, physical copies of the games do exist, but as more and more consoles drop their disk drives, they will become harder and harder to play — and the prices of these older consoles and games will undoubtedly follow the pricing trends of other retro games media.

I don’t have many strong ties to Battlefield, but I know that it’s only a matter of time until some of the older games I do love suffer from the same fate. I feel a need to hold onto these games, especially the online ones, to record my memories and hope that the end isn’t near. There are significant monetary reasons behind the majority of these closures. Keeping servers running that only a few hundred people log into monthly isn’t very cost-effective. Making sure that your game stays up to date and able to run on modern platforms and operating systems can also be a hefty task that developers might not feel is worth their time and money — especially when they can get people to buy the newest version instead. 

The overwhelming focus on nostalgia in modern culture is undoubtedly a factor behind my fears. Remembering your toys is cool, and buying new versions of them is even cooler. That movie you watched over and over again as a kid? They’re remaking it — but in live action! It’s easier than ever to hold onto the things that you grew up with, or at least the shell of those things. I think this is where the root of my fears comes from. In a culture where so much media is being recycled and reused and rebooted, it feels wrong when something isn’t — or when the original is lost in favor of a newer, cash-grabbing version. (My original VHS copies of Star Wars are very dear to me for this very reason.)

Maybe letting go of our playthings is a part of growing up — but what if I still want to be a kid? What if I still want to experience things as they were, to keep my memories fresh and preserve? Several fellow writers on the Digital Culture section have written about returning to a digital touchstone of their childhood this semester, and I think that is a testament to how important these things are to us. The subject of each article had different fates — the beloved Flipnote Studio in Katelyn’s article has been shut down, while the Pixie Hollow website in Hannah’s article is being revived by caring fans. We tend to hold on to the things that made us who we are today. But it’s getting harder and harder to do that in the digital age.

Senior Arts Editor Hunter Bishop can be reached at hdbishop@umich.edu.

The post Lamenting the loss of a digital childhood appeared first on The Michigan Daily.

What is art? What is an essay? How are the creation and the criticism categorized? When does analysis become an art form in itself? If you evaluate even this article right now, do I then become the creative instead of a critic, and you become the analyzer rather than the audience? 

The Leftist Cooks, power couple Neil Farrell and Sarah Oeffler, attempt to answer these questions: through interviews with fellow video essayists, through the words of artistic exemplars like Orson Welles, Simone de Beauvoir and Oscar Wilde and through talking about the Muppet Gonzo singing about home. These disparate elements are organized into segments such that each addition feels fresh, but its entropy then comes to be expected — almost comfortable. This form is their first attempt to stay true to the work’s title, breaking down the video essay first in structure, then in intent. They come to the crux of the conflict between creation and criticism: how to categorize what we create. 

Humans’ attempts to make the nonsense of the world make sense traps us in this issue. Does art arise from the work’s invention or interpretation? Would you say both? Can something really exist in both the giver and the receiver? These contradictions are created by our categorization, so we must be the ones to resolve them. The cons of categorization reach far beyond this artistic issue, however. Farrell stretches it into the stars, where they sing on Pluto being prohibited from the planets. The interviewees and interviewers extend it into themselves, where many of their current essayist positions arise from bodily and mental conditions that decategorize them from traditional work. Oeffler carries this categorization to the furthest possible end, discussing the creation of artificial barriers in all-too-real conflicts: race, gender, sexuality, class, disability. But of course, these essayists suffering from the crimes of categorization still encapsulate them all within art. Art still encompasses all of this.

So where do we push to and break these boundaries? How could categorization come to collapse? What could be at the basis of all that we do, all that we achieve, all that we are?

Well, maybe there’s love. There’s the connection that people make to its fullest extent, and then what isn’t love. No, there are still lines drawn there. There’s home, the spaces that love creates, the places where people feel loved — then there are the spaces they aren’t. There’s still a line there. What about existence? There is life, living, surviving, then there is not. There is death. 

There is death. 

Everything that art is and isn’t, everything that we can understand and cannot, everything that the world is and everything that it cannot contain — the weight of their discussion then breaks this video. As we enter Act 3, Farrell is in a forest and Oeffler is on a couch. The video switches between Oeffler’s partner and Farrell’s wife in the most indescribably vulnerable and beautiful monologues I have ever had uttered to me through a screen. I cannot describe it. I refuse to describe it, whether by my own analytical incompetence, artistic ineptitude or simply because you need to hear it for yourself. Maybe instead, I can tell you what it made me think of.

I thought of hearing about my friends’ almost and actual car accidents. I thought of seeing the grays slowly creep across my parents’ scalps. I thought of the taste of blood in my mouth, staring at the red that was spat into the sink as my heart began to pound. 

What is art? What is an essay?

Is art an attempt at immortality? Do essays aim to enhance that attempt? Or is art just how we are — to create something simply because it didn’t exist yet? Are essays what expand how that art exists? Will art be what saves us? If art kills us, then will it let us live on? Maybe asking these questions isn’t the way to answer them. Maybe it’s holding your friends in your arms when you get to see them. Maybe it’s running your hands through your parents’ hair while you still can. Maybe it’s taking a swig of water to rinse your mouth and swallow your meds. Maybe it’s living a life worthy of art, made worthy by art. Maybe it’s looking the Reaper straight in his hollow eye sockets and ripping his robe to ribbons, fashioning the threads into a brush and using the inky black void as a palette. That can be art. This essay could be art. Whatever the case, know that “This is Not a Video Essay” is art, the kind that makes you feel like your life before viewing it was a different one. The Leftist Cooks have created something I will go back to someday, over and over — a work whose only flaw is that I didn’t watch it sooner. Please don’t repeat my mistake. Take part in the great art of our lives while you still can.

Digital Culture Beat Editor Saarthak Johri can be reached at sjohri@umich.edu.

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At this point, I’m pretty sure I have a playlist for everything. I have a playlist I listen to when I study, a playlist for when I’m pregaming with my friends and a playlist I listen to when I’m driving. I have a playlist for when I shower, a playlist for when I’m doing my makeup and a playlist for when I’m about to go to sleep. I have a playlist for when I’m feeling happy, frustrated or in need of a loud, ugly cry session. Basically, any emotion, mood or situation you can think of, I have a playlist for it, and honestly, I love it. Music is capable of adding color to the most boring situations, making us feel like the main character and helping us process our emotions, so why not have a soundtrack for your life? 

The thing is, though, I didn’t actually make a lot of these playlists. I did make some of them (my loud, ugly cry session playlist is very specific and very personal), but as for about half of the others, I simply typed a keyword into the search bar of Spotify and scrolled through the results, of which there were plenty. The internet is certainly not short on playlists. Typing in keywords like “sad” or “happy” or “car” — no matter the platform you’re using — brings up hundreds of results, all by different users and all with different genres of music. This is largely thanks to the collaborative setup of apps like Spotify and Apple Music, which makes it so that as long as your account is set to public, your playlists will be available for others to like and listen to on their own time. In some cases, people are even able to add to other people’s playlists. That, coupled with the sheer amount of music available on the internet, makes it so that there is a playlist for just about every single thing you could ever think of. 

What kind of things, you may be wondering? Well, there’s playlists for just about every popular TV show or movie you could think of. Some center around specific romantic relationships, while others just encapsulate the general vibe of that film or TV show. If you’re in search of something a bit more applicable to your own life, there is also an abundance of playlists perfect for activities such as screaming in the car with your friends, pulling an all-nighter to study or hanging out on the beach. If you’re looking for a healthy dose of nostalgia, there are also early 2000s playlists perfect for making you feel as if you are back in your childhood bedroom, having a “High School Musical” watch party. 

That, however, is just the tip of the iceberg. What truly sets these hundreds upon hundreds of playlists apart is just how hyperspecific they have gotten over the last several years. They have begun to go way beyond just “childhood vibes” or “chill beats to study to.” There’s everything from “driving to that one 7/11 at 2:13am,” to “lost in the depths of a forest,” to “drunk girls pile inside an uber,” all of which are not exactly aesthetics I regularly seek out in my day to day life (at least by choice), yet they still have plenty of likes and saves, meaning that somewhere in the world, people are listening to them when they want to feel like they’re lying in a forest, driving to 7/11 in the middle of the night or piling into an Uber with a horde of their drunk friends.

Moreover, no matter how random the theme of a particular playlist, they do not feel like a mashup of incoherent songs. Instead, each song feels as if it was made to be on that playlist, with even the order of the songs possessing some deeper meaning. Each song transitions seamlessly into the next, creating a kind of “sound movie” that can transport you to a certain place or time period. Together, the song choices and order helps to tell a story that alludes to the name or theme of that particular playlist, making playlist-curating an art form in and of itself. It’s similar to a concept album in the way that each song contributes to an overarching theme or story, except in this case, the content is curated instead of created. The person behind the playlist puts in large chunks of time meticulously selecting the songs which will contribute most effectively to their playlist’s theme. It’s such a careful process that when I listen to a playlist, I’m usually not paying much attention to each individual song and its meaning, but more so to what that song in particular possesses adds to the theme of that playlist. Fortunately, because these playlist curators are so effective at what they do, it usually doesn’t take me long to discover what exactly that is.

It’s also important to note that the curation of oddly specific playlists is not a concept unique to Spotify or Apple Music. As a kid — before I was ever allowed to have an account on one of those apps — I would surf YouTube and turn on playlists that I thought matched my 11-year-old “aesthetic.” Then (and sometimes now), it tended to be something along the lines of “you’re at hogwarts but it’s a playlist,” and “pov: you’re sitting at the campfire at Camp Half Blood” and as I sat there listening to those playlists in my room, I really did feel like I was sitting in the Hogwarts library, or laughing around the campfire with my friends. Their composition was perfectly constructed, with each song helping to set the scene for what I was supposed to be feeling. Like I said earlier, music has the power to make even the blandest situation feel exciting, so who’s to say it couldn’t make us feel like we’re at a fictional school for wizards? Or a camp for demigods? In fact, I think that if playlists are curated correctly, they can be their own source of magic and escapism, perfect for a healthy dose of daydreaming.

Still, platforms like Spotify and Apple Music do offer a new dimension to this phenomenon. These apps have almost begun to function like a public art forum, allowing for sharing and collaboration among those who are in search of the same kind of “sound movies” as other users. People can create playlists together — something I have done countless times with my friends in preparation for long drives, or a night out — and then can continue to edit them even after they share them for the rest of the app’s users to see and listen to. In this way, the playlists are able to evolve with whatever art form it reflects, as well as with the person who made it. They are not static, but are changing and evolving with each new song and new listener, much like a public art project that is reflective of its participants’ feelings and experiences.

It is this collaborative aspect of playlist curation that has made it so that music is not only capable of connecting us through universal experiences — driving in the car with your friends, watching a popular TV show or movie or going through a breakup — but can also connect us through oddly specific experiences which may not be considered universal, but are still felt by many. In a funny way, it can be oddly healing to know that someone else in the world also likes to listen to Harry Potter-themed music while studying, or needs a soundtrack that makes them feel like a princess running through a castle. No matter how odd the theme, it’s comforting to know that someone else in the world may be listening to that exact playlist at the same time you are, possibly feeling the exact same way you’re feeling. It creates a sense of camaraderie and connection, forged solely through the existence of a niche playlist.

So, next time you’re browsing Spotify or Apple Music in search of an oddly specific playlist, pay a bit more attention to their composition. I think you’ll find that it’s a lot more intentional than you first thought. Maybe even chance a glance at who created it and pay a visit to their profile. If you’re lucky, their other content will be visible to you, and you may just find a host of other playlists that somehow perfectly match the “aesthetic” you’re going for. That’s the beauty of what these playlists have to offer.

Daily Arts Writer Rebecca Smith can be reached at rebash@umich.edu.

The post I’m obsessed with the internet’s oddly specific playlists appeared first on The Michigan Daily.

Call me basic, but “Friends” is one of my comfort TV shows. My parents were in their 20s as it aired — the same ages as the characters — and they tuned in to watch it every week. Being old enough to stay in the room whenever they were watching reruns was a rite of passage, and finally virtually binge-watching the entire series became a family bonding experience when I first went away to college. 

Funnily enough, now that I am also around the same age as the characters and living with roommates for the first time, I’m more likely to put the show on as background noise than I am to be spending all my free time at a coffee house or going out on dates every other night. In fact, I’m doing this right now as I write this article. (Rachel is pregnant and Joey has a crush on her, in case you were wondering where I am in my “rewatch”). I hate my need to constantly have something playing, even if I’m not actively paying attention to it. Sometimes it’s TV, other times it’s a podcast. So when I discovered “Popcorn for Dinner: A Podcast Sitcom,” which promised to fulfill both of these roles at the same time, it was my duty to investigate.

“Popcorn for Dinner” is designed to be a sitcom you can “throw on in the background so you don’t feel so alone.” That’s not just me saying it — host and narrator Ciara Bravo (“Big Time Rush”) pitches it this way in the trailer episode. The show follows four friends in their 20s — Laura (Maddy Kelly, debut), Michael (Charlie Foster, debut), Ellie (Jillian Ebanks, “South Side”) and Austin (Ben Fawcett, debut) — as they  “try to make it on their own, despite the fact that none of them know what that looks like … at all.” These voice actors come from backgrounds such as stand-up comedy and podcasting, and Kelly is also the show’s creator. At the time of writing, there are seven episodes available to stream, with new ones dropping every Tuesday. 

Despite being a podcast, the show is very clearly trying to be a modern take on shows like “Friends,” describing itself to potential listeners as a ’90s TV sitcom — except it’s not set in the ’90s, and it’s not on TV. It has several key components of any older sitcom: episodes have running gags, like Michael’s “sexless streak” gradually increasing each time it’s mentioned; a change in scenery or the start of a commercial break is denoted by goofy music; a “will they/won’t they” romance à la Ross and Rachel and, of course, a laugh track. As the narrator, Bravo plays a crucial role in moving things along. She describes what the characters are doing when nobody is speaking, which also makes the show more accessible. She also contributes to the show’s self-awareness — a podcast sitcom is, admittedly, a strange idea, which her commentary frequently acknowledges. At the start of the third episode, she addresses listeners by saying, “many of you haven’t even decided if you like this show yet,” though its 4.6-star rating might suggest otherwise.

Content-wise, “Popcorn for Dinner” has its moments. Several lines have made me laugh out loud, like when one character is described as looking “like she’s read ‘Perks of Being a Wallflower’ one too many times,” or another character drinking wine and asking, “You got any communion wafers?” The gang’s apartment also has a balcony that is apparently only used “during special episodes,” yet another nod to “Friends” that made me chuckle. Other times, the show feels like it’s overcompensating; the delivery of lines can sound forced, and Austin, the “oddball” character, seems like he was ripped straight from a Disney Channel show. I can’t say whether I’m completely sold on the podcast-sitcom genre, but here I am, having listened to all the episodes and currently writing about it. 

The show calls itself a “first of its kind” podcast, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that this description isn’t technically true. For one thing, scripted podcasts, like “Welcome to Night Vale,” are nothing new and have been largely successful. To get more specific, scripted comedy podcasts have been around for a while, too. The closest thing I can compare “Popcorn for Dinner” to is radio shows in the 1940s, and even then, many of the popular programs at the time were comedies. The only notable difference is that the laugh track in those programs was real, whereas today’s audiences are reminded by the narrator with every episode that “‘Popcorn for Dinner’ was not recorded in front of a live studio audience.” This show might be a new idea to most of its listeners, but a more accurate description would be that it has reinvigorated a few elements from both sitcoms and radio programs and brought them to a growing form of media. 

I’ve written before about my love for podcasts, and while I hope I’ve made my affinity for sitcoms clear by now, my knowledge of old-timey radio shows is limited to learning about fireside chats in high school and a scene from “Molly: An American Girl on the Home Front.” So where exactly does something like “Popcorn for Dinner” fall on the podcast/sitcom/radio show spectrum? Somewhere in the middle, I’d say. It’s not the first of its kind, and while the writing shows promise, the show still has to find its footing — not just in the sitcom realm but as a podcast, too. But it’s also just begun its run, and plenty of now-beloved shows got off to a rocky start. If you’re looking for a modern sitcom that rivals something like “Friends,” give “Popcorn for Dinner” a few seasons to catch up. If you genuinely just want some background noise, I’d recommend it. That’s what it was created for, anyway. 

Daily Arts Writer Hannah Carapellotti can be reached at hmcarp@umich.edu.

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It’s no secret that social media has an obsession with celebrities — log on to TikTok these days and you’re bound to come across an edit of an actor, musician or popular content creator. These edits can range in content, purpose and style, but generally speaking, they are short videos (less than 30 seconds) that mash together clips with music in a creative and entertaining fashion. Staff writer Rebecca Smith covered how these videos are used to reflect on and enjoy media franchises in fandom; however, there is a huge subsection within fandoms that is focused on celebrities themselves, rather than the characters they play.

In recent months, we can look to HBO’s “The Last of Us” star Pedro Pascal as a major example. There exist hundreds of edits of him across social media platforms, to the point that there an entire fan community surrounding him as a person has formed. Though these edits can be a way to appreciate his acting or humor, a large portion of them are focused on his looks and charisma. Clips of him in interviews or shows are matched with what could be called “sexy” music, and their reach is unmatched. One particular video, dubbed “the Pedro Pascal edit” by fans in the comment section, has a whopping 4.2 million likes on TikTok. The video in question features an introductory clip of Pascal’s character in “Kingsman: The Golden Circle” flirting with a woman, followed by clips of him looking dashing in a cowboy outfit. A peek into the comments shows off the drastic effect this video has had on the masses; one comment with more than 3,000 likes reads, “This is my lockscreen now. Byebye photos of my fiancé. This is it. That One Pedro Pascal Edit™ has taken over my life.” The “Pedro Pascal edit” phenomenon has become explosive since this video, even causing Saturday Night Live to acknowledge the trend in a sketch when Pascal hosted the show.

Though much of this obsession is in light-hearted fun (there is no shame in acknowledging the beauty of the Pedro Pascal edit), there are a growing amount of fans and commenters that speak explicitly about the actor (or explicitly about themselves in relation to him). Comments like “save a horse ride a cowboy” are rampant across edits of him, as well as a wide array of users calling him “daddy.”

There is what feels like a growing sentiment of “as long as it’s funny or relatable, it’s okay to say” regarding sexualizing comments about celebrities. It’s important to first note that TikTok frequently cycles through popularizing phrases or comments as “memes”; viral comments will be repurposed across the app as in-jokes. For example, the phrase “bro dropped the hardest (insert name) edit and thought we wouldn’t notice” is often used as a copypasta to compliment good edits. Comments of a more sexual nature have been victim to this treatment now, too; for example, on a less explicit level, even the phrase, “I need him” is a meme on its own and can be found commented across a whole manner of celebrity edits. 

But as these memes have developed, the comments get less and less tame. Examples include “it’s meowing” (in reference to female genitalia), “I know it’s grippy” (also in reference to female genitalia but commented about women) and “I whipped it out so fast” (in reference to male genitalia). These may vary slightly, but all come with the same core message of explicit sexual desire. One can find comments like these across all kinds of posts, even outside of edits explicitly meant to be found as attractive. Even just a video of a woman talking can be flooded with comments about fantasizing about her body.

As previously mentioned, Pascal is not the only celebrity receiving this treatment; search any celebrity on platforms such as TikTok and you’re bound to find people making edits and vulgar comments about them. This trendy, memeified language is enabling viewers to overstep boundaries; they do not know these people, yet they feel empowered to look and speak at them sexually without their consent.

Online anonymity likely plays a huge role in this phenomenon — it can feel good to comment on something that goes viral, and speaking freely through a screen rather than in person can allow users to justify more extreme statements. Meme culture is self-replicating and spreads like wildfire, allowing these comments to be justified as long as they fall under the “meme.” These celebrity fanbases have, in many ways, created entire communities based on sexual attraction and thus feel justified in discussing said attraction with others. Yet it’s inhumane — these celebrities are real people, too, and you do not know them. Just because they are romantic in a role, or show a bit of skin in an outfit, does not warrant explicit comments. 

The invasive nature of these comments can best be seen when brought out into the real public. Recently, in a red carpet interview, Pascal was asked by a reporter to read “thirst tweets” about himself. The reporter handed him a phone filled with dirty messages about himself from people he’s never met, expecting him to find the comments funny or flattering. After reading in silence for a moment, the reporter asks for his favorite, to which he politely replies, “No,” declining to read them aloud. Though he handled the situation with grace, it’s an extremely awkward position to put a person in, in essence forcing complacency in their own sexualization. 

Though “thirst tweets” and adjacent concepts like this have existed for ages, such as real-person fanfiction, it is easily accessible now within TikTok comment sections. Not only is it easily accessible, but it’s trendy — Buzzfeed has an entire “celebrities reading thirst tweets” series similar to the example above. It’s unnerving, particularly on TikTok, as about one-third of users on the app are aged 10-19. Kids now could grow up desensitized to this type of language, accepting it as an unproblematic aspect of celebrity culture. They may further perpetuate this behavior at too young an age, as we can now commonly see young boys commenting things like “I know it’s bubblegum pink” on women’s videos. We have gotten far too comfortable allowing sexualized comments to run loose on social media — it’s not okay, and we need to think before we post. What we do online affects others, even if they, as a celebrity, feel distant from us.

Daily Arts Writer Katelyn Sliwinski can be reached at ksliwi@umich.edu.

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A couple of years ago, my friends decided to start getting into “League of Legends.” If that doesn’t make you throw up in your mouth a little bit, it should. I held out for about a month, refusing to join them. Eventually, the frustration of being excluded from conversations because of game communications taking priority over everything else got to me. I became the worst possible thing you could ever live to see yourself becoming: a “League” player. On top of having no experience with the MOBA game genre and my friends’ lacking attempts to explain the game to me, the most frustrating part of the experience was dealing with the game’s toxic community. Having played my fair share of online multiplayer games, I was no stranger to toxicity in video games by this point in time, but there’s a reason “League” has a reputation for it. I had a fantastic time getting spam-pinged and flamed by random, seething teammates for every single decision I made that went wrong, while the enemy team gloated about their victory like they were the hottest thing since sliced bread. The one thing they could come together to agree on by the end of each game, however, was that I was absolute trash — the gum on the bottom of their shoe. To be honest, it was a beautiful kind of truce to see in such a demoralizing moment. And it’s not like they were wrong. I’m Iron — the lowest-ranked group in the game — so they might just be on to something.

So, what’s up? Did I write this article solely to rant about how I got my feelings hurt on the internet? That would be pretty funny, but no. I wanted to figure out just what it is exactly that makes online gaming such a toxic environment. I mean seriously, there are plenty of clips on the web of sweat-encrusted men with anger issues smashing their keyboards to dust, but when you’re playing Uno with friends, they’re not tearing the deck to shreds because you hit them with a Draw 4. It’s a combination of game mechanics, competitive environments and beginner-unfriendly learning curves that cultivate a specific “gamer” identity. In a way, frustration and rage serve as an embarrassing gateway to gaming.

So, is it competition? I was never really much of the competitive type — never got good enough at anything to be. Trust me, the most competition you would find on my junior varsity soccer bench was who could annoy the coach the most. But when I would watch or hear stories from my friends in higher levels of sports, it was entirely different. Audience members whipped up into a school-spirit frenzy would shout insults and taunts from the crowd, equally as anonymous as if they were concealed behind a username and a screen. Seeing brief fights erupt among opponents, pushing, shoving and throwing sloppy punches would always activate the neurons in my stupid, caveman brain. All that was missing was someone shouting, “Worldstar!” As adrenaline is coursing through players’ veins during the fast-paced, back-and-forth games, you can feel the testosterone emanating from the field. Video games, in contrast, are less physically intense. When you’re sitting in a chair, actions are simulated with the press of a button, yet you’re still feeling the blood pumping after clutching up a round — it creates a weird emotional and physical dissonance. Yet the intensity and aggression are still there. 

This aggression may be a result of the lens of masculinity in a competitive context. Men are stereotyped to be dominant in any position that allows it to be possible. Climbing the corporate ladder, participating in romantic and sexual exploits and playing sports are all different environments, but they all offer an opportunity for men to prove their dominance over other men. Gaming also has a pretty serious sexism problem, and it’s a fair assumption that this — in combination with sexual misconduct — is the result of the hypercompetitive masculine ideal that has been pushed so hard in our current society. Anger is not exclusively a male trait, and the rage that can come from the cocktail of inferiority at the game itself and the taunts of opponents is a universal experience. However, I believe this response is more amplified for men, who may be responding to a subconscious thought that to lose is to be emasculated. The times I have faced my most humiliating defeats are times I have felt serious disdain toward myself for being weak, for not being a man — getting significantly worse grades on high school assessments and letting in 20 goals in my first and last chance to be a goalie, to name a few. Defeat is no longer simply an outcome, no longer a learning experience, but rather a source of shame as a man.

Once players in both the digital and physical worlds start developing an audience, conduct quickly shifts. Most conflicts between professionals can be chalked up to banter, and the expectations of sportsmanship are more strict. Of course, how sportsmanship is defined varies widely with which sport you’re talking about, but the respect is universal. In both professional sports and esports, if there is a wide gap in skill between competitors, then the expression of dominance doesn’t extend past the play of the game itself. I think we can all agree that it’s generally frowned upon for a pro to mock their opponent about the results of their match, especially if it’s directly afterward.

Games can be frustrating and contain competitive aspects but still have a relatively tame or even welcoming community. Dark Souls, a franchise well known for its refusal to coddle newcomers, is a good example of this. The Souls series is mainly a single-player experience but has multiplayer PvP options. The PvP portion of the game, while mostly an additive part of the experience, has a thriving community behind it, especially since it adds a new dimension to the game. Players with different builds, combat toolkits and strategies at their disposal will provide a more nuanced fight than a boss who is designed to be beaten. There is a huge emphasis on respecting your opponents in Dark Souls PvP and ensuring that everyone has a fun and fair experience, with various unspoken rules to follow so you don’t end up completely outclassing your opponent or frustrating them with strategies that would be considered dishonorable. This Reddit post provides a comprehensive guide to the etiquette behind Dark Souls PvP that has been agreed upon by a large portion of the game’s dedicated player base. I believe there are two things that have made this game free of toxicity: the first is that the game’s genre and competitive nature both promote slower-paced combat and attract a more serious, dedicated crowd. The second is that you can’t verbally communicate with other players; the most you can do is perform a gesture from the game’s fairly limited selection. All of the verbal communication is saved for after the fact, in forums and discussions in person, when all of the competitive tension has long since dissipated. 

Compare that to a game like “Clash Royale,” which is also a game involving one-on-one competition and no options for direct verbal communication within the match. However, “Clash Royale” is a real-time strategy game that is much more fast-paced and much more casual due to it being a mobile game. There is much less expected etiquette between players — it’s pretty much guaranteed that when you lose, you’ll hear that iconic laughing emote: the boisterous and arrogant “hee hee hee ha!” that lives in my head rent-free. While it’s impossible not to laugh at the goofy nature of these interactions, it’s a decent counterexample that lack of communication does not stop toxicity. A famous example of mocking your opponent — teabagging — is simple: repeated crouching up and down, no words required. The gesture was popularized through the Halo games, and its influence is seen in every game with a crouching mechanic.

Maybe — due to the nature of interactions through a screen — we are doomed to destructive clashes of online personas where egos are inflated and our pride is that much more fragile. Screens don’t fight back, after all. A screen won’t puff out its chest and take a swing at you for jabbing at its insecurities. When a screen hits you with derision that leaves you reeling, you can take your time to methodically craft your response, no quick wit required. You can even ask other people to do it for you, like Sneako did. It’s no secret that the anonymity of the internet brings out the worst in us. Hate accounts very rarely broadcast their names when they want to slam the object of their disdain. 4chan, an online forum that has created a culture of referring to users as “anon,” has some of the vilest, hateful content you’ll find on the internet, simply for the joy of being contrarian and baiting reactions out of others. Even something seemingly harmless, like a password, can be an example of people online indulging in their ugliest bits in the shadows. The Wikipedia page for the 10,000 most common passwords is sprinkled with edgy words and phrases — anything from “fuckme” and “bigdick” to literal slurs. It’s a disappointing window into who people are when they think nobody is watching. It’s hard to imagine not feeling shame at having to remind yourself of your shallow immaturity every time you type in a slur as a password. 

When I was in my pre-teen years and would make usernames my 11-year-old self thought were absolutely hilarious, like “justaname666” for my Snapchat, I thought I was setting myself apart from the rest. “The devil’s number attached to such a casual name will really make those uppity god-fearing oldheads clutch their pearls!” he thought to himself. I thought I was contributing to some identity for myself when my real self was too early to be developed into anything worth considering. But pre-teen me started to fade as I grew into who I am today, and it was apparent that these attempts to be edgy were easy to see as desperate. It did me no favors, and the moment I learned I could change it, I did it in a heartbeat. 

The part that disappoints me the most about the passwords, though, is that you don’t think about your password when you type it in. It becomes mind-numbing repetition — a set of movements, mechanical and automatic, that are as unconscious as breathing and blinking. The shame I felt from having to tell a new Snapchat contact my username is no longer present, that feeling of humiliation pounded into my head over and over again is lost when a password is reduced to a pattern of button presses. I think toxicity in video games and digital interactions as a whole reflects this behavior. Completely dropping any facades of politeness and immediately going for each other’s throats has been repeated so many times that it’s like emotional muscle memory. In many online spaces, hostility has become the path of least resistance, and it takes effort to be patient and respectful.

Then again, I could just be overly sensitive. I’m not the type of person who has thick skin. Maybe I just need to touch some grass; rude behavior is hardly exclusive to the digital world. Plus, who even writes an article to analyze how they got their feelings hurt on the internet? I’m hardly providing an objective view here, but when speaking on such an emotionally charged topic, it’s difficult to stay completely objective, especially when it’s a topic I’m so familiar with. People’s digital personas are irrationally hostile sometimes, and that’s not up for debate. Whatever the case may be, if we do end up encountering each other through the screen, I hope you try to choose to be kind. I’ll try too.

Daily Arts Writer James Johnston can be reached at johnstjc@umich.edu.

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