This week in the world of young people, gamers are playing a Chinese video that’s shaking up the industry; people are eating cucumbers; and everyone is tired of being very demure, very mindful. (All of which is actually Clairo shade.)
What is Black Myth: Wukong, and why is it so controversial?
Video gamers are positive about just-released video game Black Myth: Wukong. The action-adventure boss-fighting game is based on 16th century Chinese novel Journey to the West, and has been getting raves from both critics and fans. A couple of days after it released, there were over 2.2 million concurrent players. So it’s a successful game, but it’s also creating some controversy.
Black Myth: Wukong was developed and published by Game Science, a Chinese company making a push into the Western gaming world, and they do things differently in China. When the codes for the advance copies of the game were sent to gaming influencers and reviewers on TikTok, YouTube, and Twitch, they included a list of topics they were not to discuss, including “feminist propaganda,” “fetishisation,” politics, Covid-19, and China’s video game industry policies.
Some people outright refused to review the game, and some streamers defied the policy, including Twitch’s Moonmoon who called their Black Myth stream: “Covid-19 Isolation Taiwan (Is a Real Country) Feminism Propaganda.”
What is “Clairo shade?”
This image of a cake labeled “Clairo shade” with the caption “whole party lowkey felt like clairo shade” was shared hundreds of thousands of times on Twitter this week, so I went on a deep dive into the meaning of this very-online piece of slang.
“Clairo shade” is the kind of thing people with jobs usually don’t have time to understand, but here goes: “Shade” is commonly known slang that means a subtle insult. “Clairo” is the stage name of 26-year-old singer Claire Cottrill. Back when she was 19, Clairo released a YouTube video for a song called “Pretty Girl,” a lo-fi/vapor-wave/bedroom-pop song that seems very DIY and grassroots.
As “Pretty Girl” climbed up YouTube’s charts, online haters and non-appreciators began to suspect that Clairo was an “industry plant”—a pop star who seems grassroots but is actually a product of the music industry’s star-making machinery. (More on what an industry plant is here.) The main evidence for her plant status is that her father is a marketing guy. I don’t know or care whether this is true, but people started posting a lot of subtle and not-subtle “Clairo is a plant” messages online (“Clairo shade”).
But the phrase caught on ironically when Clairo’s fans, leaping to her defense, apparently saw examples of Clairo shade in totally unrelated things, like this Katy Perry album cover.
So people started saying “Does Anyone Feel Like This Is Clairo Shade?” to literally anything that wasn’t Clairo related. For instance, when President Joe Biden mistakenly calling the Ukrainian President “Vladimir Putin,” some asked if this was actually Clairo shade. So “Clairo shade” is a joke about how Clairo’s fans (and fans in general) often view the wide world through the tiny lens of their fandom.
On a deeper level, knowing enough about what fans of Clairo think is a myopic worldview, too. Like if you look at a cake that says “Clairo shade” on it, and you think “that’s a funny joke,” the joke is on you.
Everyone is getting very sick of “very demure”
The phrases “very demure,” “very mindful” and “very cutesy” have made a speed run from “what does this mean?” to “ha! Funny!” to “oh my god, this is so annoying. Make it stop” in record time. It’s only been about a week since people noticed TikToker Jools Lebron’s videos explaining how she is very demure, very mindful and decided to keep repeating it over and over.
But the life cycle is coming to a close. The meme is following the path of all Internet memes from “something a clever person made up” to “something less clever people noticed” to “something non-clever people started repeating,” to the final death of all interesting things: “something people are using to advertise and promote things.” Here are only a few examples:
NASA described Saturn’s rings as “Very considerate, very approachable, very demure.”
Dunkin Donuts jumped on the trend.
United airlines is “very demure.”
J. Lo and Kim Kardashian hopped on the bandwagon.
The president of the United States’ Instagram described canceling the debt of five million Americans as “Very mindful. Very demure.”
Make it stop? Please?
Why is everyone online talking about cucumbers?
It’s hard to tell why a mundane thing like the word “demure” will suddenly have a cultural moment, but it happens. And it’s happening now with cucumbers. The humble vegetable that barely tastes like anything and is in every salad you’ve ever eaten is suddenly the hottest food on TikTok. Cucumbers are so in right now that demand may be contributing to a cucumber shortage in Iceland, and mandolin-related finger-slicing incidents are on the rise. So where did this cucumber mania come from? Mostly TikTok home chef Logan Moffitt (known as “the cucumber guy”), who posts recipes for cucumber salads that often rack up tens of millions of views. They’re solid salad recipes, like this “salmon bagel salad” or Din tai fung cucumber, and there’s something about slicing up a whole cucumber with a mandolin directly into a takeout container, then throwing some other stuff in there, that no doubt inspires confidence in new cooks.
Viral video of the week: Cybertruck durability tests
YouTube channel WhistlinDiesel has made a name for itself with videos about wrecking things that cost a lot of money in amusing ways, like a $400,000 Ferrari, and building ridiculous machines like a jet-powered monster truck. Recently they touched a nerve online by testing the durability of a Cybertruck.
These videos dig into cultural soft tissue around masculinity and machines by questioning whether the Cybertruck—with its heavy duty, tank-like build and high price tag—is actually weak and poorly designed. We can all tell it’s ugly, but seeing what happens if you put stress on a Cybertruck is shocking. You’d think it would be able to tow things without falling apart.
WhistlinDiesel’s follow-up tries some of the same tests with a Ford F-150 and the comparison is fascinating. I’m sure 95% of Ford F-150 drivers don’t actually need a heavy-duty truck, but at least they get one when they pay for it.
