Skibidi Monologue Binge Squid
On not getting slang, democracy, streaming & good news.
Hello there, how is the coffee today? Before diving in to this week, a moment to wave at a bunch of recent subscribers. Some of you might be less familiar with what I write than others, so I thought I will share some examples that can give a sense of the ground I cover. I am also happily conscious of the (very) different interests across those who receive this, and I find it both fascinating and a challenge to bring together pieces that can appeal to different palates. I generally tend to go with an approach that is part writer, part curator- I believe you will trust my taste as we go along!
Here are a few links to explore from the weeks gone by. If you know them, skip ahead.
The Duke, the Baron, the Thief- a story spanning three centuries · Really, TV?- a baffling tale from reality TV · Of Craft, Art & a Tuscan Summer- scents blended in nature · A Prince from a foreign land- Nostalgia and video games · The whirlwind Big Dawgs · · Vienna waits for you in song · On the Ampersand- And, per se · Wesley Wang’s journey of Nothing- a young filmmaker · Selfishly Speaking- Nike’s campaign ·
Its relatively early days, and I still experiment with both content and format. Any sort of thoughts & feedback, whether on specific pieces or just in general, is very welcome- reach out or just hit reply to this email. Gracias!
On to this week.
Say What, A?: Care for some Gen Alpha speak?
Friday Find: Margaret Atwood on Democracy.
Binge It!: Do you like your episodes all at once, or drip-fed dramatically?
Siiiubscribe!: The
greatest footballerbiggest football star starts a channel.With: Good news you must watch, statues to the past, a Squid Game Game.
1. Say What, A?
I will not. I refuse.
I refuse to start this with a weird sounding teen slang word.
Ok dang it. Fine. Fanum tax! Do you know what that is?
“Every generation has slang, but Gen Alpha’s has a particularly unhinged quality, some parents say.”
That statement pretty much sounds like something that could be attributed to most generations, their vocabulary, and their parents. As with many ‘demographic’ boundaries, definitions and traits, the gen-speak for any cohort is predictably maligned by those not part of the group. The further away you are from the group, the more vehement your reactions are likely to be. I call this the Law of Apparently Divergent & Overly Finicky BS, aka Load of BS (not peer-reviewed).
(I put the term demographic in quotes because I am always hesitant about how demographic boundaries- and traits- are defined so precisely, grouping entire generations as one profile).
If you are on social media and the algorithm has blessed you, you might have seen some (or way too many) of these videos: parent & teen/pre-teen looking at camera (but really at a list of text they are pretending to not read from), each spouting a word in turn. Parent says the normal/ Millenial/ GenX term, child drones the ‘Gen Alpha’ term. Skibidi and Rizz must feature, even if they have made 942 appearances previously in everyone’s feeds, reels, tiktoks, articles and whatsapps.
Disconnect.
Many of us might be bemoaning some of these (admittedly bizarre) words. Yet, in our recent or distant pasts, some would have been just fine using the word ‘sick’ and not meaning ill; saying ‘I’m down’ while totally still; calling others a ‘peep’ and not meaning a glimpse; others way back might have been the ones adding a non-temperature definition to ‘cool’! If language is always evolving, slang is almost by definition built to break. Every generation has its own, and the whole point really is to build your own niche, and in doing so exclude others.
“Thats part of the appeal. These memes wouldn’t be funny if your grandma was saying them. That’s how memes start to die.”
In all fairness, some of the disconnect now also seems sharper because much of this evolving/ creating/ mangling now happens on hyperdrive- new terms come & go faster than you can say “I can’t seem to log on to Roblox?”. Gen Alpha’s playing fields are insular & less accessible for older ‘peeps’, so exposure is limited. Their idiosyncratic nature also often renders any exposure irrelevant, because it won’t mean much to us! Plus, while they may not stay hidden in their little internet niches, these terms are definitely born in obscure corners and sources, stripping them of any ‘intuitive’ understanding of what they mean, or why. After all, many make their way from Roblox to Twitch to Tiktok, or some such convoluted pathway. What hope do we have?
But if it makes you feel old, even ‘Gen Z’ likes to frown on some of these.
Gen Zers in their 20s are looking on in horror at who is inheriting the internet from them, with many posting videos of their own calling their younger counterparts and their “brainrot” language “scary” and accusing them of not being able to read or write.
As the good folk over at The People said, “The challenge for parents (and companies) is that unless they consume the same media diet – they won’t understand the cultural references.”
And that, is kinda the point.
Post Scripts.
So, “Fanum Tax”? It means to steal something.
How? Kai Cenat, a streamer/ gamer with 13 million followers, once had a piece of food stolen during a livestream, by his friend Fanum. So, erm,…. Fanum Tax.
Also fascinating how our internet age means far more mobility of such slang across geographies. I checked out similar lowdowns across Singapore, India and of course, the US.
If you want to feel connected or are curious, here are some other terms (though I’m pretty sure some overlap with Gen Z)
Skibidi: It started with a now-76-part animated YouTube series called “skibidi toilet.” Now it’s used to mean basically anything.
Sigma: someone who is cool or a leader
Gyatt/Gyat: a voluptuous behind
Rizz: (also Gen Z)- short for charisma
Ohio: weird or cringe (based on memes referencing “only in Ohio” type of incidents)
Mid: mediocre, average
Aura: a quantifiable unit used to refer to how cool (an aura gain) or uncool (an aura loss) a person is2. Friday Find: Atwood on Democracy.
In a year where more than half the planet has been/is going to the polls, and particularly flashy week in a particularly followed democracy, here is Margaret Atwood on Democracy. A wonderful monologue on its erosion, depicted entirely in illustration and motion graphics.
Expression/execution.
Creating a compelling visual narrative of this nature (graphics, animation, little or no ‘real’ visuals, no talking heads) for a monologue like this is challenging. It needs not only animation skills, but a perspective on the topic and visual devices that can help represent it. The visuals here do justice to the words, sometimes beautifully so. But it all really comes together from their synergy with the moody- sometimes dark- sound design, and of course, the rather ponderous and sombre (dareisay cynical?) tone of Atwood. Much can be said about her words, which are worthy of thought and debate, but I share here primarily for the execution.
This is one in a series on Democracy by the FT earlier this year. It features perspectives from four women- hailing from India, Nigeria, Turkey & America. The piece with writer Lola Shoneyin is also quite powerful, albeit via a very different aesthetic & emotional route.
Juliet Riddell and the team at FT have clearly looked to combine meaning with creative expression. And I am here for it.
The above piece was directed by Juliet Riddell, with design by Jamie Macdonald/Airship23, and sound by Tristan Cassel Delavois.
3. Binge it!
Most of us watch shows on streaming services. Some every day, others occasionally, and few never at all. But streaming content has its tentacles in many lives, and this is why I have found that the ‘Binge vs Weekly’ debate, a hot topic in the TV/streaming industry, is one that resonates with those outside it too.
‘Team Slow Burn’ or ‘Team One & Done’?
Reams have been written on the pros & cons of the two models. Dropping all episodes at once and letting hungry appetites devour a show? Or releasing episodes weekly (the ‘old TV’ way), keeping appetites whetted, conversations going, and subscribers retained? More recently, we’ve also seen hybrid models- either binges in two-part seasons, or a clutch of initial episodes followed by weekly releases. Notably, South Korean services have played around with these models for some time now. Broadly speaking, Netflix has been the biggest champion of the binge model (with good claim to having invented it), though they don’t wade into the debate too often.
Engage.
A recent analysis adds slightly different data to this- from fan communities.
Fandom is the wiki hosting service that features wikis focused on entertainment, helping fans get more out of their entertainment and gaming journeys. Powered by first party data from its 350million global user base, its recent study looks at how various release models might affect fan engagement and retention.
Select takeaways:
Overall, weekly drops are more effective for both spikes during the release window, and sustaining fan engagement after the finale.
Newer shows might benefit more from weekly releases- this allows time for fanbase growth through word-of-mouth and earned media.
For the two-part binge model, there appears to be higher engagement between parts, while at the same time there is concern if it makes it even harder to keep track of releases. “It’s one thing to know that every Wednesday, your show is coming back. It’s another thing to be like, ‘When is this coming back again?”
Clearly there is no silver bullet approach, even within a service. Different streamers have different objectives. In this context, its interesting how Stephanie Fried, Fandom’s CMO, framed it, revealing a wider view that Netlfix has much the less challenges to deal with.
Netflix doesn’t have to do that as much because people are much less likely to cancel anyway. So they’re able to just kind of give people what they want all at once and let them binge.
** Fandom’s measurements are based on visits to its 50 million pages by 300 million users per month, including data about what pages they visit, how many pages they visit and the depth of their scroll on each page.
For what its worth, the LA times doesn’t consider this a debate any more.
TV viewers have debated the merits of the Netflix-style binge model versus the traditional weekly episode release — along with every kind of hybrid strategy in between. That battle has been won. TV series that dominate the water-cooler conversation arrive the old-fashioned way, week by scintillating week.
Overviews of this data in AdWeek and on Fandom. The LA Times weighs in here.
If this interests you, there is more in-depth reading from the last 12 months on the topic from Parrot Analytics & the Entertainment Strategy Guy.
4. Siiiubscribe!
So Christiano Ronaldo is on Youtube. Let the vanity metric wars begin!
1hr 29min after launch, his channel topped 1 million subs- the fastest in history.
A couple of hours after posting his first video, 1.69 million more had joined.
He hit 15million in about 24 hours, and currently sits at nearly 29 million, with maybe 36 hours having passed.
Arguably, sportspersons or athletes have not really cracked Youtube yet, or at least made a mark that matches their on-field or social media followings. There are some of note from the NFL like the Kelce brothers, UK diver Tom Daley, NBA star Steph Curry, but nothing huge yet.
I think this is both understandable and desirable because lets face it- who wants to be inundated by formulaic, inauthentic Youtube content managed by a team who is merely checking the boxes. Its potentially much harder to create meaningful content on this platform compared to, say, Instagram or X.
But if done well*, the rewards for both athlete and fans could be amazing.
In this case, CR is going to rocket through the metrics, and we can expect to hear sustained updates on who he has overtaken in the coming weeks. For reference, he has a combined 918m followers across social, with 636m on IG alone.
Mr Beast, watch out.
*If.
5. Peanut Masala
(where I share stories or tidbits I find interesting)
Watch: The good news you might have missed. “Whether or not you believe the world is doomed might depend on where you get your news”, says journalist Angus Hervey in a bright Ted talk. Its about 8min- do watch, because we can all do with positive stories.
(In his quest to break the presentation mould such talks usually have, Angus collaborated with the very same creative- Jamie Macdonald- who crafted the Atwood/Democracy piece shared above.)
Read: A little commentary on how the past is viewed through the present’s lens, in context of some recently installed statues in Singapore."There is now a more nationalistic tone in the conversation on how history should be preserved, guided by contemporary global discourse on decolonisation. There is a risk of seeing public monuments through a binary, exclusionary lens, where historical figures are either natives or subjugators.”
Watch: A game of the game. Here’s a fun trailer for the Squid Game mobile game releasing as part of Netflix Games, later this year (around when the long-awaited Season 2 drops). Edited to an ‘epic’ version of The Blue Danube!
That’s it. Off for my brew!