Hello the Internet, and welcome to this episode of Trends So Good. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, trends Yes yes yes balloon Hello, I'm Jack. That is super producer Becca Ramos. And for people who haven't seen that video, they're gonna be confused, I guess a little bit.
But we're gonna talk about it.
So as were we all? Should we just kick off with that, because I guess.
So we started there, we should.
Yeah, this was on my list of like, oh, we forgot to talk about that this week over the weekend, and then I lost that list and then we forgot to talk about it again this week. But it is this video of a person on TikTok, a woman who has a cowboy hat and a mustache in like for a moment, like a graphic over, and then the main chunk that I think people chose to to like I think it went viral on Twitter, was her saying ice cream so good. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes yes, and it just.
Her name is Pinky Doll. By the way, her.
Name, yes, I should do not erase Pinky Doll. So Pinky Doll is somebody who's part of a TikTok trend that Becca as a resident TikTok expert, I am asking you to explain to me, and you I asked you, and you just put your head in your hands and began weeping. So that is.
Truly how it's felt going down this rabbit hole. I actively tried to avoid it on TikTok because I kept seeing it pop up and I was like, what is this? And then I saw more people making fun of it, and I was like, I simply, is it above my head? I don't understand, and then I and then I. The thing that made me bring it up was I got to serve to TikTok saying, oh, this is actually fetish, and I was like, of course it is. But obviously no claims have been you know, confirmed or denied. What
this is. It is basically people TikTokers pretending to be NPCs, which are non playing characters right AI video.
Game, like the background characters who just respond to stimulus and do the same thing over and over again.
Yes, which there have been other trends on TikTok of like NPC vibe, but they've been more in the vein of showing outfits like choose your character and then it's like right, So and then people like change all these different outfits to be different characters that type of thing.
But this has been kind of a weird thing because it's specifically for TikTok Live, because on TikTok Live, people can send different emoticons and those emoticons are equating to a certain amount of actual dollar coins attached to it to pay the creators to act to it.
So she when she's saying ice cream so good, and like maybe ice cream so good? Yes, yes, yes, that is a gift that is being sent to her. That is also a gift. There is a monetary value that she is receiving in connection with that, And the point of the people sending this is just to see a human being devoid of all humanity, just to having free will taken away from them by technology, which I feel like at a deep like, at a deep psychological level, is kind of how everyone feels a little bit. So
that's probably where part of the fascinations coming from. And then yes, probably people are also masturbating.
People are definitely masturbating to this. That was the vibe I got from specifically the TikToker ming a lla bay m I n g A L A B a E. They were explaining how when these TikTokers, specifically like Pinky Doll will receive these emoticons, you know, and the way they react to them is kind of like them orgasming. That's like kind of the fetish to it, and.
The people who are.
Yes ya, and so the people sending it are you know, getting off on seeing the TikToker react, whereas the issue being this is a child's app, why would you, you know, bring this child's you know, this adult play child in a theory, it is a child's app. Yeah, so you know, but that's you could say that about all the lives
on TikTok. We've talked about how weird TikTok lives are in general, and they all make their money this way, like this is just one specific weird way to make money, but they all make this money from receiving these emoticons.
And a lot of people go live, like regular ass content creators go live so that they can earn money from their audience by them sending them emoticons, because the whole goal of the live stream in that sense is that you're getting a live reaction from your favorite creator that's like, oh my god, thanks Jess for sending me that you know ice cream. I'm like so grateful for you when it's not being this creepy, weird AI n PC thing that is just how life works. This is
just a different way to be earning money. It is a little black marry that you know, Pinky Doll won't break character and she's like on Live twenty four seven. She's literally on Live right now as we were like looking up shit for this article.
Yeah, it is weird, and you are one of her biggest donors.
We should make that and you know, selling my money out to be Actually I'm like losing my apartment for this.
I'm seniging money to Pinky Doll over these gifts. Yeah, it does feel like something that would be too weird for Black Mirror. Like I feel like we've gone from the thing where people being like gosh man, reality like starting to feel like Black Mirror episode open here, and now we're just like this is like if you if this was in the trailer for Black Mirror, people would just be like, well, I don't even know what to
do with that. Like usually yeah, like there's that one episode of Black Mirror where people like rate each other on like how good you are, And it's just like that almost feels like quaint now, Like then you that everybody would have like a reward system that when you interact with them you have to like give them five stars. Yeah, it was like, okay, that was your reaction to the introduction of like the like gig app culture, But like that's that just seems like we've digested that and moved on.
This is not me saying like Black Mirror, you're so lamb. This is me saying like our culture is so ravenous and fucked.
Up that it already moved they can not move.
Through new surreal terrain like at a startling pace that I feel like it almost makes the job of someone
making a Black Mirror show like hard, too hard. Yeah, all right, well anyways, I it's one of those weird things that is not a song, is not an earworm, but has been stuck in my head as though it were a song, And I've been saying it around the house and my kids think it's funny, and so I'll keep saying it until they stop giving me little gifts of their left All right, Oppenheimer, it is Boppenheimer Day is upon us, upon us, I got, Yeah, I guess at midnight tonight tonight they both drop.
Well, okay, I am seeing it tonight before midnight because.
Read the predial showings.
Yeah, they are showing it early. But I kind of was thinking about this before we got on MIC. Do you remember the days when movies would actually drop at night at the theater, like they wouldn't be showing them at like seven or four pm or not in the day before It was like you had to either go to the midnight showing or see it on the day of. And I kind of miss that. I mean, I was like an older person to not be going to the midnight showing, but I miss the fun of like a
midnight premiere. You guy, all your friends and.
You go and you sit, and I choose to still believe in that reality and say, oh, yeah, these are just Thursday previews. Yeah yeah, it's so. The reviews are in. They they've lifted the review embargo on Metacritic, and the reviews for Oppenheimer and Barbie are in, and they are dun dun, dumb, both really good. They're just like Oppenheimer's in the nineties, which is crazy high.
Like this, it's definitely better than I thought it was going to be, like the reviews for Oppenheimer, because like, I guess maybe it's just not my like, it's not my category movie that I would like love to go see. Like, yeah, I love Christopher Nolan. There's definitely movies of his that I love. But war movies are definitely have always been like a negatory for me. It's kind of like whatever.
So and I felt like the press for Barbie was so overshadowing Oppenheimer that people were like, na, like Oppenheimer's gonna be okay, but they're doing better than Party.
Yeah, what's your favorite? Like what's we We've done this with Wes Anderson, you and I, But what's your like? Nolan? Like Inception?
Okay, Yeah, I wrote a whole like essay on it in college.
You wrote a whole yeah.
A ten page essay on Inception in college.
I don't think when I saw it, Inception was my favorite Nolan movie. It's definitely the one that I think about the most often. And yeah, like it is just burnt into the back of my brain of course, Yeah, which I think is like the mark of a successful movie, Like it's just like riddled with plot holes. Which again I think Christopher Nolan does plot holes as a flex because he's like, I'm so good at movie magic, you won't notice this. I am literally waite. Yeah.
But anyway, it was just such a phenomenon when it came out, though, like the concept of the movie I felt like was one of those oh, this is an original movie again, you know.
Yeah, yeah, so, and I mean, I will say Dunkirk was also like in the nineties when it first came out and I saw that and I was like, that is a successful war film, you know. But did I enjoy it the way that I enjoyed like some of his other sillier movies. No, yeah, not so much. But so like my sense is I'm going to appreciate Oppenheimer, but it's not going to be like the film that
is my favorite Christopher Nolan movie. And then the Barbie reviews are in, and they are in the eighties eighty one, I believe on Metacritic, which.
I've got my Juicy Gutour sweatsuit on right now, yes, and I'm very excited.
To go right pink Juicy Guitour ready for the premiere. So that so you're going.
Tonight, I'm going tonight because I couldn't wait. I personally was like I have to see it before everybody else. So I was like, they're available on Thursday. I'm gonna go on Thursday.
Yeah. The reviews, I think, I think some people say it is a little darker than anticipated. That was that was my prediction. So yeah, yeah, so we'll see. Uh, but you know, the the pre purchases of Barbie tickets are like the highest I think we talked about earlier in the week that I mean.
My theater sold out. I'm going to be getting there early because I chose to go to a theater that doesn't have a sign seating because I was like, oh, let me see how many of my friends I can get to go so we don't have to like sit next to like worry about booking seats next to each other. And I only got four friends to go and my boyfriend, but because he felt very left out, he was shocked that I actually bought the tickets without him, but he
didn't seem interested. But yeah, it sold out, so we got to get there early and make sure we get good seats.
The raves for Barbie seemed particularly impressed with the Ken character, so I'm excited about that too, Gossling going full gossling. Yeah, but both of the lead performances are supposedly amazing, Margot Robbie continuing to be, you know, just an incredible actor. Yes, all right, So we're gonna take a quick break and then we're gonna come back and talk about a internet conspiracy theory about Oppenheimer that is probably not true, but has like a nugget in it that kind of blew
my mind. So we'll be right back, and we're back. And so there was this theory back in the day when the Frozen came out. The Disney made Frozen purely to like as an SEO trap to divert search traffic from the internet. Theory that Walt Disney's cryogenically frozen head was preserved somewhere in Disneyland.
That is so crazy. That is a crazy theory.
Yeah, that like when you google Disney and Frozen, the movie comes up instead of conspiracy theories. Is the theory definitely not true, but a fun but fun Reddit post, a very fun reddit post. So people are saying the same thing about Oppenheimer and Christopher Nolan in a way that makes even less sense than that, but it does
have like a really weird backstory. So there's this viral tweet from mister Chow Saracha Chow on Twitter saying, learning that Christopher Nolan's fugitive hit man brother's code name is Oppenheimer is actually what turned me around on him entirely as an artist. Immediately made me want to revisit everything.
So and then people are like, so, that's that's why he made it, And I don't think that's why he made it, but it is true that he has an older brother who was implicated in a murder in Costa Rica that people think will like is like a Hitman style murder. So there's Christopher Nolan, there's his brother Joanah Nolan or Jonathan Nolan, the Westworld guy who like co wrote a couple of his biggest movies, Memento with him.
They have an older brother named Matthew Nolan. It's just you know, he works as a property developer in Chicago.
But in two thousand and five he was accused or he was accused of the two thousand and five murder of an accountant in Costa Rica who had stolen a bunch of cash from a drug trafficker, and like the drug trafficker allegedly like brought Nolan in to recover the lost money, all of which Nolan denies, but like he allegedly tricked the accountant into like coming into contact him by calling himself Matthew McCall Oppenheimer, not because of the
atomic scientist, but because he wanted people to think he was part of the Oppenheimer diamond family. And so he was eventually arrested in two thousand and nine after the FBI tracked him down because he slipped up and attended his own bankruptcy hearing, and the Costa Rican government wanted
him extradited. He was put in prison in Chicago until the judge ultimately ruled that there was no sufficient evidence that he was the killer, and he was allowed to stay in the US, But the arresting FBI agent claimed the extradition request was not up to the legal standards required and pointed out that Nolan had some tw somehow secure a high priced attorney despite being bankrupt.
Yeah, his two brothers are award winning right, Yes, a little lost here.
But I don't know, it's just like he seems so one of the guys who like tracked him down and like brought about his arrest. Is like he is the most arrogant evil person you've ever met, Like he sounds like a movie villain. When he was released from his Chicago jail, like guards discovered a thirty one foot long rope made up of bed sheets and a harness razor and clip designed to unlock handcuffs in his cell and they were like, is actually the best damn rope I've
ever seen made of bed sheets? Like it's just so I don't know. And also, so this is around the time that Christopher Nolan made Inception, in which, like the main character is a like his avoiding extradition for a murder he was falsely accused of.
Damn, this should have been in my essay.
Right, but it's such a wild like I don't know, I mean, so, so the SEO thing doesn't make sense, right because this obviously is flirting with like getting everybody to google this story and find out this story Like this wasn't I said, this wasn't an existing urban legend that everybody was talking about on the internet that he was trying to cover up, and like this is a thing where now I know about this because he chose
to make the Oppenheimer movie. But it does feel like I don't know, he's like taking cues from like at least there has to be this like massive fascination with his brother, who's.
Like a quite the life. Yeah, right, wouldn't shock.
Me, but what a just what a wild story. It does make you like kind of take a step back and just be like, do I need to like rethink because he just seems like kind of a stuffy, like British guy who's like, yeah, you know, you better clear the schedule when I released my movies because they're the best movies, and now it's like weather, there's this darkness,
this path under the surface. So I don't know, nothing was ever proven, but just in terms of like an influence on Christopher Nolan's films, Like you know, his breakout movie was Memento, written by him and his little brother, and it's about a guy who essentially gets exploited and tricked into becoming an assassin.
And it's all coming together.
I don't know, that's just it's interesting.
I would believe the Christopher Nolan conspiracy theories over the
Frozen via Frozen crygentically Disney theory. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure, because especially with Frozen the movie, those movies take so long to animate and they're like in pop I would believe other conspiracy theories about the movie Frozen, like the lesbian wan and like all those other things over the cryogenically Frozen, because I just don't thieve there's a lot of stake in that game for them to worry about if Walt Disney's cryogenically frozen or not.
Yeah, he is, but there is there is something too, like the way decisions ultimately, the way we find out decisions are made over the course of American history, Like a lot of times it does end up being like some thin skinned rich person being like you gotta find a way to get this room or out of there, yeah, you know what I mean. Like, so, like it's not crazy to me that like that was on a you know, on a whiteboard somewhere in the Disney office. Is like,
but I don't believe it. I'm just like it's it's not the most far fetched thing. The Nolan thing doesn't make sense as a motivation to make this movie. It does make sense to me as like if he is you know, this brother is just this like shadow figure in his life, who is like, you know, really fascinating, like darkly fascinating, and he like kind of takes his creative interests and cues from that. Like that makes sense to me.
Yeah, that makes so much more sense, I do think. I mean, granted, I don't know what Oppenheimer's about. I know it's a war movie. Is that awful for me to say I don't know what it's about. I'm like, I just assume. I look at the aesthetic and was like world War two, and then I just like moved on.
I just didn't it's about the invention of the atomic bomb. Oh okay.
Who. I was like, there's an atomic bomb. It's World War two, That's all I know.
Yes, And then he's like oopsies. And then the government's like, well you shouldn't have said oopsies, and now you're.
Now we have atomic bombs.
Yeah. Yeah. And finally, just kind of following up on some of the stuff we were talking about earlier this week, Google News is testing a product that used artificial intelligence technology to produce news stories, pitching it to news organizations including The New York Times, The Washington Post, on The Wall Street Journal's owner News Court.
This is so scary to me, But.
It's already happening. It's just like a new product.
Well they go on strike. The writers over there are the part of the WGA. They their own writers, hopefully union.
The Internet is just going to become increasingly unusable as a source of any sort of research. Absolutely, yeah, but I mean hopefully the New York Times of the Washington Posts, uh in the Wall Street Journal are you know, willing to push back on this?
But when do you think the popular culture bubble of the fun office culture of Google will burst for how evil they are?
Oh yeah, I don't think anyone thinks of Google as like a fun place to definitely like a nice place to work because of like the chefs.
And then I guess because I know a lot of people that work at Google, and I feel like, like, oh yeah, it's whatever. I work at Google, like we're good coming from I guess here where we actually talk about like news and pop culture. I'm like, oh, y'all work for like evil, like doctor Evil, Evil, like obviously, But they're like, but it's not Facebook, And I'm like, I don't know. Right now, Google's pitching a hei to news companies that got writers out of jobs.
Yeah, I could see. Like the way this is probably being pitched is, look, so many lesser news outlets are already doing this, they're doing it worse. This is an improvement on that. Yeah, and then you like get somebody to come in and fact check it, and you don't need the reporting. You're just we're just like skimming the internet to like create proprietary story. Proprietary stories. Yeah, you know, unique to The New York Times because we've fed them.
We've fed the algorithm every one of your stories, so they kind of know your voice. And this will just be like a cleaned up version of what you know, the Times of India is already doing there, you know, like some of those like websites that have the it's no big secret, what why nobody wants to work with Van bought anymore? Yeah, type things. You know. So we'll see, but it's not looking good for the ability to do
research on the internet. Note I would Yeah. All right, those are some of the things that are trending on this Thursday, July twentieth. All right, well, thank you so much for joining Today. Super producer Becca Ramos. Where can people find you? Follow you all that good stuff you.
Can find me and follow me at bex b e CCS, Ramos on all platforms, and at the movies tonight watching Barbie.
There we go, all right. You can find me on Twitter at Jack Underscore ol Brian. That is going to do it for us this afternoon. We're back tomorrow with a whole last episode of the show. Until then, be kind to each other, be kind to yourselves, get the vaccine, don't do nothing about white supremacy, and we'll talk to you all tomorrow. Bye bye m