Catboys Are So In Right Now

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I Regret To Inform You The Brands Are At It Again

I was tipped off to this by the r/LofiHipHop subreddit. I’ve written a bit about how lofi hip hop has morphed from strange algorithmic quirk to bonafide music craze in the last couple years. I suspect in the next year or two we’ll see artists like Joji, Oliver Tree, or Bladee figure out how to swirl emo rap, 100 Gecs-style post-nightcore, meme EDM, and lofi hip hop into a general YouTube sound that will feel a lot like mid-00s indie rock — huge with the kids, too weird for radio (if that’s even a thing anymore), and overwhelmingly white, male, and faux-sensitive.

Anyways, it looks like Pepsi is trying to get in on the action. When I went into the their lofi beats radio this morning it had 5 watching, which I assume included me. The beats were fine, I guess. Most of the songs though have lyrics that are literally about Pepsi though. The stream’s been going since September. As one redditor pointed out, branded lofi hip hop streams are becomingly increasingly common. Will Smith even did one back in July.

“It is literally about the money now. Lofi hiphop is dead basically,” the redditor wrote. Which lol ok, let’s not get too crazy here.

Here’s A Good Beaver Video

Whenever I put videos like this in Garbage Day, I try and verify it’s not some weird exotic animal operation. The TikTok channel this comes from — @beaverbabyfurrylove — identifies itself as a Department of Environmental Conservation certified wildlife rehab specialist. Their videos are both very cute and very informative!

Twitter Has Rediscovered That Chris Pratt Is Probably A Conservative

Following entertainment and celebrity news can be really difficult right now. If you only read celebrity sites or follow movie or TV news outlets, things might seem random or nonsensical. Why is Celebrity A commenting on X topic? From the outside, it just seems like a rats nest. One big thing that, I think, isn’t reflected in a lot of pop culture reporting right now is that most of the randomness comes from the fact Twitter armies are the ones that are actually in the driver’s seat most of the time.

I’ve often dreamed of moving to a cabin in the woods (that has WiFi) and spending a few months mapping out every online community and how they intersect, but I’m not sure that’s a very smart use of my limited time here on Earth. But basically, when it comes to huge franchise entertainment properties like the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the DC Entertainment Universe, or Star Wars there are extremely dedicated online communities built up around them that are constantly (and I mean constantly) fighting and relitigating every single possible thing you could imagine about that fictional universe and the actors involved with it. The Cap/Bucky shippers hate the Cap/Falcon shippers. The Prequels memers think Reylo shippers are all demented. The #SnyderCut guys are, well, most just harassing female journalists. Inside these online spaces, there are an infinite number of Council of Nicaea-level battles playing out 24/7 and any one of these conflicts could — and often does — balloon out into a national news story.

On October 17, the director Amy Berg tweeted out one of those “which is the worst Chris in Hollywood” tweets that go around every six months. This is also pretty in line with the confusing way culture works now. I don’t really understand why people working in Hollywood are habitually months behind on every single internet thing, but they sure do love confidently kicking it all back up again like it’s brand new 6-8 months after the rest of us have moved on. Anyways, the Chris tweet went viral because they always go viral because three of the Chris’s — Pine, Evans, and Hemsworth — have extremely vocal stan armies. So the stans all started fighting amongst each other and dunking on Chris Pratt, who has been at the center of a tremendous amount of discourse over the years. Basically, there’s just been this weird thing hanging over him for years and stans have been desperate to finally prove once and for all that he’s Actually Bad.

Then, a day later, the cast of the MCU, including people like Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, Mark Ruffalo, and Zoe Saldana hosted a virtual fundraiser for Joe Biden. Pratt was noticeably absent. This, dropping in the middle of a new Chris Pratt discourse cycle, sent stans into a frenzy. A bunch of them dug through his Instagram follows and discovered he’s following a bunch of right-wing pages.

For what it’s worth, the stuff Pratt is following aren’t like mainstream conservative accounts (if those even exist anymore). He’s following pages like Ben Shapiro, PragerU, Turning Points USA, and a bunch of other cringey right-wing alt-lite junk. This stuff is a mess and if he’s going to follow them, at least be smart about it and set up an edgelord finsta.

This round of backlash against Chris Pratt finally became loud enough that other celebrities are starting speak out about it, which, then, of course, turned this entire thing into a fully-formed news cycle. So far, Pratt’s wife Katherine Schwarzenegger, Robert Downey Jr, Mark Ruffalo, and James Gunn have publicly defended Pratt.

And that’s how we ended up here. It’s all very confusing and messy. But hopefully, we can finally put an end to it now that we have successfully proven that Chris Pratt is Actually Bad. Here’s my favorite take on the whole thing:

Catboys Are Taking Over Tumblr

This screenshot comes from the likes of this Tumblr post. I wish I had a good explanation for why catboys and catgirls are so hot right now and I’ve even asked a few contacts I have at Tumblr about it, but I’m honestly at a loss. I guess kids just think it’s funny. On the off-chance this makes the jump, as it often does, to Twitter, here’s a few things I can tell you.

Catgirls are an anime trope. They’re not really a furry thing and they’re not necessarily always horny, but there’s sort of an unspoken vibe of horniness around them. Typically they present as a normal anime girl but with cat ears and a tail. Here’s a TV Tropes article about them and here’s a WikiFur article if you’re looking for, uh, that angle on it. In the course of researching this Garbage Day item I learned the Japanese term for a catgirl is nekomusume (猫娘) or “cat daughter”. So there’s a fun party fact for you!

Catboys, which are currently becoming especialy popular on Tumblr, just seem like a queer western riff on the whole thing. I went into the Catboy tag this morning and it seems kind of like a weird mishmash of like K-pop stans, TikTok e-boys, and anime socialists. Alright then! Have fun, kings.

Looking For A New Webcam?

Last month, an extremely petty redditor asked the r/Gameboy community if it was possible to use a Gameboy Camera as a webcam. The redditor explained that they were asked to take a test for their job that had extremely specific rules about how their webcam should work.

Well, Bernard Capulong, the editor-in-chief of Everyday Carry, actually figured out how to do it! Here’s how it looks in action:

I’ve dabbled a little bit in the world of streaming video as one of my many manic COVID hobbies, so I’m pretty sure I help explain what he’s doing here. He’s running Gameboy Camera off of a Super Gameboy 2 — a Japanese exclusive add-on from 1998 that allows you to play Gameboy games on a television. He’s then got that going into an Analogue Super Nt, which is an SNES recreation that has an HDMI out. The Super Nt is then running through a capture card and that goes into a laptop. And the audio is being captured separately. According to Capulong’s video, it’s both impractical and expensive.

It looks like Capulong dropped his set-up back into the subreddit and OP posted an update. Sadly, he wasn’t able to get it set up before the test.

“Ok the short update isnt going to be satisfing,” he wrote. “I dont own the SNES hardware to do this immediately and will almost certainly not have it by the time of the exam. However, I was seriously inspired by [Capulong’s] video and still intend to get this working for myself when I can justify dropping the cash.”

If You Understand This Tumblr Trends Suggestion, Congrats, You Need To Log Off

(via lycanthromorph)

btw if you have no idea what any of this means, here’s a quick rundown:

• “Smack Barm Pey Wet” comes from this 2019 Joe.co.uk video about a Northern English chip shop. A “smack barm” is a fried potato sandwich and to order it “pey wet” means it comes slathered in the liquid from mushy green peas.

• “And She Do What I Yoinky” is a lyric from a song by Instagram user RiceBubs. The full lyric is “One bad gloop, and she do what I yoinky / Two big splurgs and big ass gloopy / Three more yoinks, then I buy me a smoothie.” The song went lowkey viral back in May.

• And “Da Vinky” references those TikTok twins that pronounced Da Vinci wrong.

See, without this newsletter, you wouldn’t know any of these incredibly important things!

The Twitch DCMApocalypse Has Begun

Yesterday, hundreds of streamers took to Twitter to report they had been nabbed by Twitch’s DCMA takedowns. I’ve seen a lot of DCMA takedown stuff over the years, but this is definitely the strictest policy I’ve ever heard of.

The platform is in the midst of a huge overhaul when it comes to how music rights works. Last month, they released Soundtrack by Twitch, which is a rights-cleared music library for creators.

Right now, if copyrighted material plays during your stream, it will show up muted in playback and in VODs — or the saved clips users make of streams. Keeping up with what is and isn’t allowed on Twitch is honestly tough. And what makes things even more confusing for creators is the differences between what Twitch and YouTube allow, creating a TOS blackhole for creators to try and navigate. If it sounds like I’m venting lol, a Twitch channel I stream with has had serious issues with this over the last few weeks.

Justin "TheGunrun" Ignacio, a former Twitch founder, tweeted out a github resource that will help users mass-download and then mass-delete their VODs. But here’s my favorite development with this. The chiptune band Anamanaguchi has run afoul of Twitch’s incredibly intense music rights guidelines… when playing their own music.

A Very Cute Moment From AOC’s Among Us Twitch Stream Last Night

For those out of the loop, AOC’s Twitch stream last night was one of the site’s biggest ever — peaking at 435,000 viewers. Ninja and Drake have the record with 600,000 concurrent viewers on a Fortnite stream in 2018. And for those out of the loop on Among Us, it’s the new big video game. If you’re keeping track, it’s been Animal Crossing, Fall Guys, and now Among Us. It’s a Mafia-style game where one person playing as an imposter crew member goes around secretly killing other people on a spaceship and then all the players try and figure out who the killer is. In the clip above, a user was just secretly murdered by AOC, who was the imposter. Politics will never be normal again.

And Finally, This Girl Went On A Date With Godzilla

This link was sent to me by Garbage Day reader Molly. Seira Watanabe, a 13-year-old from Hyōgo, Japan, told the TV show Tantei! Knight Scoop that her biggest dream in life was to go on a date with Godzilla. The two went to a Godzilla Museum and shared a bento together. Perfect day if you ask me. You can check out all the GIfs of the very cute Godzilla date over at Kotaku.

“Japanese game shows” as they’re often referred to in the US are actually closer to variety shows. They usually have a panel of celebrities and idols and feature skits, contests, and weird stunts like this Godzilla date. If you’re looking for more stuff like this, I highly recommend the r/JapaneseGameShows subreddit. My personal favorite bit form one of these shows is the slippery stairs competition.

Fun fact: I was on Japanese TV back in 2013 doing a segment about the Hadouken photo meme.

P.S. here’s that very unfortunate tweet.

***Any typos in this email are on purpose actually***