When I was in high school, the only times we thought about goats was when we planned to steal them because they were a rival high school’s mascot, or when we needed a sacrifice to the Great Old Ones. Seems kids today are taking a different tack, and posing for prom pictures with them. They’re also redefining the institutions of both concert tailgating and drinking water, while still finding time to debate whether a an up-and-coming child star is a flesh-and-blood human or a digital creation.
Taylor Swift parking lot scene rises
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Young fans of Taylor Swift have discovered tailgating. In response to the bank-account-draining ticket prices for Swift’s ongoing “Eras” tour, broke-ass Swifties are showing up in parking lots without passes to listen to the concert from afar, echoing the dedication of fans of the Grateful Dead back in the day, but with way fewer acid casualties. Parking-lot-Swifties are enjoying the vibe, dancing to the spillover sounds, and even getting a peek at Taylor, provided the stadium has correctly angled its jumbo-sized screens.
The recent Tampa Swift show had all the right conditions, at least judging by various TikTok vids of fans who seem happy to have not dropped nearly a grand to see a show only to be seated behind the stage, with a view of nothing but gear crates, electrical equipment, and janitors pushing carts.
What is #Watertok, and why should you hate it?
Seems younger people can’t just drink water like every human who has ever lived. They have to make it a whole thing. They have to create a hashtag for it, and a subreddit. They have to make memes and try to improve the water-drinking-experience by adding flavors and trying to deep-fry it. They have to tell everyone, “Look at me, I drink water!”
Older people will see this, sigh, and respond, “You are doing it wrong. Why can’t you just shut up and drink water without putting weird flavors in it? Why can’t you drink from a glass instead of a hydro-flask? Doctors say what you’re doing might be dangerous and bad and it makes me uncomfortable.”
This is the circle of life.
This year’s hot prom accessory: a live goat
Tailgating outside of concerts and drinking water are time-honored rituals, but here’s something new kids are doing: Taking prom photos with goats. The trend is a play on the acronym G.O.A.T.; high schoolers are renting livestock along with their limos and tuxedos so they can pose next to the animal to say, “We are the greatest of all time.” It seems to be mainly a thing around Atlanta—livestock rental company Get Your Goats Rental started the trend by catering to prom goers with deliveries of Insta and TikTok-ready goats, and it’s catching on. They say they’ve rented out over 100 goats this year alone, all so prom couples can post videos like this one and this one. These videos have a kind of absurdist power that I absolutely love—formalwear and domesticated animals make for a surprisingly memorable combination.
Beau is Afraid kid insists he is real; the internet has doubts
Young actor Armen Nahapetian, known online as “Beau is Afraid Kid,” would like everyone to know that he is real. He exists as a flesh and blood person, not as a digitally de-aged version of Joaquin Phoenix.
The online rumors concerning Nahapetian’s reality (or lack thereof) began with the release of a poster for Beau is Afraid, a conceptual horror/comedy flick that opens on April 21. The one-sheet slaps Joaquin Phoenix’s name above a waxy, retouched image of Nahapetian, and the kid looks so much like Phoenix (and so uncanny valley) that some people became convinced that he doesn’t actually exist. (It didn’t help that the movie publicity department played into the rumor by releasing videos like this one.)
Honestly, the now-16 year-old does look a bit unreal, even in the red carpet cast photos. But he’s a real boy, not a computer generated creation—or so he says in this TikTok video and on his Instagram bio, which reads, “I’m not AI.” But isn’t that exactly what an AI would say? I am not convinced.
Viral video of the week: “ASMR: I Asked 7 YouTubers for ASMR Ideas…I went too far.”
ASMR videos are designed to provoke an “autonomous sensory meridian response,” a tingling sensation on the scalp or the back of the neck, usually triggered by whispering and repetitive clicking sounds. They either work on you or they don’t. If they do, it’s a cool, mysterious sensation that science can’t fully explain. If they don’t, it’s just someone whispering in a slightly creepy way. ASMR videos don’t do anything for me (although I appreciate how quiet they are) but they seem to work for a lot of people, and there’s a whole galaxy of quietly whispering online celebrities out there.
This week’s viral video comes from one of the top players in the scene. Gibi ASMR, a YouTuber with 4.6 million subscribers, took ASMR video suggestions from seven other well known YouTubers. She rose to the challenge, making ASMR clips about a riding lawnmower, trimming a bonsai tree, and other disparate tasks and objects. Was she successful? Damned if I know, but judging from the comments and the amount of views from happy tingle-heads, it’s an amazing video—maybe a leap forward for the genre!—even if it seems to me like someone talking softly about nothing and touching things for an hour.