There’s a fine line between laughing at people and laughing with them, and it’s often blurred on the internet, so, just to be clear: I am laughing with the TikTok couples who spend date night painting terrible portraits of each other. But I am laughing at Florida police officers who open fire because an acorn falls on their police car. When it comes to AI text-to-video tool Sora, I am not laughing.
Couples painting each other on TikTok
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Young couples on TikTok can be incredibly annoying when they do things like refuse to wear shoes, but there are also heartwarming couple trends, like clips of stay-at-home dates where couples paint each other’s portrait. The videos these evenings produce are glorious—there’s the suspense as you wait for the images to be revealed, but no matter how terrible you think the painting will be, it’s somehow worse. At the same time, there’s something charming in how sincere this art is, and I really like videos of people who are in love and laughing uncontrollably. Plus, the trend is new enough that I can’t find any “real” artist couples doing awesome pictures of each other because they’re so much better than everyone else—nor are there any easily accessible, unfunny parody videos.
Viral video of the week: the acorn-cop incident
This week’s viral video comes courtesy of the body cameras of two Florida law enforcement officers and the Freedom of Information Act. In a video that is both hilarious and terrifying, we see Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Deputy Barney Fife, er, sorry, Jesse Hernandez, approaching his patrol car parked on a quiet street. A handcuffed suspect waits within to be taken to jail. Suddenly, an acorn falls from a tree, and Hernadez reacts by screaming “shots fired!” while somersaulting away. He adds “I’m hit!” and draws his weapon.
Nearby, Sergeant Beth Roberts is talking to a witness. She hears the commotion and pulls out her own gun; then both cops start firing at Hernandez’s patrol car. Roberts is shooting towards Hernandez who is taking cover from the angry squirrel behind a nearby car. The pair unload at least 20 bullets into the vehicle, while an unnamed witness at the scene exhorts them to not kill the person in the car.
Ultimately, the acorn was uninjured in the firefight. The suspect in the back of the car also escaped injury—miraculous given the number of bullets that were aimed toward him—and officer Hernandez resigned while the incident was investigated. Don’t worry, the officers were cleared of any criminal wrongdoing.
The video was posted by YouTuber PoliceActivity on February 13 and quickly spread everywhere, inspiring response memes like this one:
Credit: Know your meme
and this:
Credit: Know your meme
Hopefully the acorn-cop case will also inspire a serious national conversation about how police are absolutely insane and why do we let these yahoos have guns anyway?
What is Sora?
This week, OpenAI, the people who brought us ChatGPT, unveiled their newest threat to humanity: Sora. The generative AI model translates user text into startlingly lifelike (or surreal) videos that are a cut above any AI videos that have come before. These clips are rich in detail, feature full camera movement, multiple subjects, complex lighting, etc., all produced in moments based on a few lines of text. At a glance, or even a longer look, Sora’s videos are nearly indistinguishable from “real” videos. Just click the demo above to see what I mean—all those clips were supposedly created by Sora directly. Sora is not available to the public yet. OpenAI says it is “taking several important safety steps” by “working with red teamers—domain experts in areas like misinformation, hateful content, and bias—who are adversarially testing the model,” which is not terrifying at all.
Highlights from Nintendo Direct
This week, Nintendo showed off a slew of upcoming third-party games coming to its Switch console, announcing some new titles and revealing the release dates for others. I’ve embedded the video above, but if you don’t have 25 minutes to spare for Nintendo, here are some of the highlights:
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Grounded, an action game from Obsidian where players are shrunk to a tiny size and must survive their backyard, will be released on April 16.
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Pentiment, also from Obsidian, is a narrative-driven game set in in early sixteenth-century Bavaria. It will be available on Switch on February 22.
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Disney Epic Mickey: Rebrushed is coming at some point in 2024. It’s an improved version of 2010’s Epic Mickey.
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Turn-based strategy game Unicorn Overlord will be released on March 8.
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Star Wars: Battlefront Classic Collection is the first two Battlefront games with new playable characters and maps.
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World of Goo 2, a sequel to the much-loved puzzle game, will be a Switch exclusive and hits consoles on May 23.
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Endless Ocean Luminous, a sequel to undersea adventure game Endless Ocean, hits the Switch store on May 2. It features online play where up to 30 gamers can share the same ocean.