The Daily Zeitgeist - Mmm Trends, So Good, Yes Yes Yes 7/20: Pinkydoll, Boppenheimer Reviews, Christopher Nolan Conspiracy Theories, Google News AI

Episode Date: July 20, 2023

In this edition of Mmm Trends, So Good, Yes Yes Yes, Jack and super-producer Becca Ramos discuss the viral NPC trend on TikTok Live spearheaded by content creator Pinkydoll, the review embargo for Boppenheimer has been lifted and things are looking good for both films, the conspiracy theory that Christopher Nolan made Oppenheimer to cover up a dark family secret and Google is testing a product that uses artificial intelligence technology to produce news stories.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, I'm Gianna Pradenti. And I'm Jermaine Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. There's a lot to figure out when you're just starting your career. That's where we come in. Think of us as your work besties

you can turn to for advice. And if we don't know the answer, we bring in people who do, like negotiation expert Maury Tahiripour. If you start thinking about negotiations as just a conversation, then I think it sort of eases us a little bit. Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Keri Champion, and this is Season 4 of Naked Sports. Up first, I explore the making of a rivalry. Kaitlyn Clark versus Angel Reese. Every great player needs a foil. I know I'll go down in history. People are talking about women's basketball just because of one single game. Clark and Reese have changed the way we consume

women's sports. Listen to the making of a rivalry. Caitlin Clark versus Angel Reese on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Presented by Capital One, founding partner of iHeart Women's Sports. I'm Carrie Champion and this is season four of Naked

Sports. Up first, I explore the making of a rivalry, Kaitlyn Clark versus Angel Reese. People are talking about women's basketball just because of one single game. Clark and Reese have changed the way we consume women's basketball. And on this new season, we'll cover all things sports and culture. Listen to Naked Sports on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio apps, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Black Effect Podcast Network is sponsored by Diet Coke. Hello, the internet, and welcome to this episode of Trends. So good. Yes, yes, yes. Yes, yes, yes. Trends. Yes, yes, yes. Ballooned. Hello, I'm Jack. That is yes ballooned hello uh 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

as were we all um 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 off with that? 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's 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, uh, the, the main chunk that I think people chose to, like, I think it went viral on Twitter was her saying, Hmm, ice cream. So good. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Um, and it just,

her name is pinky doll, by the way, her way her name yes i should do not erase pinky doll so pinky doll is somebody who's part of a tiktok trend that uh becca as our 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 stuff. And I was like, of course it is.

But obviously no claims have been 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 uh 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 right attached to it to pay the creators to react to it so she when she's saying ice cream so good and like me ice cream so good yes yes yes that is a gift that is being sent to her that is also a gift yes there is a monetary value that uh 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 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 fascination is coming from uh and then yes probably people are also masturbating people are definitely masturbating to this that was the vibe i got from uh specifically the tiktoker um ming alabe 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 sending the Freudian reading of the text yeah 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 considered more a child's app than in 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 yeah 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 NPC thing. being this creepy, weird AI NPC thing. That is just how live works. This is just a different way to be earning money. It is a little black mirror that, you know, Pinky Doll won't break character.

And she's like on live 24 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 clear. I'm shelling my money out to Pinky Doll, actually. I'm like losing my apartment for this. I'm hemorr my money out to Pinky Doll. Actually, I'm like losing my apartment for this.

I'm severaging money to Pinky Doll over these gifts. Yeah, it does feel like something that would be too weird for Black Mirror. I feel like we've gone from the thing where people being like, gosh, man, reality, starting to feel like Black Mirror episode up in here. And now we're just like, this is, like, 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. 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 that you that everybody would have like a reward system that when you interact with them you have to like give them five stars that was fun eight out of ten 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 yeah this is not me saying like black mirror you're so lame this is me saying like our culture is so uh ravenous and fucked up that yeah we've already moved past this this is normal now 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 harder 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 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 laughter all right uh oppenheimer it is boppenheimer day is upon us upon us i got yeah i guess at midnight tonight tonight they both drop uh well okay i am seeing it tonight before midnight because the preview showings yeah they are showing it early but i i kind of was thinking about this before we got on mic do you remember the days when movies would actually drop at midnight at the theater like they wouldn't be showing them at like 7 or 4 p.m

or not 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'm grateful as an older person to not be going to the midnight showing, but I miss the fun of a midnight premiere. You got all your friends, and you go, and you sit.

I choose to still believe in that reality. And say, oh yeah, these are just Thursday previews. So the reviews are in they they've lifted the review embargo on metacritic uh and the reviews for oppenheimer and barbie are in and they are dun dun dun both really good they're pretty good they're just like oppenheimer's in the 90s which is crazy high like that 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 of 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 yeah it's kind of like whatever uh so and i felt like the press for barbie was so overshadowing oppenheimer that people were like nah like oppenheimer's gonna be okay but they're doing better than barbie yeah so what's your favorite like what what's we we've done this with wes anderson you and i but what's your like uh nolan like top two inception okay yeah i wrote a whole like essay on it in college you wrote a whole essay on it yeah a 10 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 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. Yeah. But anyway, it was just such a phenomenon when it came out though. Like the,

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 nins when it first came out and i 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 uh but so so i like my my sense is i'm going to appreciate abenheimer but it's not going to be like the the film that is my favorite christopher nolan movie uh and then the barbie reviews are in and they are in the 80s uh 81 i believe on metacritic which i've got my juicy couture sweatsuit on right now yes and i'm very excited to go. Bright pink, juicy couture, ready for the premiere. 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. Well, congratulations. I was like, they're available on Thursday? I'm going to go on Thursday. Yeah. The reviews, I think some people say it is a little darker than anticipated. That was my prediction. So I might just be seeking out the ones.

Yeah, yeah. So we'll see. But, you know, the pre-purchases of Barbie tickets are like the highest, I think we talked about earlier in the week, the highest since Avatar 2. I mean, my theater sold out. Like the highest, I think we talked about earlier in the week, the highest. My theater sold out. Avatar 2.

I'm going to be getting there early because I chose to go to a theater that doesn't have assigned 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 each other, like worry about booking seats next to each other. And I only got four friends to go and my boyfriend um but because he felt very left out he was shocked that i actually bought the tickets without him but he didn't seem interested uh but yeah it's sold out so we gotta get there early and make sure we get good seats the raves for barbie seem particularly impressed with uh the ken character so i'm excited about that too gosling going full gosling um yeah but both of the lead performances are supposedly amazing margot robbie continuing to be you know just an incredible actor um yes all right so we're gonna take a quick break and then we're gonna come back and talk about a uh internet conspiracy theory about oppenheimer that is um probably not true but has like a nugget in it that kind of blew my mind so we'll be right back i'm jess casavetto executive producer of the hit netflix documentary

series dancing for the devil the the 7M TikTok cult. And I'm Clea Gray, former member of 7M Films and Shekinah Church. And we're the host of the new podcast, Forgive Me For I Have Followed. Together, we'll be diving even deeper into the unbelievable stories behind 7M Films and LA-based Shekinah Church, an alleged cult that has impacted members for over two decades. Jessica and I will delve into the hidden truths between high control groups and interview dancers, church members, and others whose lives and careers have been impacted, just like mine. Through powerful, in-depth interviews with former members and new, chilling firsthand accounts,

the series will illuminate untold and extremely necessary perspectives. Forgive Me For I Have Followed will be more than an exploration. It's a vital revelation aimed at ensuring these types of abuses never happen again. Listen to Forgive Me For I Have Followed on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Pradente. And I'm Jimei Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline, a new podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts.

When you're just starting out in your career, you have a lot of questions like, how do I speak up when I'm feeling overwhelmed? Or can I negotiate a higher salary if this is my first real job? Girl, yes. Each week, we answer your unfiltered work questions. Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice. And if we don't know the answer, we bring in experts who do, like resume specialist Morgan Saner. The only difference between the person who doesn't get the job and the person who gets the job is usually who applies.

Yeah, I think a lot about that quote. What is it, like you miss 100% of the shots you never take? Yeah, rejection is scary, but it's better than you rejecting yourself. Together, we'll share what it really takes to thrive in the early years of your career without sacrificing your sanity or sleep. Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Keri Champion, and this is Season 4 of Naked Sports where we live at the intersection

of sports and culture up first I explore the making of a rivalry Caitlin Clark versus Angel Reese I know I'll go down in history people are talking about women's basketball just because of one single game every great player needs a foil I ain't really near them boys I just come here to play basketball every single day and that's what I focus on. From college to the pros, Clark and Reese have changed the way we consume women's sports. Angel Reese is a joy to watch. She is unapologetically Black.

I love her. What exactly ignited this fire? Why has it been so good for the game? And can the fanfare surrounding these two supernovas be sustained? This game is only going to get better because the talent is getting better. This new season will cover all things sports and culture. Listen to Naked Sports on the Black Effect Podcast Network,

iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Black Effect Podcast Network is sponsored by Diet Coke. And we're back and so so there was this theory back in the day when the the film frozen came out um 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 um 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 Mr. Chow, Sriracha Chow on Twitter saying, learning that Christopher Nolan's fugitive hitman brother's codename 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 would like is like a hitman style murder. So there's Christopher Nolan, there's his brother Jonah Nolan orolan or jonathan nolan the west world guy who like co-wrote a couple of his biggest movies um memento with him they have an older brother named uh matthew nolan uh who's just you know he works as a property developer in chicago uh but in 2005 uh he was accused or he was accused of the 2005 murder

of an accountant in costa rica um 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 he allegedly tricked the accountant into coming in to 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 2009

after the FBI tracked him down um because he slipped up and attended his own bankruptcy hearing and the costa the costa rican government wanted him extradited uh 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 u.s but the arresting fbi agent claimed uh the extradition request was not up to the legal standards required and pointed out that nolan had some tell somehow secured a high-priced attorney despite supposedly being bankrupt yeah his his two brothers are award-winning writers yeah yeah a little lost here but i don't know it's just like he seemed so what 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 um when he was released from his chicago jail like guards discovered a 31 foot long rope made up of bed sheets and a harness razor and clip designed to unlock handcuffs in his cell um and they were like it was actually the best damn rope i've ever seen made of bed sheets i'm like it's just so i don. And also, so this is around the time that Christopher Nolan made Inception in which like the main character is 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 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 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, I mean, quite the life.

Yeah. So wouldn't shock me, but what a, just a, what a wild story. It does. 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 release my

movies because they're the best movies and now it's like well well, there's this darkness, this pathos under the surface. So I don't, 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 um and it's all coming together i don't know it's just it's interesting i would believe the christopher nolan conspiracy theories over the frozen via frozen cryogenically disney theory yeah yeah yeah for sure absolutely 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 one and like all those other things over the cryogenically frozen because i just don't think there's a lot of stake in that game for them to worry about if walt disney's cryogenically frozen or not. Yeah. Which maybe he is, but... There is something to... The way decisions ultimately... The way we find out decisions are made over the course of American history.

A lot of times it does end up being some thin-skinned richinned rich person being like you gotta find a way to get this rumor 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 offices like i but i 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 fascinated, 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 is 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. Yeah. I just didn't. It's about the invention of the atomic bomb. Oh, the guy who, there you go. I was like, there's an atomic bomb oh okay there you go i was like

there's an atomic bomb it's world war ii 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 um and finally just kind of following up on some of the stuff we were talking about earlier this week google news News is testing a product that uses artificial intelligence technology to produce news stories, pitching it to news organizations, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal's owner, News Corp. This is so scary to me. But it's already happening. I know.

It's just like a new product. Will they go on strike, the writers over there are they part of the wga they're not right yeah they're not like their own writers yeah 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 post uh and the wall street journal uh 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 has it burst oh yeah the 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 um yeah the benefits i guess

because i know a lot of people that work at google and i feel like they're like oh yeah it's whatever i work at google yeah 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 dr 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 ai to news companies that got writers out of jobs yeah i guess 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 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 the Times of India is already doing. Some of those websites that have the, it's no big secret why nobody wants to work with VanBot anymore type things,

you know? So we'll see, but it's not looking good for the ability to do research on the internet. I would say. Yeah. All right. Those are some of the things that are trending on this Thursday, July 20th.

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-C-C-S 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 O'Brien. 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. Hey, I'm Gianna Pradenti. And I'm Jermaine Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. There's a lot to figure out when you're just starting your career.

That's where we come in. Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice. And if we don't know the answer, we bring in people who do, like negotiation expert Maury Tahiripour. If you start thinking about negotiations as just a conversation, then I think it sort of eases us a little bit. Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Keri Champion, and this is season 4 of Naked Sports. Up first, I explore the making of a rivalry. Kaitlyn Clark versus Angel Reese.

Every great player needs a foil. I know I'll go down in history. People are talking about women's basketball just because of one single game. Clark and Reese have changed the way we consume women's sports. Listen to the making of a rivalry. Kaitlyn Clark versus Angel Reese on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Capital One, founding partner of iHeart Women's Sports. I'm Keri Champion, and this is season four of Naked Sports.

Up first, I explore the making of a rivalry, Caitlin Clark versus Angel Reese. People are talking about women's basketball just because of one single game. Clark and Reese have changed the way we about women's basketball just because of one single game. Clark and Reese have changed the way we consume women's basketball. And on this new season, we'll cover all things sports and culture. Listen to Naked Sports on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio

apps, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Black Effect Podcast Network is sponsored by Diet Coke.