BIGGIE'S PLACE

As a child of the 80s, I’m now entering year four of my fifth decade of life (which is really weird to say). The world makes a lot more sense to me now than it did even ten years ago, let alone compared to when I was in my 20s. It turns out you actually do have to gain life experience before you figure some things out. Who knew? At the same time, a lot of what I see makes less and less sense as our culture changes and I come to revile what young people are into now. Lately, I’ve found myself spending more time than I probably ought to wondering what that means for the future.

So, COME! Enter my mind as I use this post to cover a wide range of topics that have been vexing me over the past couple of years. You’ve heard of photo dumps on social media. This is a thought dump.

1. Is it even possible for a rock band to become popular anymore? Seriously, what was the last breakout rock band? Better question: what was the last band that became big enough to fill a stadium? I feel like it was Coldplay, who reached that level in the mid-2000s. I can’t think of a single rock band that’s even come close since. What happened to rock music in general?

And yes, many of these will be multi-question questions.

2. What is the appeal of Jimmy Donaldson aka MrBeast? I realize most of his audience are kids who all want to be him, but he certainly enjoys being respected and envied by his adult peers. My exposure to him has mostly been having random videos recommended to me featuring interviews with him on various podcasts or videos claiming that I, too, can be successful like MrBeast on YouTube if I follow these tips. In case you have no idea who MrBeast is, he’s the most popular YouTube channel in the world, with 235 million subscribers as I type this. To be clear, I am not subscribed to any of his dozen or so channels, and the only video of his I’ve seen from start to finish was his Squid Game copycat video. In fairness, it was well done, and he certainly does put a lot of the money he makes back into his videos. I do wonder if the creator of Squid Game, South Korean filmmaker Hwang Dong-hyuk, is owed some of the millions Mr. Donaldson made off that, his most popular video.

But seriously, most of his other videos are simply lower-budget versions of stunt game show concepts that have been done dozens of times on various reality TV competition shows over the years. What would this dude be if he didn’t put some huge financial prize in the title of all his videos? “I’ll give $700,000 to any of these 700 YouTubers if they can keep their lips on my ass for 700 minutes!” Did I get that about right? And why is that financial prize so appealing to watch if you’re not one of the people competing for it? That stuff doesn’t trigger interest in my brain, so naturally, I wonder why it seems to in just about everyone else’s. He doesn’t seem to be especially funny or witty. He’s not that interesting to listen to unless you love hearing about social media statistics and engagement strategy. His biggest talents appear to be throwing money around and making goofy gape-mouthed faces in his thumbnails. But he’s a nice guy and does a lot of philanthropy, so I can’t say I dislike him. I’m just sick of hearing about him.

I did watch a video recently on the dozens of “content creators” who copy MrBeast’s format. There are so many greedy, opportunistic people on that platform attempting to leech off his success that it would be funnier if it weren’t sad. Now you’ve got people in all different genres making seizure-inducing, fast-paced videos with cartoon font captions. In general, I find YouTube to be a fascinating place because it presents to you almost every method modern “creators” use to try and squeeze money out of people.

3. Why do most Gen Z’ers, when they write online, frequently use only lower-case letters? This is a strange thing to popularize, and perhaps even stranger that it bothers me, yet here we are. What did capital letters ever do to you? What did the English language do to any of you motherfuckers under the age of 30? I genuinely wonder what will be left of the English language come 2075, because the internet is doing its damndest to slaughter the concept of writing and speaking like an adult. Thankfully, I probably won’t be around to find out firsthand.

4. Just how fucked are we in this country, really? Our healthcare system sucks ass (even if you have insurance), our education system licks balls from kindergarten to college, our financial system is meant to favor the few winners over the millions of people making an attempt to simply get by comfortably, and our only options for president appear to be two people at or near 80, one of whom will soon be a convicted felon. And through it all, most Americans have been convinced to accept that this is fine. Is there any hope of seeing a day where our representatives in government care more about the interests of the people who voted for them over the people who paid for their campaigns? Is there any hope of Congressional term limits becoming a thing in my lifetime? Removing the incentive of re-election would allow government officials to actually, I dunno, govern. It would simultaneously remove from the equation the desire for almost anyone to become a career politician – that most heinous of descriptives.

5. Is there anywhere I can go to avoid being bombarded with advertising for sports betting while reading about or watching my sports? I remember a time when being a gambling addict was something we didn’t encourage. How does DraftKings make back the 75 billion dollars they spend in advertising every year?

6. Are YouTube and Instagram the greatest acquisitions in the history of American business? Little old YouTube sold to Google for $1.65 billion in 2006. Today, YouTube has basically replaced the TV networks for a lot of people and is estimated to be worth upwards of $160 billion. On top of that, it has a near monopoly on internet video sharing (not counting short-form videos, of course). A hundred times more valuable just 18 years later. Facebook bought Instagram in 2012 for just $1 billion. Today, it’s estimated to be worth north of $100 billion and is far more relevant culturally than its parent company. Another hundred-x multiplier. I find that stuff fascinating. I wish 16-year-old me knew how interested 43-year-old me would be in certain areas of economics. Maybe then I would’ve tried harder in college.

7. Why can’t Rockstar Games finish Grand Theft Auto VI faster? Here’s an even more important question; has Rockstar stayed immune to the pressures of our modern social climate whilst making this game? Will GTA VI have the vulgarity, depravity, and unflinching humor we’ve come to expect? God, I hope so. No pressure though. I only expect this to be the greatest video game ever made. When you set the bar this high (as they’ve done with GTA V and Red Dead II), I’m gonna keep it there for your next release. We did finally get a trailer, which I also believe was the first time they publicly admitted GTA VI was the game they were working on. I tell ya, the CIA and NSA could take some lessons in secrecy from those guys. And 2025?! Fuck, man. Since this probably isn’t coming out on January 1, 2025, we still have a long way to go.

8. Really? 10 years, $700 million for Shohei Otani starting in his age 30 season? Baseball will never learn, will they? Even by MLB standards, this contract is ridiculous. Though the structure of it is odd in that he has deferred $680 million of that 700 until after the contract ends, meaning they’ll be paying him tens of millions every year for a decade after he’s finished playing for them. Whatever. It ain’t my money. I no longer care enough to look this up myself, but when has a single one of these gargantuan contracts that start when a player is 29-31 ever worked out for the team?

9. Have scientists discovered the source of the grip Taylor Swift has on the Caucasian female mind? This isn’t hating on Swift. She seems to be an incredibly decent person despite her monumental success. But holy shit. The numbers for this Eras tour are beyond compare. Most big artists hit a 60,000+ seat stadium in a major city and then move on to the next one. This woman hit a major city like LA, parked there for a week, and sold out that gigantic spaceship stadium six fucking times before her Death Star of a tour moved on to its next conquest. Did every single white female in America age 35 and under attend at least one of these shows last year? I wish she’d do an experiment to see exactly how long she could plant herself in one city and find out how many consecutive days would elapse before a show didn’t sell out. Could she have stayed in New York or LA for a month? Longer?

Here’s just one piece on the impact of Swift’s tour this past summer: The Staggering Economic Impact of Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour.