Osita Nwanevu: The cultural gap between people engaged with social video and people who aren't is unbelievable. I've never seen this man in my life. Hundreds of millions of views. There are gazillions of him.

The cultural gap between people engaged with social video and people who aren't is unbelievable. I've never seen this man in my life. Hundreds of millions of views. There are gazillions of him.

im sorry im only just learning what dr disrespect looks like and,,,

"Extremely online" text posters on Twitter or here are, in fact, clustered in an extremely isolated and out of touch corner of the web. Maybe that makes them even more online than normal folks, in a sense. Whatever the case, you'll see TikToks pop up on Twitter *ages* after they first went viral.

I too had to do a deep dive on this yesterday.

i did my first ever video on TikTok, just a clip of a Donald Sutherland interview, and it got 3.5 million views. the scale on video stuff is off the charts next to Twitter.

That's about as many people as the number of Americans who read the NYT online each day.

they should hire me, i could turn that place around

This is also a case of 'first one's free kid', since new/young accounts are deliberately boosted while older accounts go down in the algorithm's ranking

IMO a significant part of this if you’re a millenial is that the people who have historically driven pop culture (teens) are all objectively of a different generation.

If history’s any guide, if you’re approaching 40 you’re *supposed* to have no idea who a bunch of pop culture figures are and it’s going to be an alienating experience.

there's a genuinely interesting sort of lateral function and passing around of information and pop culture; twitter for the longest time (and often still is) the First place to get the news, especially in crisis events. used to be top for pop culture too, but that shifted...

...and now tiktok has taken the lead there, with twitch and youtube adjacent to it (the latter with the longest tail but no longer the big Immediate Hit) factor. and meanwhile, frequent subjects of discourse are often still *years* behind tumblr, filtering from there to twitter to tiktok.

lotta Format Is Function here. tumblr is one of the best for longform written material, so it was ideal in the new waves of discourse mines post the big days of PHPbb forums. twitter is perfect for Headlines From Breaking News. and tiktok is ideal as pop culture thanks to video + music licenses.

(music license aspect can't be underrated; giving tons of people outlets to actually use a shitload of songs for making their own media without immediately getting DMCAed like they would everywhere else is fucking *huge*)

addendum: that twitter is still basically The place for news feels like it's a big part of how people break their brains on thinking the posting there is world altering shit and the most important social network. whatsapp matters much more but gets discussed basically never

One of my favorite things to do is listen to music I like and noodle along with the piano to it, and I'd love to stream that.. but as I can tell it still simply Can't Be Done without absolute mountains of labor and money.

As a person also outside of all of this, every now and then I like to look at the trending tab on YouTube to just see a bunch of names pop up that I have no idea what it is

My sister-in-law has a joke where if someone asks her if she’s seen this TikTok video she says, “no, I’m going to watch it 3 weeks later on Facebook, LIKE AN ADULT”

I mean if you don’t play shooters and know watch Twitch is why would you ever know of him?

every time some youtubers name gets brought to my attention i learn they have the reach of like a state broadcaster in a medium sized country

the New York Times subscribers all together would be like only a top-50 subreddit

Honestly given how determined the NYT is to be stupid and wrong about most things these days, that's probably for the better.

Half the time I see an amusing little sketch on TikTok by some random person I've never heard of and I go to the comments to encourage them, it's all full of "I loved the movie!!! When is your next album coming out?!?"

i have never heard this man's name and fear that searching for more information will only make him more powerful

it is an unpleasant but unsurprising set of headlines

one thing that blows my mind is popular youtubers are basically like if nobody who didn’t watch Oprah even knew who Oprah was

The circumference of Earth’s orbit is something like 585 million miles and this is my 44th trip around. That’s 25 billion miles traveled, not counting additional distance gained from the sun’s orbit around the Milky Way. I am absolutely not learning about any new guys at this point

It's fun how you can be hyper online and still miss so many people because you're not in a specific space. I knew him because of video games, not that I ever watched him - very not my vibe, aka asshole - but if something happened to a major beauty or fashion influencer i wouldn't have a clue.

Sometimes I imagine explaining modern pop culture to someone from the 1970's. "So, nobody goes to movie theaters anymore and on the computer there's people who host public access UHF shows who are more famous than the Beatles."

Cliff Notes: -He's is/was a popular Twitch personality -His character is over the top WWE style trash talk/bro-comedy combined with high-level skill at games -2020, he was banned from Twitch w/o much explanation, went to YouTube -2023, former Twitch staffers leaked he sent sex msg's to a minor

That’s not a Ben Stiller bit?

It's not not a Ben Stiller bit.

Thank you for that because I thought it was JUST that I was old. So I'm feeling slightly less ancient this morning.

I only found out MrBeast existed after a list of the most-subscribed Twitter accounts was posted and he was number 1 *by far*, and I still don’t know what kind of thing he does or how he got popular.

I was unfortunately introduced to him after he got caught filming kids in the bathroom at E3 a couple of years ago.

He is viscerally repulsive to me. I've seen him many times over the late five or so years, as @comicbook.bsky.social has taken to reporting on professional gamers. Every single time I've wanted to immediately log off and go do something better.

Related, ESPN and FS1 profits are collapsing in part b/c of these guys. For the commentary/analysis shows, there are a bazillion reasonably well-produced YouTube & TikToks that break down NFL, NBA, etc. My teen gets his info from dudes I've never heard of. No need for Skip Bayless or NFL Live.

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