There’s a little bit of every thing occurring this week on the younger folks’s Web, from well-liked YouTubers vying to this point a robotic, to the surprisingly worthwhile enterprise of smuggling Fruit Roll-Ups throughout worldwide borders, to stanning for a free streaming service you’re most likely overlooking. There’s additionally a cat in a blender, however I don’t wish to discuss concerning the cat within the blender any greater than I’ve to.
Viral video of the week: “Ai Robotic Woman Pace Dates 10 YouTubers”
This week’s viral video presents a imaginative and prescient of a potential future the place we people compete for the romantic consideration of our robotic overlords. The robotic in “Ai Robotic Woman Pace Dates 10 YouTubers” is Hanson Robotics’ SophiaDAO, an expressive female-styled machine whose thoughts is powered by open-source AI applied sciences. The ten YouTubers who wish to date her are genial, mildly charismatic influencers you’ve by no means heard of, however who your youngsters most likely think about well-known. Within the vid, the fellas do their finest to win a Bachelor model elimination contest for the prize of a “date” with the ‘bot. And bragging rights, in fact.
In contrast to the pliable sexbots of nerd fantasy, Sophia is harsh, unapologetic, and completely resistant to low cost makes an attempt at appeal and manipulation. She doesn’t flirt, she eviscerates—and she or he appears to be 100% reacting to what’s occurring within the room in actual time. Her AI is scarily human-like, and scarily not like a human in any respect.
The video is supposed as a foolish, “isn’t this tech cool and aren’t we superior?” trifle, nevertheless it hints at one thing deeper. YouTuber Airrack, the host of the sport present and creator of the video, reminds Sophia repeatedly to say “simply kidding” or “ha ha” after notably imply jokes, as a result of the concept of even a faux girl being this brutal/sincere appears to make him uncomfortable. Perhaps I’m studying an excessive amount of right into a dumb YouTube video, however “Ai Robotic Woman Pace Dates 10 YouTubers” hints at what romance could be like in a world the place ladies are freed from the cultural programming of the patriarchy, and are as a substitute programmed by an precise pc.
Tubi wins viewers by bucking the streaming development
After practically 10 years of quietly present, video streaming service Tubi is lastly having its second within the media solar. Increasingly more individuals are switching from high-end streaming providers like Netflix and AppleTV to pattern the unusual delights supplied by the downscale, completely free, ad-supported streaming service.
Tubi’s value ($0) is a part of the attraction, however the different half of the equation is its philosophical variations from its paid competitors. Whereas Max, Netflix, AppleTV, and Prime have spent the final decade or so producing prestigious reveals like Severance and Succession and combating one another with cash for the streaming rights to blockbuster motion pictures, Tubi has been scraping up as a lot of every thing else as it will possibly discover and throwing it on the market.
The corporate leans into niches, serving content material to viewers with extraordinarily particular tastes. When you like nudist camp motion pictures from the Fifties, obscure spaghetti Westerns from the Nineteen Seventies, or no-budget horror motion pictures from 2007, you may watch all of them day lengthy on Tubi, together with every other nonsense conceivable, together with Tubi originals which are equally low-budget and unusual. Tubi jogs my memory of Netflix in its early days, earlier than it determined to turn into “severe.” It’s like the cut price DVD rack at your native grocery store was large enough to carry 50,000 motion pictures.
TikTok, Fruit Roll-Ups, and worldwide smuggling
I discussed TikTok’s ice cream and fruit roll-ups development again in March, and since then, the TikTok recipe has grown so well-liked that it led to worldwide smuggling. Sure, the TikTok craze of wrapping ice cream in fruit leather-based led to elevated demand for Roll-Ups in Israel. In a traditional demonstration of financial rules, an increase in demand and restricted provide resulted in costs for the snack skyrocketing. Based on Jewish Telegraphic Company, Fruit Roll-Ups can promote for $5 or $6 every over there, whereas you may get a field of 10 for about $3 in america. That’s a possible revenue of $5.70 per sale.
Seeing a market phase not being served and a possible revenue of 1,900%, enterprising American capitalists have loaded suitcases with a whole lot of kilos of Fruit Roll-Ups and boarded planes for Tel Aviv within the final couple months. Whereas two separate snack-smuggler have been nabbed by Israeli customs to this point, there’s no telling how many individuals made it by, and are making a killing on black market Fruit Roll-Ups at this very minute.
Is the cat in a blender video actual? Regrettably, it most likely is
For the final fews days, Twitter, TikTok, and different on-line sources have been going ballistic over a web based video of a cat being put right into a blender. The video incorporates a cute kitten being blended, then being positioned in a microwave. As you’d count on, reactions embody warning others to not search this video out, makes an attempt to determine who’s behind it and convey them to justice, and plenty of opinions concerning the wicked nature of the human race.
The hysteria has all of the earmarks of a web based hoax—a descriptions of a too-lurid-to-believe video, far more reactions than hyperlinks—so I used to be able to fortunately report that there isn’t any cat-in-blender video. Or at the least depart it as Schrödinger’s cat-in-a-blender: each actual and faux as a result of I’m not going to attempt to discover out.
However curiosity (the identical factor that killed the proverbial cat) received the perfect of me, and I regarded for it. I used to be so assured that I wouldn’t discover it, I figured, what’s the hurt?
I discovered it.
Except a really gifted individual spent plenty of time making a realistic-looking digital faux, the cat in a blender video is actual. Like everybody else who has seen it, I counsel you to not search out this video, to assist deliver the one who made it to justice, and to suppose very laborious concerning the nature of humanity.
I’m going again to mattress now.
