Is Kylie Jenner going broke?
And are you getting your industrial grade glycine from Donghua Jinlong?
Keep scrolling for how JoJo Siwa really feels about her rebrand.
Why is TikTok obsessed with industrial grade glycine from Donghua Jinlong?
This week, a TikTok trend where people are parodying Donghua Jinlong — a Chinese-based company that manufactures glycine— has emerged. If you didn't understand that sentence, Lauren Meisner, host of the 'mini scroll podcast,' breaks down this wild meme in a new episode.
@donghuajinlong began posting advertisements for their company on December 3, 2023. They continued to share videos on their TikTok account through 2024, with many clips receiving over 100,000 views.
The videos tend to feature an AI voice describing the factory, its location, and the quality of the glycine.
For context, glycine is an amino acid the human body generates and is also found in certain foods. Synthetic forms are often included in food items and supplements.
These strange ads also reference the company's existence since 1979, praising its more than 40 years in the business.
The meme started after TikTok user @gangstasportivik posted two videos on March 31 parodying Donghua Jinlong's glycine advertisement videos. From there, it snowballed.
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Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browserWhile these ads are not something that typically goes viral on an app like TikTok, Gen Z is obsessed. According to Meisner, this is exactly why. Donghua Jinlong's glycine videos were so absurd that they broke through the noise.
The advertisements "Blended these two things. One, it matches the vibe of the platform right now and the new style of AI content on the platform. And two, it is so absurd that it was like this perfect blend, and people just thought this was the funniest joke ever," Meisner explains.
Watch the full episode via TikTok, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube.
Is Kylie Cosmetics going bankrupt?
We know that TikTok users can appreciate a viral meme, but they also love a conspiracy theory. This week, users are convinced that Kylie Jenner is facing financial troubles as she continues to launch new brands.
Speculation about Kylie’s financial situation has been circulating ever since she ended her "King Kylie" era. However, discussions on TikTok regarding her financial troubles gained traction after Nicky Reardon, host of the ‘Share Your Screen’ podcast, shared his theory that Kylie Cosmetics is on the brink of bankruptcy.
In a video garnering over 7 million views, Nicky highlights Kylie's recent series of brand launches. In the past few months alone, Kylie has unveiled her clothing line Khy, Sprinter, a ready-to-drink vodka soda, and a fragrance named Cosmic.
“It’s interesting because the Kardashian strategy has always been like, you do a hundred things until one of them works and then you do that thing and you ride it,” Nicky begins. “When I see one of them planting all these seeds again, to me, its like because the wave they were riding before is about to come crashing down.”
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On top of this, Kylie Cosmetics sales have been plummeting— with its revenue consistently decreasing for the past seven years.
According to Statista, “kyliecosmetics.com, saw its e-commerce net sales decline from 68.7 million U.S. dollars in 2017 to 36.2 million U.S. dollars in 2022.”
Following Nicky's TikTok, users began reposting his video and expressing their support for his theory.
Many of these users shared that they have found Kylie Cosmetics being sold at discount stores, while others noted that they weren’t even aware she had launched new brands, indicating her declining influence.
Ultimately, her decline reaffirms the claim that Gen Z is moving away from traditional celebrity culture. While Kylie has always straddled the line between influencer and celebrity, she has struggled to capture younger Gen Z audiences for years now.
Watch Nicky’s full video via TikTok.
Did Social Media Kill the Pop Song?
Kylie Jenner isn't the only celebrity feeling the effects of Gen Z's shift from traditional fame to internet culture. In a recent WIRED article, Jason Praham delves into how social media has reshaped the landscape of pop music.
Gone are the days when young people relied solely on radio charts or Grammy awards to gauge what was popular. Nowadays, it's all about what's going viral. Praham highlights how this change has impacted how artists create music, as well as how they promote it. It has also changed what it takes for a song to become a hit.
Citing a study from Scientific Reports, Praham discusses the decline in lyrical complexity across various genres like rap, rock, country, R&B, and pop. Instead of unique lyrics, there is an increase in repetitive lyricism and a trend of "angrier" songs.
“Changing song lyrics reflect the spirit of the era they are born into. Society today is more egocentric,” Praham continues. “Much of the way we live is mediated through digital portals that require a mode of self-centering as part of their hook. Modern songs may be characterized by their anger, monotony, and vanity, but those attributes are not an indictment of the time.”
As social media, specifically TikTok (before the UMG ban), has become the primary platform for music promotion, artists have had to adapt their storytelling to suit these new formats, often aiming for viral success over everything.
While going viral has democratised fame and amplified marginalised voices, artists are "beholden to the algorithm" as users' preferences constantly evolve and shift.
“Artists, then, find themselves making music in line with what's trending,“ Praham notes. “In years past, everything from war to heartbreak influenced the music of the moment. That's still true, but now TikTok, X, and other platforms drive the conversation as much as anything else.”
Read the full piece via WIRED.
JoJo Siwa: The woman behind the bow
One artist capitalising off virality is JoJo Siwa. After her recent attempt to rebrand herself as a more "adult", JoJo is embracing this new era, sitting down for a candid interview with Alex Cooper on the Call Her Daddy podcast.
Released on April 10, their conversation covered a wide range of topics — including JoJo’s past relationships, her iconic bows, and her experiences growing up as a child star on Dance Moms.
Many listeners were eager to hear JoJo's take on her rebrand, especially as “cringe” clips of her interviews continue to circulate online.
Despite facing a barrage of criticism for her new image, JoJo tells Alex that the response is "exactly" what she had hoped for.
“It is doing exactly what I wanted it to, I wanted people's heads to turn I wanted people to go ‘what?’,” JoJo explains, “I wanted people to go what is she saying… honestly, what I didn't expect is for people to know every lyric that's been released.”
She explained that Miley Cyrus had always been a big inspiration for her, particularly during Miley’s transition away from child stardom in her Bangerz era. JoJo credits this as a significant influence for her own rebranding and the release of ‘Karma.’
“Two years ago is when I started writing new music. I got out of my Nickelodeon music contract…I got pitched this song Karma and it's the first word…was a bad girl and I was like, ‘oh it's a good song,’” JoJo reflects.
While acknowledging that dealing with hate can be difficult, she also shared that coming out as a member of the LGBTQIA+ community was one of the most challenging experiences she's faced in terms of backlash throughout her career.
After sharing the news with her followers, JoJo said that the majority of comments were, “awful. horrific [saying] I am never letting my kids watch you again, I’m throwing away all of our bows today.”
Listen to the full interview via Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
In a new piece for VICE, Lowri Llewelyn delves into her own experience navigating through the manosphere—an umbrella term for various men’s rights movements operating in the online space.
As a reflective piece, she explores how these groups perceive women, comparing their expectations of women against her own fears of aging.
Llewelyn specifically discusses incels— a group of men who are “involuntarily celibate” and harbour resentment and hate toward women.
In the age of TikTok's fixation on botox and elaborate anti-aging regimens, our digital landscape is consumed with eternal youth. As expected, aging is something incels resent women for, claiming as they get older, their "sexual market value" decreases.
“I continued using the forums and noticed the “wall” age drop from 30 to 25. Then it dropped to 22. A “female” of 22, they gloated, didn’t have the “emotional baggage” of one with a higher “body count”,” Llewelyn recalls.
The incel forums paint a stark picture of how some men view women solely through a sexual lens, Llewelyn notes. It serves as a sobering reminder of the hypermasculinity that lingers in the online space.
Many of these men point fingers at women, holding them responsible for what they perceive as failures in romance and personal achievement.
“That’s when it hit me: It was never about women’s value, it was about scaring us into settling. It enraged them that we'd rather take our chances than endure subpar partners,” Llewelyn continues.
Having immersed herself in the manosphere, Llewelyn concludes that loneliness likely drives many men to these forums. However, as incels increasingly turn to extremism and perpetrate violence against women, it serves as a stark reminder of the significant influence these online echo chambers wield.
Read the full story via VICE.