Keep scrolling for the reckoning of Sam Levinson.
Model Ali Tate goes viral for posting videos with terminally ill grandmother
Ali Tate Culter, a model and Instagram influencer, is facing backlash for posting content with her grandmother ahead of her death by euthanasia.
Earlier this week, Ali posted a get-ready-with-me style transition Reel with her grandmother. “My grandmother has chosen Euthanasia after her terminal diagnosis so this is the last time I can take her out to dinner,” she wrote over the video.
Ali followed this up by doing a Q&A video alongside her grandmother about euthanasia and her decision.
The videos were posted to Twitter by writer Evie Solheim who criticised Ali for “making cutesy videos” about her grandmother’s choice. The tweet reached 20 million views in a matter of days.
This has led to intense debate online about how Western culture has stigmatised death, as well as conversations about MAiD policies.
Many have welcomed Ali’s transparency and believe her videos will help people struggling with grief, loss, and decisions of this nature.
Others feel like she’s exploiting her grandmother’s difficult decision for views.
Read social media’s full reaction via Twitter.
The Idol faces brutal reviews as social media questions Sam Levinson’s portrayal of women
HBO’s new series The Idol debuted at the Cannes Film Festival this week to a standing ovation. But critics aren’t convinced that the series and its showrunner Sam Levinson deserve the praise.
The Idol was shrouded in controversy long before its premiere this week. The series has faced allegations of a toxic working environment and problematic sex scenes, with Rolling Stone likening it to “torture porn” in an exposé published in March.
While the show, starring Lily-Rose Depp and The Weeknd, received a five-minute standing ovation after its world premiere Monday night, the series currently sits at a critic rating of 27% on Rotten Tomatoes.
Levinson’s recent press statements about the film are giving social media the collective ick and have brought about criticism of his “art.”
As detailed in a piece for Dazed, journalist Haaniyah Angus explores how Levinson portrays female characters in his work, saying he’s less of an auteur and more of a “spoilt nepo baby” who got lucky off his dad’s last name and a co-sign from Drake.
“Levinson’s inability to depict stories of women’s trauma without sexualising it or dumbing it down is nothing new,” writes Angus. “Several main characters [in Euphoria] who are sexually liberated, promiscuous or otherwise, are heavily ‘punished’ for being so, especially in season two which sees beloved characters have their arcs erased, caricatured, or heavily dumbed down. […] All of these women’s trauma becomes heightened and ridiculous; something to be laughed at.”
This unnecessary sexualisation of female characters tracks with The Idol reviews coming out of Cannes. Ramin Setoodeh, Editor-in-Chief at Variety, noted the show’s premiere has elicited “lots of strong” (mostly negative) reactions—with many questioning why Lily-Rose Depp was always naked.
Read more about Sam Levinson’s controversial work via Dazed.
Why TikTok’s ‘blue couch girl’ went viral
TikTok user Amanda Joy is going viral after she found a couch allegedly worth $8000 on the streets of New York City. The original video, which amassed over 50 million views in three days (now over 60 million), has sparked intense controversy as users debate its authenticity (and cleanliness).
In her viral video, Amanda comes across the sofa, gives it a deep clean and brings it up to her apartment.
Amanda believes the sofa is the “Bubble” couch from Roche Bobois – a French luxury home brand specialising in contemporary interior design.
TikTok users flooded her comment section, claiming she did not thoroughly clean the sofa. Meanwhile, others have shared their own stories of finding their dream couch on the side of the road – only to be met with disaster.
To make matters worse, it appears that Amanda’s new sofa may be from somewhere other than Roche Bobois.
Twitter users have jumped in on the “Blue Couch” discourse, pointing out that the material in the video differs from the sofa on the company’s website.
Sharing close-up screenshots of the fabric to compare the couches, Twitter user @ds00za writes, “It’s a knock-off. the fabric isn’t correct. It should be that honeycomb/meshy synthetic that they use.” With this post accumulating over 13 million views and 75 thousand likes, Twitter users seem to agree that the sofa is a fake.
Users, like @shaTIRED, speculate that the sofa came from AliExpress, as the company sells a couch that resembles Amanda’s for $600.
As expected with any viral moment, Twitter users have wasted no time jumping on the bandwagon and poking fun at the “Blue Couch” phenomenon. Numerous users have taken to the platform, pretending to be the people who discarded the sofa. These posts have quickly gained traction, accumulating millions of views and tens of thousands of likes.
Amanda has since shown proof of the Roche Bobois tag on her couch.
Read the full story via Centennial World.
The first social media babies are growing up—and they’re horrified
A new piece by Kate Lindsay for The Atlantic explores how children of the “Facebook era” are facing the consequences of their parents’ social media use as they prepare to enter the workforce.
Lindsay spoke to 24-year-old Caymi Barrett who grew up with a mom that posted her personal moments publicly on Facebook.
This included bath photos, her MRSA diagnosis, the fact that she was adopted, and the time a drunk driver hit the car she was riding in.
The distress caused by her mother’s social media posting motivated her to become an advocate for children’s privacy online.
“Barrett says she’s still feeling the effects of her mother’s decade of oversharing. When Barrett was 12, she says she was once followed home by a man who she believes recognized her from the internet. She was later bullied by classmates who latched on to all the intimate details of her life that her mother had posted online, and she ultimately dropped out of high school. She and her mom have no relationship now, in large part because of the wedge her mother’s social-media habits put between them,” writes Lindsay.
Stephen Balkam, the CEO of the nonprofit Family Online Safety Institute, calls this experience a “digital coming-of-age.”
Lindsay notes that we’ve normalised sharing information about children that we would never share about adults. This is made worse by the fact that there are “no real rules against it.”
For parents, the motivation to share their children on social media comes from validation and money.
“Views, likes, and comments offer a form of positive reinforcement to parents, whose work is largely invisible and often thankless,” writes Lindsay. “The likes and comments are one thing. Money is another. Families who document their lives intimately on YouTube or TikTok can amass large audiences, sponsorships, and ad revenue. Currently, no state or federal laws entitle the children of these family vloggers to any of the money earned.”
Despite the damage done by Facebook era parents, it seems newer Millennial and Gen Z parents are more conscious of the possible consequences of posting their children online.
Read the full story via The Atlantic.
The cozzie livs & TikTok's fast fashion crisis
This week's infinite scroll podcast dives into a controversy sweeping fashion TikTok that has the industry up in arms over consumers’ entitlement over being able to purchase anything they want at an affordable price. We explore TikTok's fast fashion culture, consumer entitlement, and how little we really understand about art.