Gay Journalist Brutally Beaten during Pride Month, Millennials May Be Permanently Poor, Netflix Cancels Their #1 Spring Show For This? Twitter to Charge (Some) Users Monthly (The Five for 06/04/21)
Hey, Happy Friday.
Which means it’s time for the Culture & Commentary edition of The Five.
Come back Tuesday for reporting on Hard news.
Let’s dive in…
[one]
Journalist Andy Ngo, who became a household name by covering Portland’s Antifa riots on the ground, was allegedly beaten again by the far left organization again this week.
Ngo, who has reported on the violent, Communist movement since Antifa first rose in popularity more than three years ago in the Pacific Northwest, has clearly put himself on the line for what he does. He’s also profited from the risks he’s taken, with his book on Antifa topping the bestseller list.
Tim Pool,pioneer in on-the-ground digital journalism, sharply criticized Ngo’s tactics.
Pool has reported in the middle of political unrest everywhere from Venezuala to Egypt, so his words do carry some weight.
On the other side of the coin, conservative social media personality Kaitlin Bennett simply replied with a quote that inferred Pool blaming Ngo for being beaten was like society blaming women for being raped.
After living with this story for 24 hours, I’m still torn.
On one hand, Ngo has a tremendous track record of courage in the face of danger to get the story.
On the other, he can no longer effectivity get the story of antifa knows who he is.
If Ngo is wise, he will take a step back and go cut for some other beat, and let a brave unknown step into the role of Antifa unmasking journalist.
From a constitutional standpoint, I will always be on the side of free speech. But from a practicality standpoint, there's only so much that you can bait organized crime without losing your own life in the process. The police can find a murderer but they're much less able to stop a murder from happening.
And it feels like that's where this is going if Andy doesn't take a different course.
[two]
As the oldest Millennials are turning 40 this year, the media are turning their attention to taking stock of the controversial generation.
Turns out Millennials are…poor, and likely to never recover financially. And although I’ve been quick to blame my own generation, the numbers here are staggering (and depressing).
Bloomberg reports:
Some economists predicted millennials would avoid buying homes after the 2008 housing market crash. They haven’t, but their homeownership rates are lower than previous generations at the same point in their lives: 61% for older millennials, 68% for middle-age Gen Xers and 66% for middle-age Boomers.
“The basic way that middle American households build wealth is through their homes,” said Richard Fry, a senior researcher at Pew Research Center. “Millennials have been less likely to be homeowners. Fewer of them have begun the process of building home equity.”
One culprit could be housing prices, which have increased — especially compared with earnings. Millennials are paying a median of $328,000 on homes. Baby boomers only had to spend $216,000 — adjusted for inflation — in 1989. Wages, on the other hand, have only risen 20%.
In 2020, 18% of millennial renters said they planned to rent forever, up for the third consecutive year, according to a report from Apartment List. Among millennials who do plan to buy a home, 63% have no money saved for a down payment, the report said.
Some disturbing trends from the report:
[three]
Netflix canceled it’s biggest show of the spring, despite blockbuster ratings.
Jupiter’s Legacy, which told the tale of aging superheroes struggling to hand down the defense of the world to their not-too-up-for-the-task twentysomething children, survived just a single season despite being a ratings juggernaut according to Neilson and being beloved by fans.
The motivation for cancellation was two fold: A). the show cost $200 million, and despite the outpouring of fan love on social media, season 1 scored an abysmal 38% on Rotten Tomatoes. and B). Since Netflix is subscription based, and betting that people who loved JL probably won’t cancel their subscriptions, because they’re sticking around for Stranger Things, The Witcher and The Umbrella Academy, all of which appeal to a similar audience.
It’s a strange world where a huge, hit show that makes the fans clamor for more isn’t enough to keep an intellectual property from cancellation.
[four]
Remember those copy/paste statuses on Facebook of people who were terrified the network would start charging for access?
Those fears were not based in reality. But the first major social network has rolled out a subcription service. Twitter will remain free to use, but is offering a premium tier for power users, which is rolling out first in Canada and Australia.
The Verge reports:
Twitter has officially announced Twitter Blue, a paid subscription service that offers access to new features like undoing tweets and viewing threads in an easier to digest “Reader Mode.” Starting Thursday, it will roll out first in Canada and Australia, where the subscription will cost $3.49 CAD or $4.49 AUD per month, respectively. We already had a good idea of what features to expect from Twitter Blue thanks to sleuthing from app researcher Jane Manchun Wong, but now Twitter has detailed everything the service includes.
A new undo send feature gives you the option of retracting your tweets before they actually go live, and you can set a timer for undoing your tweets that can last up to 30 seconds. A Bookmark Folders feature lets you group saved tweets to make them easier to find later. “Reader Mode” lets you keep up with threads by “turning them into easy-to-read text” and mashing together tweets into one page. Other Twitter Blue features are purely aesthetic: it adds new color theme options as well as the ability to change the color of Twitter’s app icon.
[five]
As always, let’s head into the weekend with the pop culture roundup:
Mark Whalberg stars in Infinite, the first truly big budget film to go straight streaming on Paramount+, which launched this spring. Whalberg plays a character who dies and is reborn over and over again in an eternal battle against evil. If you’re wondering how that’s different from the 2020 Netflix streaming hit The Old Guard starring Charleze Theron…uhh, this one stars a lead with a Boston accent. Other than that, they’re probably the same movie. To me, that’s a feature, not a bug. Streaming June 10.+
And and speaking of making the same movie over again, writer/director Jonathan Nolan (Westworld, Pushing Daisies) is back with a movie starring Hugh Jackman (X-Men, The Greatest Showman) who goes into the subconscious to discover unsolved mysteries. If that sounds vaguely familiar, it’s because that’s also the plot of Inception, directed by Jonathan’s older brother Christopher Nolan. See the trailer here. On HBO Max September 3rd.
Andrew Garfield (The Amazing Spiderman, The Social Network) and Jessica Chastain (Zero Dark Thirty, Lawless) look unrecognizable as 1980’s televangelists Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, who built an empire using TV programming, only to fall to a series of scandals that included financial scandals, accusations of sexual abuse…and a theme park that once saw millions of visitors per year. Heritage USA in Fort Mill, SC sits empty today. The Bakkers are an odd story, but I’m not sure why a biopic on them has drawn such big name talent for the leading roles….it feels more like cheap basic cable fodder than something for the big screen.
MUSIC: Chicago punk rock legends/angry vegans (but there I go using two words for the same thing again) Rise Against return with a new album. Missouri bred rock/soul favorite Nathaniel Rateliff previewed his upcoming live project from Red Rocks with a new song. NEEDTOBREATHE let go of a second single from their upcoming LP, which releases in July. Rapper Lil Baby, who’s shown a surprising amount of artistic maturation despite…his really stupid name, released a joint album with Lil Durk, another surprisingly insightful artist who’s stage moniker unfortunately makes you think he eats crayons as his main form of amusement.
I’m sure there’s more, but it’s after midnight, so I’ve gotta call it on this one.
-sth