Pedophiles Lurking in Video Game Used in Elementary Schools, Corporate Press Bemoan Biden's Mumbling, Hip-Hop Beef Comes to Country Music (The Five for 06/28/24)
Plus, Sylvester Stallone is still really cool as he approaches 80 with latest TV show, Missouri band dusts off the sounds of 1960's Stax Records soul, to great results. 9
Hey, welcome to The Five.
Let’s dive into Culture & Commentary.
[one]
Odds are, you’ve seen Minecraft, even if you’re not familiar with the larger video game world, due to the pop culture permeation of the pixelated digital world the game exists within. With a graphic interface that screams “we ripped off Lego but changed things just enough to avoid paying royalties,” the game targets VERY young players, with a significant chunk of the userbase being 3-12 years old.
(Side note—THREE? What are parents thinking?)
The game has also been adapted for use in schools (see video above, although even this has a lot of questions around it). All of this likely points adults to the assumption that Minecraft is safe for kids. But the truth is…more complex.
You see, not all conversation ABOUT Minecraft happens through the game. There are servers on Discord and other gaming-focused internet chat apps where users are constantly discussing pedophilia, as documented by hacker Ryan Montgomery, who uncovered the dark side of Minecraft servers. These servers are both open inviting to elementary aged Minecraft aficionados.
If you missed the underlined quote, here it is again:
If a 14 year old wants to be with her 32 year old teacher, I support it. The only reason I see not to is cause the teacher might give their students preferential treatment.
There has been a LOT of discussion about the ways children are exposed to sexualized content during PRIDE month, like this photo posted by Gays Against Groomers of elementary aged kids at a bar (first of all, not ok, regardless if the bar has straight or gay patrons), in front of a sign that reads in neon “it’s not going to lick itself.”
But Drag Queen Story Hour and public parades featuring kids mixed in with adults in bondage gear are…relatively rare, when compared to the general population. There are no stats on this, but common sense dictates that the vast majority of parents are smart enough NOT to bring their kids into highly sexualized spaces. The reason that PRIDE month comes up in particular in this conversation…is because the parades in June often feature experiences that are locked behind the doors of private establishments in the rest of American culture (aka if you’re going to go to a strip club, you have to prove you’re not 8-years-old via an ID).
But the scary thing is, adults who would never take their kids to the sex offender wing of a state prison to have casual conversations with the inmates…are ignorant to the fact that would-be inmates are hanging out in the chatrooms of their kids favorite video game.
The greatest danger to young kids for sex abuse is not being snatched by a stranger at the mall. It’s a child being groomed for months or years to meet up with a stranger from the internet at that mall, and slip away unnoticed.
[two]
A couple of weeks ago, I covered the beginning of the cultural fading of Taylor Swift, a story the British music press is now paying attention to.
From The Standard (UK)
Admittedly the intellectually challenged of my generation also embraced Take That and the Spice Girls, but the rest of us also had The Prodigy, Elastica, The Cure, Blur, Pulp, The Smiths, The Stone Roses, Nirvana. Crucially, we had so many options of what we could like and dislike and so much of it was alternative. Not only was the music thought-provoking and imaginative, but the lyrics were meaningful and caught the spirit of a generation.
By comparison Swift’s music sounds to me like what I would listen to if I had the intellect of a very small worm. Not only is it uninteresting, repetitive and entirely basic, her lyrics are brain-numbingly banal. Take the following: “You smoked, then ate seven bars of chocolate/We declared Charlie Puth should be a bigger artist/I scratch your head, you fall asleep/Like a tattooed golden retriever.” Or “My muses, acquired like bruises”, or “even statues crumble, if they’re made to wait”.
It’s all absolute nonsense.
It doesn’t seem to matter. Swift’s Eras Tour is the highest-grossing concert of all time, she’s the most-streamed artist on Spotify, the highest-grossing female touring act and the first billionaire with music as her main source of income.
More a brand than an artist, she never says anything unexpected or controversial, she’s more a capitalist construct with a business and marketing operation behind her akin to a like-generating, algorithm-outwitting juggernaut.
I’m genuinely concerned that Swift’s dominance says something frightening about the hegemony of social media which means that rather than myriad opinions we seem to have less and less diversity of thought and Donald Trump and Taylor Swift seem to be the only winners in our strange online lives.
I realize there’s always the possibility of a Gen X journalist (presumably, based on the bands listed) sliding into “get off my lawn” mode…but we’re now seeing more and more voices questioning exactly why Swift has a such a lock on young women, when there seems to be very little authenticity here.
The journalist is correct here…Swift has never exited the “love lost and scorned exes” emotional stage to write about topics with more heft, the way that artists like Justin Timberlake, Beyonce, Ariana Grande, Demi Lovato, Selena Gomez, Nick Jonas, Janet Jackson, Christian Aguilera and a host of other artists over the decades have done…put their childhood stardom away for more mature art.
A prime example is Lovato’s “29,” a song she penned about dating That 70’s Show star Wilmer Valderrama when he was about to turn 30…and she was a junior in high school:
Petal on the vine, too young to drink wine
Just five years a bleeder, student and a teacher
Far from innocent, what the f*ck's consent?
Numbers told you not to, but that didn't stop youFinally twenty-nine
Funny, just like you were at the time
Thought it was a teenage dream, just a fantasy
But was it yours or was it mine?
Seventeen, twenty-nine
Did Lovato write a “breakup song” here? I guess so. But she goes deep into a dysfunctional, predatory relationship in just a few lines. Sorry, Taylor…but your lines about a boyfriend being a “tattooed golden retriever” seem like high school dribble by comparison.
I’m not surprised Swift’s songwriting has faltered. She’s been impossibly rich, famous and…curated by a team of experts designed to make her career as big as possible, since she was in high school.
She got by on talent and natural charm for well over a decade…but now in her mid-thirties, it’s obvious that she’s avoided the real heartbreak (the kind where life hits you so hard you’re not sure you’ll recover—not to be confused with hopping between celebrity boyfriends).
Cultural influence (creating ideas that impact society) should not be confused with commerce. For example, the Backstreet Boys and N*SYNC sold more records than any other artist of the era, but outside of the occasional nostalgia concert that brings wine moms back together with their high school besties, they didn’t put any ideas into the world that changed minds.
By comparison, New Jersey post-punk outfit Thursday can be credited, not just with almost single-handedly inventing screamo in sweaty basement shows in the 1990’s, but also beating American Idiot era Green Day to the punch by over a year as the first band to put out a serious criticism of the Iraq invasion with their 2003 album War All the Time, just five months after the first American boots hit the ground:
War all of the time
In the shadow of the New York skyline
We grew up too fast, falling apart
Like the ashes of American flagsIf the sun doesn't rise
We'll replace it with an H-bomb explosion
A painted jail cell of light in the sky
Like three mile island nightmares
On TVs that sing us to sleep
They burn on and on like an oil field
Taylor Swift is on track to be remembered as the leader of a cult-like fanbase, and one of the biggest pop singers in history.
But if she wants to one day be remembered as an artist that created something worth contending with cultural forces…she’s going to need to start making art that says something more than “I’m sad over my sexy, but flawed boyfriends.”
Hat Tip for sending me the Standard UK story…Craig at Second Drafts.
[three]
I typically finish issues of The Five 2-3 days before publication, but in in this case left space for a reaction to the debate.
And now the challenge is…what to even say?
From a pop culture perspective…I suppose this was “Must See TV,” and it’s a moment that will be collectively remembered. But not in the way Biden was hoping for.
Is there any argument that Biden didn’t lose this debate? And just how bad was it for him?
Sam Stein: Is there an argument? Sure. Is it a convincing one? Absolutely not. Even his own former aides are acknowledging it was a bad night, that he looked and sounded weak and that he didn’t do the essential thing he had to do, which is to calm the very concerns about his age that prompted his campaign to get this debate scheduled in the first place.
How bad is it? What do we know? I could surmise that it’s anywhere between debilitating and ephemeral — likely closer to the former. What we do know: It’s going to prompt a vicious news cycle for the campaign and they know it.
Steven Shepard: No. By stumbling out of the gate — and repeatedly over the course of more than an hour-and-a-half — Biden reinforced everything that voters have been saying gives them pause about electing him to another term.
Significant shares of Biden’s own voters were already uneasy about his candidacy, and the president did little to reassure them. In a New York Times/Siena College poll conducted in the run-up to Thursday’s debate, only 51 percent of likely voters who picked Biden over Trump said they wanted Biden to be the Democratic nominee. Nearly as many, 45 percent, said there should be a different nominee. And 53 percent of Biden voters said they “strongly” or “somewhat” agreed that Biden is “just too old to be an effective president.”
The overall consensus was that CNN’s format was excellent (no audience, muting the opponent’s mic when it wasn’t their turn to speak), and the moderators seemed to be surprisingly balanced in their questioning (although I won’t swear by that, as I listened while rocking a toddler back to sleep and missed some parts).
If all debates were like this going forward, we would be a better country for it…it feels like we stumbled upon something that got the WWE factor out of politics.
As far as the takeaways here:
A). I have no idea if the Dems will find a way to pull Biden. He could have blamed his health and bowed out gracefully six months ago, but at this point it seems like Biden has to go down swinging.
You’ve gotta wonder how many Dems are waking up wishing they had taken the RFK Jr. challenge more seriously, and had a real primary.
B). Trump seems to have learned from his 2020 loss, and tempered the more wild parts of his past debate performances. It’s hard to tell how that performance would have fared against a political opponent who put up more of a fight than Biden’s mumbling, off kilter half-answers, but it does appear that Trump is actually better at the political game than the last time these two clashed for the White House.
C). As far as what happens next…who knows? I don’t have time machine to hop into in order to find out if…
….the Dems will try to push Joe out.
…or he’ll just step aside.
…or if Trump will go to jail in July.
…or if Trump will go to jail, and it will make him more popular, triggering a sympathy vote.
…or if we’ll see Newsom? Michelle Obama? Hillary? Pritzker? Whitmer? step in.
Whatvever happens next, the thing that happened on your TV (or, more likely, smartphone) last night will almost certainly enter the pop culture lexicon, in a way that most political events do not.
And now…let me leave you with the words of America’s finest country singer:
This is why The Five is set up as a 2x weekly publication…because you should know about politics and world events.
But we should also be reminded of the beautiful things that make life worth living…and good films, good records and good books should not be neglected…even in an election year.
No, scratch that. Especially in an election year.
[four]
The 1990’s had the Tupac/Biggie rivalry that wound up taking the lives of the two best rappers of a generation. The 2020’s have…middle aged country songwriters taking verbal and songwriting shots at each other.
Often as not, Jason Isbell is at the center of these issues. In particular, Isbell’s annoying habit of writing songs about his former friends. For example, the Alabama native took shots at his dead friend, Justin Townes Earle, on “When We Were Close.”
It's not up to me to forgive you
For the nights that your love had to live through
Now you'll never need to look me in the eye
It’s entirely possible that Isbell still harbors jealousy against Justin, who died of an overdose in 2020. The pair came up in the Americana scene together, with Earle initially enjoying much more press coverage and higher album sales than Isbell.
Justin had struggled with addiction, but had gotten sober, married and had a daughter…before his life tragically ended due to a one-off relapse during the COVID lockdowns. Despite their personal connections, Isbell didn’t notify Justin’s widow of the song in general, or the cutting, cruel tone of the lyrics in particular.
That’s not the only hip-hop style beef Isbell has started via his songwriting. Isbell was once close with fellow Americana troubadour Ryan Adams (who was a member of Whiskeytown before going solo), with Adams originally set to produce Isbell’s breakthrough album Southeastern, before dropping off due to scheduling conflicts.
But the pair remained close, and Adams helped Isbell get into rehab and get sober around that time. Later, when Ryan was “canceled” during the #metoo movement, Jason threw him under the bus in a GQ interview, saying he was no longer friends with Ryan:
“…The situation with Ryan and with the Times story made me rethink my friendships with other men and how much we’re actually sharing with each other. And I think it really helped me redefine, you know, what kind of a friend I want to be to somebody.”
Not one to leave well enough alone, Isbell mocked Adams in a 2017 song “Chaos and Clothes,” referencing the singer’s divorce from actress Mandy Moore, who remarried Taylor Goldsmith of Americana outfit Dawes.
The man she chose to take your place
Turns his collar up to better frame his face
How you'd love to hate her, but you just can't hate somebody you don't know
Oh no
Adams finally hit back this week, dedicating a song to Isbell, which was less a “song” (with structure to it) and more just Ryan dropping one liners while strumming an acoustic guitar.
This concert is a lot like if you went to see Jason Isbell, but only if the songs were really good/And you didn’t leave and it didn’t sound like someone was yelling at you for two f–king hours/playing some suspiciously sounding Molly Hatchet guitar. F–k you, f–k yourself, f–k you Jason Isbell.”
“I guess now it’s only ’23 Frames.’ Have to tell somebody else how to live their life, how to date a girl, how to be insane. It sounds like I’m pissed. Don’t forget the laundry list. Don’t forget the grocery list. Don’t forget to pick up a baguette. Don’t forget, or you’re gonna catch hell. We’re gonna lock you in a Gap overnight with Jason Isbell.”
In the latter verse, Adams parodies Isbell’s (admittedly impressive) catalog quite well…and ushers in the era of the country music diss track, a phenomenon previously confined exclusively to hip-hop.
As long as all this gets attention, you can expect other artists in country music to mimic the “diss track” behavior, as artists are always looking for new ways to expand their fanbase…including starting feuds.
And what of self respect? There was an era where musicians wanted the focus to be on the songcraft, not the gossip headlines.
The immortal words of P.T. Barnum ring true here.
“I don’t care what you write, just spell my name correctly.”
For better or worse, when attention is the currency, feuds can grow a brand.
[five]
As always, let's head into the weekend with a pop culture roundup.
Tom Hanks and Robin Wright are teaming back up with the director of Forest Gump, for the first time since the 1994 hit film for…a very similar story that takes place over 100 years. The pair have been significantly de-aged for at least one scene…
Well, that was quick. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is out for digital rental already. It will cost you $25 to rent or $30 to buy…or, just wait for it to drop to $6 in a couple weeks or months. Finally, it will hit Max (formerly HBO) at some point…so choose how badly you want to see it.
The Chicago restaurant drama The Bear is back for a third season on Hulu, and critics are raving.
Deadpool & Wolverine, which has to save Marvel from financial ruin in 2024 AND the summer box office for your local movie theater, just dropped another teaser, featuring Sabretooth from the early aughts X-Men movies. Even if you don’t care about this particular movie, your local multiplex is hurting from the lack of summer blockbusters…a portion of the U.S. economy quite literally needs a hit movie.
Mark Wahlberg playing himself (an East Coast, blue-collar-ish-beer-swilling-sports-fan and good dude) teaming up with Halle Berry (James Bond: Die Another Day, X-Men) and J.J. Simmons (La La Land, Juno) for a spy movie?
Yes, all day. On Netflix 08/16.
Yet another Taylor Sheridan show that’s winning. Sylvester Stallone returns for a second season of Tulsa King, in which the Rocky and Rambo alum plays a mafia kingpin sent to run illegal operations in the heartland. Premiers 09/15.
[new music]
Saving Country Music has an excellent writeup on the Best Country Songs of 2024 (So Far). My personal pick is this incredible acapella number from Laurie Lewis (an artist I’d never heard of). Hit that play button…you’ll thank me.
There’s something to be said for a band releasing a tight, 11 song, 36 minute album in the era of artists putting out every song idea they’ve ever had. This is due to streaming…where artists are placing a bet that you’ll just leave a long album playing, and their streaming revenue will go up.
What is lost is the focus on making the individual song great…an art Missouri native Nathaniel Rateliff and his band have brought back on South of Here.
I don’t often recommend albums on the day they release, but the pre-release singles are fantastic. And at first listen, all signs point to these guys picking up the 1960’s-era-Stax-Records soul sound, and taking it in a whole new direction.
Until the next one,
-sth