The Out-of-Touch Adults’ Guide To Kid Culture: What is Beaning?

This week is all about young people gone bad. Kids out there are straight delinquents. They’re throwing baked beans around, vandalizing school bathrooms, and pointing out ontological inconsistencies. Stop disrespecting my assumptions about reality, ya punks!

TikTok trend of the week: What is beaning?

In a delightfully British trend, gangs of young hooligans armed with tins of baked beans are roaming all over the UK, pouring them on cars and front steps with abandon. They then post videos of these vicious attacks on TikTok with the hashtag #BEANBANDITS. It’s called “beaning,” and it’s serious business.

The police are recommending shopkeepers limit the sale of beans to young people, posting shocking photos of bean-smeared cars to the internet, and pointing out that “The victims are understandably distressed by this unacceptable behaviour.”

When will the beaning nightmare end? And can I have some spread on toast?

Follow-up of the week: The crackdown on “Devious Licks”

Meanwhile, in the U.S.: Last week we brought you news of the “Devious Lick” trend on TikTok, where kids are posting videos of ridiculous thefts from their school. This week comes the inevitable authoritarian crackdown.

TikTok banned the videos, and schools all over the country are making it clear they’d rather students didn’t steal or vandalise. Administrators in Raleigh, NC are limiting student’s bathroom time to prevent deviousness and/or licks. In Tennessee, cops are dropping vandalism charges on multiple students for wrecking their school bathrooms. But inevitably, the licks struck Licking County the hardest; kids at the brand-new high school in the Ohio county have reportedly been “kicking in doors, ripping soap dispensers from the wall and putting them into toilets, twisting faucets to the point of repairs, and filling toilets and urinals in the boys restroom with Halloween style fake blood.” Devious!

TikTok warnings of the week

It’s time once again to remind you to never do anything you see on the internet for any reason. Specifically, do not do these things:

• Do not remove your own IUD.
• Do not sing “Rick and Morty” at your mother’s funeral.
• Do not attend the Met Gala with a “message” on your dress (unless you want the internet to make fun of you.)
• Do not punish your child by making them run in 40 degree heat.
• Do not join an online cult.

This week in music: Ginger Root is blowing up

Twenty-five-year-old Huntington Beach, CA musician Cameron Lew is having a moment. His musical project, Ginger Root, is dedicated to making “aggressive elevator soul,” and their video is being shared all over the place. Try to imagine what aggressive elevator soul sounds like before clicking the link to the video for Ginger Root’s “Loretta.”

How close did you get? If the infectious (maybe ironic) 1970s grooves of “Loretta” are stuck in your head too, check out this entire concert from the group. All their music is like that.

This week in streaming: The D’Amelio Show

Sisters Charli and Dixie D’Amelio became incredibly famous overnight for doing almost nothing on TikTok, and now they’re taking their non-act over to Hulu, where The D’Amelio Show, a reality program featuring the sisters, can be seen. 

While the show is often a behind-the-scenes look at banal people advancing their careers, it sometimes drops the “ain’t it great to be rich, famous, and young?” tone and gets interesting. At its best, The D’Amelio Show digs in to the dark side of internet-fame, exploring the anxiety, self-doubt, and fragility of the sisters and their symbiotic relationship with the often-poisonous normies who make up their audience.

You can’t help but wonder if they’d be better deleting their accounts and never looking back, or if the lack of attention would cause them to literally melt away like the Wicked Witch of the West.

Viral video of the week: Do chairs exist?

Some think only stupid videos go viral on the internet, but this week’s viral joint, Vsauce’s “Do chairs exist” is not stupid at all. It’s pretty smart, honestly. “Do chairs exist?” isn’t an absurdist question or a poke at conspiracy theorists, instead the simple question is the launchpad for a nearly 40-minute philosophical discussion of ontology and semiotics, where “a chair” is used to illustrate what makes a thing a thing, and whether any thing actually exists at all. Nearly 2 million people have watched the video in only a few days, suggesting that young people out there like the kind of discussion you might have in Philosophy 101 or the first time you do bong rips.