Category: Viral

Apple has been scoring well in the streaming TV realm with several hit series and films (including a Godzilla-focused show and a Scorsese movie), but the promotional approach for their latest hardware innovation isn’t gaining many points. Actually, many responses to the ad are downright negative because people seem to grasp what Apple was aiming to communicate, but they are taking umbrage with the mechanisms (and probably unintentional symbolism) used to deliver that message.

To get right to the point here: Apple will soon (next week) begin shipping its newest iPad Pro model. CEO Tim Cook thusly tweeted an ad, in which he promises, “[T]he thinnest product we’ve ever created, the most advanced display we’ve ever produced, with the incredible power of the M4 chip.” He then added, “Just imagine all the things it’ll be used to create.”

The intent here, presumably, was to suggest that the results of these creative mechanisms and instruments could fit into an extremely thin iPad Pro and into the storage capacities involved with the M4 chip. Yet visually speaking, this happens in the ad at the expense of these tools of creativity. The “Crush” title of the ad is meant literally, which means using an industrial crusher to flatten and destroy instruments, books, cameras, and other beloved creative symbols. Not to mention what happened to this poor little critter:

The iPad itself is a groundbreaking innovation and useful to millions of people (myself included) on a daily basis. However, let’s just say that even loyal Apple users are not impressed with “a heartbreaking, uncomfortable, and egotistic advertisement.” The term “demonic inversion” has also popped into the mix as well as a response directly to Tim Cook: “Your predecessors showed us their dreams, you showed us our nightmares.”

However, this ad is racking up views on YouTube like wildfire, so the product visibility is certainly there. We’ll see what people think when the model is released into the world.

Legendary producer Steve Albini is dead at 61 years old, Pitchfork confirmed today, May 8. The publication reports that per staff at Albini’s Electric Audio recording studio, Albini died of a heart attack.

While studying journalism at Northwestern University, Albini started the punk band Big Black and was later also a member of the groups Rapeman, Flour, and Shellac. He also started working as a producer in the mid-1980s and contributed to some classic albums by artists like Nirvana, Pixies, PJ Harvey, and many others.

A new Shellac album, To All Trains, is set for release on May 17. The band was also preparing to go on tour this summer.

In a 2023 NME interview, Albini was humble when discussing his impact, saying, “I feel weird when somebody says I had a massive influence on anything. It’s like, if you’re in a stadium during a sporting event, you have no influence on the outcome, really. It was an experience for me. I was there when it happened, but I wasn’t on the field. I feel like I get a lot of undue attention for records that I worked on where the record was going to be good no matter who was sitting in the chair.”

In an August 2023 interview with The Guardian, Albini was asked if he has ever thought about his legacy. He responded, “I don’t give a sh*t. I’m doing it, and that’s what matters to me — the fact that I get to keep doing it. That’s the whole basis of it. I was doing it yesterday, and I’m gonna do it tomorrow, and I’m gonna carry on doing it.”

As the Las Vegas Aces got set to begin training camp with eyes on a three-peat, one of their veteran stars made the announcement that she would be calling it a career. Candace Parker announced her retirement from the league after a Hall of Fame career that saw her win three championships on three different teams.

Parker is one of the greatest players to ever grace the WNBA court, and she made clear that her ambitions are to now conquer the business world, similarly to how she did the basketball world. Parker has her eyes on NBA and WNBA team ownership and still has a budding media career, but she’ll also take a big step into the business space with her new position at adidas.

The sneaker and apparel giant announced on Wednesday that Parker would be the brand’s new President of Women’s Basketball.

“Stepping into this new leadership role is a deeply personal next step in my journey with adidas,” said Parker. “From high school to college to playing pro to now, this appointment by adidas symbolizes a shared commitment to making impactful change and setting new benchmarks for the future of women’s sports. It’s not just about products; it’s about fostering a movement focused on innovation, representation, and access.”

Parker has been with adidas throughout her career, and had her own signature shoe with the brand. Now she’ll look to build their presence in the women’s hoops space further, guiding the brand’s vision for how they want to promote and grow that segment of the business. Adidas’ current roster of players includes Aliyah Boston, Kahleah Copper, Aaliyah Edwards, and Nneka Ogwumike, among others.

Pop-soul singer Raveena returns with a dreamy video for her latest throwback single, “Pluto.” In the video, Raveena rides butterflies, through both sunny and stormy skies. The now-30-year-old singer’s love of nature is present throughout, and even when the video gets a little dark, the new song remains upbeat and perky, guided by Raveena’s gentle vocals and hinted throughout with some late-90s funk-pop, right down the turntablism hidden in the beat.

“Pluto” is the singer’s first new single in two years. When we last heard from her in February 2022, she’d just released her second studio, Asha’s Awakening, a high-concept album infused with spirituality taken from Raveena’s Indian heritage. Now, she’s an independent artist — as befits her free spirit — and used her time away from the spotlight to get back to her musical influences, like the dreamy pop-soul of acts like Corinne Bailey Rae.

“This record is so inner child for me,” she explains of “Pluto.” “It’s a song about loss, but woven into the most joyful soundbed. When making it, I was remembering the feeling of having my little walkman and listening to the most euphoric pop songs, dancing around the yard or looking out the window on a long drive at ten years old. I want to bring back the sweetness that feels like it’s suspended in that time of the early 2000s and 90s.”

Now that she’s partnered with Empire, she’s got full creative control of her music and its release schedule, so don’t be surprised to see an album announcement sometime soon.

Watch Raveena’s “Pluto” video above.

Here comes Fresh Pair with a new drop. This time, legendary Hip-hop maestro Just Blaze and sneaker-customizer-to-the-GOATs, Katty Customs welcome one of Brooklyn’s finest, Memphis Bleek, to the chair. And once again, Katty and Just knock it out of the park, with Bleek pledging to wear these super clean custom AF-1s come Florida summertime.

The latest episode is a bit special, aside from Bleek being an absolute legend, him and Just have a storied history that goes way back, and you can feel the chemistry between the two as they touch on their friendship, and early collaborations like “Round Here,” a beat that Just was initially skeptical of that ended up being a big moment in the early days of Roc-A-Fella. The interview serves as a celebration of how far he’s come.

Throughout, Bleek speaks on the Just Blaze beats he regrettably passed on, working with a young Rihanna on “The One,” how State Property started out as a Beans (Beanie Sigel) and Bleek album, and reveals why “Yes,” never appeared on an album and why Jay-Z gave him “Murda Murda.”
It’s an insightful dive full of deep-cut discussions as two long-time friends chop it up. But our favorite moment has to be when Bleek explains how he discovered air conditioning through Jay-Z back when the legend was in his dope boy days.

Check out the latest Fresh Pair above.

The Los Angeles Lakers saw their season end at the hands of the Denver Nuggets for the second straight year, this time in the first round rather than the Conference Finals. In the 2024 edition, the Lakers lost in five games, with two of their losses coming on Jamal Murray game-winners in the final seconds.

L.A. led for the vast majority of the series, holding double-digit leads in all five games, but could not execute well enough down the stretch to take down the defending champs. The Timberwolves are currently showing what is required to beat the Nuggets, as they’ve mown down the champs in back-to-back impressive performances, and look to be on the precipice of bouncing Denver from the second round.

That effort only adds to the frustration for the Lakers, as it’s very apparent this year’s Nuggets team is more gettable — if you can put together a full 48. That was something Los Angeles just could not manage to do, and now they enter an offseason with some fascinating decisions to make, starting with a head coaching change.

LeBron James also has a decision to make, as he can test the free agency waters, and the 39-year-old knows chances to get one more ring are running low. With that in mind, James spoke about the Lakers loss on this week’s “Mind the Game” podcast with noted Lakers coaching candidate JJ Redick, saying “sh*t hurts” but also admitting “the better team won” even with the opportunities L.A. had.

What will be interesting is how the Lakers go about trying to be the better team next year. They got a lot of healthy games from LeBron and Anthony Davis this year, but the supporting cast continued to lag behind what they needed. Given the incredible depth of the top contenders in the West, particularly Minnesota and Oklahoma City, the Lakers need to figure out how to increase their talent level around James and AD at numerous spots. That’s not going to be easy, and even though they came close to beating Denver (even in a five-game series), it’s pretty clear there’s more work to do than just making marginal improvements if they want to be in title contention again.

An 8th grader in Wisconsin is being called a hero by the community for taking control of the school bus after the driver suffered a medical emergency. The trip started as a routine ride home from school on April 24. The bus driver joked with students as they loaded up on the bus, but things took a turn for the worse shortly after.

“As we got about 20 feet down Villard, I was looking at my phone and I looked back up and I felt the bus accelerate,” Acie Holland III, 14, told TMJ4. “And I looked at the bus driver because she went past my stop and I looked and I seen her head just go down.”

Acie quickly sprung into action, removing the driver’s foot from the gas pedal and taking control of the wheel. “I grabbed the steering wheel, then I get us to the curb and I hit the brakes close and then when we hit the curb, I turned the wheel all the way because I didn’t know where the parking brake was,” Acie told WISN.

After Acie was able to park the bus securely, he called 911. His grandmother, a registered nurse, told all the kids on the bus to call their parents. “Everybody was just like, ‘thank you’ because I saved their life,” Acie told CNN.

According to WISN, Acie saved the lives of 20 students and the bus driver.

Teen grabs wheel when driver passes out and school bus veers into traffic

“I took the wheel and straightened out the bus, then I moved her foot off the gas pedal,” said Wisconsin eighth-grader Acie Holland III. https://t.co/l86p1yix0s

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) May 3, 2024

The driver regained consciousness shortly after and contacted the bus’s dispatch service. A safety team and an alternate driver were sent out to the location.

A big reason why Acie was so calm is even though he’s a teenager, he has had a lot of experience with cars. His father, Acie Holland II, is a certified auto technician. “It was like he was in the right place at the right time. So it was, it was meant to be for a variety of reasons, the most important being for the safety of others,” Glen Hills Middle School principal Anna Young said according to CNN.

Person of the Week: Acie Holland

After the incident, Young sent a letter to the families of the Glendale-River Hills School District, praising Acie for his heroic actions. “The Glen Hills school community could not be any prouder of Acie,” Young wrote. “The compassion and leadership that we see him exhibit daily was taken to the next level on his bus ride home yesterday. We are grateful that all of our Glen Hills students are safe and are wishing their driver a healthy recovery.”

When school let out the next day, the students chanted “AC-Hero” to celebrate the 14-year-old’s heroism. His father is proud of him as well. “He’s always been a person where he’s real quick on his feet. That’s one of my things that I know he’s capable of, not on the school bus, but just in general, being able to help someone in need,” Holland’s father told CNN. “But I am proud of what he did.”

Acie has also been celebrated by local community leaders for his actions. The mayor of Glendale recognized him in a proclamation and the Milwaukee Fire Department and the Glendale Police Department praised him for his heroics as well.

Picture this: A happy family playing together in the backyard, smiling and laughing in slow motion while a soothing voice goes on and on about enjoying life. You feel moved and inspired somehow, but you’re not sure why.

Then you’re suddenly bombarded with a litany of terrible things that could happen before the soothing voice returns. “Ask your doctor if Gonofixia is right for you,” it says. You have no idea what condition “Gonifixia” is even meant to treat and but it sounds like taking it might be worse than whatever it is.

Welcome to the modern American pharmaceutical drug commercial, which the incomparable Elle Cordova has hilariously parodied on TikTok.

Cordova has gained a huge loyal following with her brilliant poems and videos personifying everything from planets to inventions to fonts on social media. Her “RX Side Effects Redux” video takes on pharmaceutical ad side effect disclaimers with a list of potential reactions that have people cracking up.

Cordova started off with a funny rhyming list of potential prescription drug side effects, which includes traditional reactions such as “sneezing, wheezing, labored breathing, trouble speaking, sleeping, eating, hemorrhages, internal bleeding…” and non-traditional ones such as “masochism, vampirism, sudden necromanticism, phantom limbs, fanaticism.”

Then someone challenged her to put a beat to it and with the help of a bass-playing friend, she did. Behold the result:

@elle.cordova

Replying to @the_lonelyest_pickle dare accepted. RX Side Effects Redux! (Deja vu now also makes a recurring appearance per commenter requests) #rx

People are loving it and even requesting she make it into a real song:

“if you made this an official song I would listen to this religiously 😭😭,” wrote one person.

“The second ‘chronic deja vu’ i almost screamed, this is art 😭,” wrote another.

“I would actually listen to this ironically,” added another.

“So there’s a small chance i can become a vampire or a necromancer 🤔,” joked another.

This is the kind of thing that makes social media tolerable—smart people entertaining us with clever commentary on contemporary reality. And Ella Cordova is a master at it.

If you enjoyed Cordova’s video, you can drop her a tip here or join her Patreon here, and follow her for more on TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram.

Unlike much of the online hip-hop community, Questlove was less than impressed with the rap beef between Drake and Kendrick Lamar. Over the weekend, the two rappers exchanged a slew of acidic diss tracks — “6:16 In LA,” “Family Matters,” “Meet The Grahams,” “Not Like Us,” and “The Heart Part 6” — that did little to promote either rapper as the vanguard of a generation in favor of simply airing out each other’s dirty laundry.

Questlove, a 30-plus-year veteran of the rap business, who heard “Rapper’s Delight” on the radio and has written at least two books about the history of hip-hop as pop culture, deplored the contest on his Instagram, where he wrote, “Nobody won the war.”

This wasn’t about skill. This was a wrestling match level mudslinging and takedown by any means necessary — women & children (& actual facts) be damned. Same audience wanting blood will soon put up ‘rip’ posts like they weren’t part of the problem. Hip Hop truly is dead.

As one of hip-hop’s foremost historians, Quest’s opinion holds a lot of weight. He also sees and remembers more than most. His ominous pronouncement isn’t just doomsaying, it’s a remembrance; interviews with prominent hip-hop journalists from the ’90s expressing regret over the coverage of the interpersonal feud between Tupac and The Notorious B.I.G. aren’t hard to find.

And no, it doesn’t seem like either Drake or Kendrick would do some dummy sh*t and escalate the conflict to violence, but that doesn’t mean those around them won’t — or even unrelated superfans taking their jabs to heart. If nothing else, the pair never seemed to consider the effects of the battle on those they care about. Kendrick directly addressed Drake’s mother and son on “Meet The Grahams,” while Drake insinuated Kendrick’s manager was schtupping his fiancée on “Family Matters.”

Those are things you can’t take back and, honestly, probably would warrant violence in a face-to-face confrontation — I’ve seen folks punched in the face at rap battles for less (maybe they should take up Shawn Michaels on his WWE invitation and put on a shoot match for the ages). The battle wasn’t exactly “good for hip-hop” in the way many — who really just wanted to see a couple of really good rappers RAP — might see it. There were always plenty of raps, but many underground stars just looking to climb their way into public notice had rollouts ruined, opportunities overlooked, and releases swept to the side in the rush to hear these two guys air their personal grievances. Quest’s pronouncement that “hip-hop is truly dead” might be dramatic, but the spirit of friendly competition seems to have gotten lost in the modern climate of ad hominem and frankly outrageous accusations.

What has Ryan Reynolds been up to lately? Quite literally everything and anything you can think of! Not only is he leading this summer’s kiddie blockbuster IF, but he’s also suiting up as Deadpool once again this summer. Yet somehow he finds time to film those repetitive Mint Mobile ads.

But for the sports fans out there, Reynolds also hosts Welcome To Wrexham, the inspirational football docuseries that has brought the love of the game to Americans (who call it “soccer”).

Season three of the hit series, also featuring Rob McElhenney, premiered earlier this month, and a lot of riding on the team and its owners for a successful season.

Episode three, titled “Notts Again,” will air Thursday, May 9 at 10 EDT on FX. Afterwards, it lands on Hulu and Disney+ the next day, normally by 3 am EST on Friday.

Episode three shifts the focus to the Wrexham Women’s Team, who had a groundbreaking 2023 season. The men are also gearing up to face their toughest team yet. Here is the episode three synopsis, “The Wrexham Women’s Team adapt to life in the top Welsh league as the men prepare to face Notts County, their fiercest rivals from the National League.”

You can stream Welcome To Wrexham seasons one and two now on Hulu and Disney+.