Current Trends Explained: Croydon Water Park and Anti-ICE Protests on Roblox

This week’s out-of-touch guide is a mix of internet nonsense that reflects real-world concerns. A dark part of London is going viral because of a taxpayer-funded water park that only exists because of AI videos designed to enrage racists. Inside the Kid-Centric Video Game Robloxusers protest both ICE and age verification without ever leaving their avatar. And in the darkest corners of the online world, looksmaxxers determine who is an HTN, while everyone else on TikTok says, “To hell with it.” We’re going to pretend to be birds. »

What is a Croydon water park?

It might sound like the name of an outrageous sex act or a 1980s cocktail, but a Croydon water park is something else entirely, and that’s going to take some explaining. Croydon is a large town in south London with a reputation as a tough, gritty place, known (rightly or wrongly) for its concrete and crime. It is also diverse – 51% of its population identifies as black, Asian or from an ethnic minority – so British racists generally dislike Croydon. The “water park” bit comes from people posting AI-generated videos of masked men (“roaders”, in slang) enjoying Croydon’s water park, which doesn’t exist, often with “reminders” that it is “taxpayer funded”. This is rage bait for racist old Brits. Here is a representative sample:

Other AI-created locations in Croydon include this taxpayer-funded buffet:

And Croydon Aquarium:

In the online hall of mirrors, it’s impossible to tell how many of the angry wankers in the comments section are legit, and how many are kids dressing up as angry wankers. Judge for yourself on the #Croydon tag.

Protests break out in Roblox against ICE raids (and age verification)

Digital activism can be complicated. Recently, in response to the ICE protests in Minnesota, Roblox users held their own in-game demonstrations. Led by @clipsforcloset, users reenact ICE raids, hold signs, and otherwise express their deep feelings about current events. It looks like this:

Here is a demonstration showing ICE vans arriving at a preschool:

Protesting in a game probably doesn’t have an immediate effect on the real world, but in terms of educating an extremely hard-to-reach population about what happens outside of their computer, it could be effective. But it seems the biggest problem for many Roblox users isn’t ICE, but the platform’s age verification requirements.

Roblox’s recently rolled out restrictions on chat require users to provide identification or pose for a series of photos so their age can be determined, otherwise they can’t chat. From the robot guessing age being totally wrong, to privacy issues, to people selling verified accounts online, there are a lot of problems with Roblox’s new policy, which is why some Roblox users are organizing “marches” on Roblox’s virtual headquarters that appear to be against both ICE and chat restrictions.

Some have pointed out that walking in a match means you’re increasing the number of players, so it may not be the most effective means of protest, but it’s interesting that the same sort of “What’s the point?” » Arguments and failure to keep protesters “in the loop” are known problems in real-life activism. Speaking of real life, so far it doesn’t appear that Roblox’s age verification is affecting its parent company’s stock price.

What does HTN mean?

The acronym “HTN” stands for “high level standard”. In normal language, you might refer to an HTN as a “handsome guy”, but not as a handsome male model. It comes from the online community of “looksmaxxers,” people concerned with maximizing their physical attractiveness. Looksmaxxers use what they consider to be an objective gauge of human facial attractiveness called the PSL scale, and an HTN scores 4.5 to 5.5 out of 8 on the PSL scale. Of course, this is all complete nonsense, but many younger men think it’s the truth. If you know younger men like this, explain to them that a high score on the “being a semi-decent person” scale beats any number on the PSL scale.

Viral Videos of the Week: Owl Impersonators on TikTok

This week, TikTok is being overtaken by people doing owl impressions. The meme works like this: You say, “Here’s my impression of an owl if it were X” and you play it. The X can be anything. Celebrity owls are popular, like this print of an owl if it were Michael Jackson:

There are a lot of impressions of groups of owls, like this owl who is “Italian-American, but also from New York.”

If you dig a little deeper, you get more conceptual owls, like an owl that is “an overstimulated millennial mom who is teaching herself to self-regulate while teaching her child to self-regulate.”

or an owl “it’s ChatGPT”.

For thousands of videos featuring countless types of owls, check out Owl Impersonators on TikTok.