03.29.2021: Weekly Rundown
Hollywood couple drama, Investor drama, Influencer drama. It's all here!
Hey hey — if you’re new here, welcome! Each week, we catch you up on the major news going on in pop culture, the newest TikTok trends the youths love, and give you something to say to your more culturally aware friends to impress them. Subscribe below to be the first to get the weekly newsletter.
Hey! Missed me? I took a week break because, well, we’re living through a pandemic and shit happens! But don’t worry, here are the most important stories for you to know from the last two weeks.
🏆 Oscar Nominations are here
Somehow in the year that movie theaters have shut down, we’ve still gotten a slew of Oscar-worthy movies. There weren’t many surprises, but things of note:
The Academy sidestepped the controversy of the Golden Globes by rightfully nominating Minari (a movie about an immigrant family in America, shot in America, made by Americans) for Best Picture instead of Best Foreign Film. Sigh, when will the Golden Globes ever lean?
For the first time ever, two women are nominated for Best Director. On the one hand, yay! On the other hand, can’t believe it took us this long.
Netflix garnered 30+ nominations for their original content. Remember when they used to mail DVDs? The good old days.
😞 David Dobrik Leaves Dispo
TW: Sexual assault and rape
This one’s a doozy, and not the good kind.
David Dobrik is one of the most famous and successful YouTubers out there. He started out with a “Vlog Squad”, a group of people who would play pranks on each other and put out YouTube videos almost daily. One of these videos from 2018 depicted a member of the Vlog Squad bringing underage college girls back to their home, getting them drunk, and eventually raping at least one of them. In the video, Dobrik says he peeped into the bedroom to “make sure it was real” and congratulates this friend on his first successful threesome. Dobrik took the video down a few months later after the girl, who has no recollection of the evening, asked him to but at that point it already had millions of views.
So why are we talking about this now? An investigate reporter released an article detailing this video with quotes from the girls who were present, which prompted Dobrik to release an extremely out of touch “apology” — he distanced himself from the friend in question and didn’t take any responsibility. Brands dropped Dobrik almost immediately, but the scandal also leaked into his business ventures. Dobrik has been working on a camera app “Dispo” for a few years and recently raised VC funding (including Alexis Ohanian, Serena William’s husband’s, fund). As a result of the backlash, for the first time ever the lead VC firm, Spark Capital, dropped out of the deal and pledged to donate any profits from Dispo to sexual assault survivors. And, Dispo has officially parted ways with David Dobrik.
There’s no telling where Dobrik goes from here. He has been dubbed the “Jimmy Fallon of our generation” because of his lovability and cross-generation appeal, but this is so damning of a situation that only time will tell how forgiving we can be.
💔 A List Couple Brings Their Breakup to Twitter
Quavo and Saweetie were a perfect music royalty couple. Just watch their GQ Couple’s Interview! Sadly, they’re headed for Splitsville after 2 years together. Saweetie tweeted that Quavo cheated on her, and he tweeted back “I know you want to make this into a show so I’ll play my part just this one time”. Talk about a bad breakup. We hate to see a couple go down, but are excited to see what’s next for the both of them.
🎶 TikTok Stars Go Mainstream
You’ve probably heard of Addison Rae before. She’s one of the OG TikTok stars best known for making funny faces and dancing away. Oh, and she’s beautiful of course. Since she blew up on TikTok, Addison moved her family to LA, started a beauty brand (Item Beauty), launched a merchandise line, has a song named after her, starring in a Netflix movie called “He’s All That”, and is best friends with Kourtney Kardashian. If that all wasn’t enough for a 19 year old, she’s now gone primetime with a brand new song, “Obsessed”. She performed it live on Jimmy Fallon this weekend, marking the first time a TikTok star has officially broken into mainstream celebrity. This girl’s one to watch!
📱TikTok Trend of the Week
After some feedback, I’ll be highlighting only one trend per week and explaining the meaning behind it.
Trend: Why is German so…aggressive?!
In this trend, people translate a single word (in this case, “hospital”) in different languages and use Google Translate’s speaking feature to say it out loud. As you listen on you’ll notice that all of the translations sound pretty normal. And then, you get to the German translator. Somehow, it’s always an angry-sounding man shouting the word. Is it the translator? Is it the German language? We’ll never know!
And just for fun, here’s a new TikTok group called The Broadway Boys (including Ben Platt aka Evan Hansen!) singing Part of your World. Enjoy 💖
What to say at Happy Hour: Did you hear that David Dobrik is leaving Dispo? At least the other people at the company won’t be affected. The app is pretty cool.
That’s it for this week! Do you have any tips? Any drama you want to see reported on? Comment below + let us know!
Oh, and please share this with anyone who needs a quick Pop Culture Rundown themselves 🙏 Stay young, friends!