This week on The Deep Dive: How social media cringe culture killed the club, 5 Gum marked a bizarre end to the downfall of chewing gum, if you missed all the queer symbolism in Cadet Kelly as a kid join the club, what “time blindness” tells us about how we view time, and where did all the visible microphones on YouTube come from?

I also interviewed video essayist Elliot Sang for The Rabbit Hole, coming this Thursday! Upgrade to get access to the interview as well as subscriber-only posts, weekly podcast episodes, and my favorite video essays of 2023, coming next Wednesday!

If you’re not subscribed to The Rabbit Hole, this will be the last newsletter of 2023. I truly can’t thank you enough for being here and joining me on this wild, highly educational journey. See you in 2024 for a new year with new video essays. As always, don’t forget to catch up on The Deep Dive’s YouTube playlist and shop The Deep Dive merch here! 🐰

POP CULTURE

Cringe Culture, Pop & Panopticism by naomi cannibal (18:56)

Cringe culture has gone way too far, with its victims including but not limited to dancing in public, K-pop, Roku TVs, brown cabinets, Taylor Swift (sometimes), and Olivia Rodrigo (also sometimes). In today’s social media-driven world, there’s no greater offense than being cringe, trapping us in an invisible panopticon that follows us everywhere we go. And if that sounds dramatic to you, it actually isn’t. In this video, naomi cannibal explores the connection between social media and cringe culture and the ways it forces its targets to conform…or else face the wrath of commenters. In another world, much of the content many would consider “cringe” would be limited to the audiences they’re meant for, too bad this world has TikTok’s algorithm.

BUSINESS

5 Gum: How to Completely Annihilate Your Brand Image by slow start (19:56)

Once upon a time, in the early days of what would become chewing gum’s flop era, Wrigley’s needed a product it could market to teen boys and young adult men. Enter 5 Gum and its epic, almost Marvel-esque ad campaigns with edgy flavor names to match the experience of “what it’s like to chew 5 Gum.” It was so crazy, it actually worked – until it became clear young people just weren’t chewing gum like they used to. In this video, slow start uses 5 Gum’s rise and fall to tell the story of how gum went from being a symbol of youth rebellion to losing ground to the much more practical breath mint. How did chewing gum lose its cool? And whatever happened to 5 Gum’s attempt at marketing to…gamers?

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