CCTV 042: COMPLEMENTARY CODES
CCTV 042: COMPLEMENTARY CODES
COMPLEMENTARY COLORS TV IS A PRODUCTION OF CULTURAL FAN-FICTION & UNDERCURRENTS
This week’s Cultural Fan-Fiction is about parents leaching off their extremely online children.
I stopped going to school weeks ago.
I don’t need to anymore. I’ve been rich, ever since I animated a bitmoji dog, Muffinz, to jump into famous Youtube videos & TikToks. It plays around in other people’s videos, licking their faces, and even wags its tail when music gets loud. I thought it wasn’t that crazy, but then Muffinz hit the big time. All of the sudden, the Muffinz version of a Twitch stream would be more famous than the real one.
My favorite is the one where Miley Cyrus is explaining why we need to defund the Vatican and Muffinz gets spanked by il Papa. Lady Gaga retweeted it and claimed that Muffinz was the Hand of God. My AI dog even has a PR guy now, who babysits when mom & dad are meeting with investors. I just hate it when he calls me Muffinz instead of my real name.
Here’s the real trouble, followers—I’m starting to worry that my parents are cashing in on Muffinz’ fame.
I didn’t really understand money before, but now, each time one of Muffinz’ vids gets meme’d, mom and dad get so excited. Look, I’m a good kid. I even send a tithe to Brangelina’s charity (mom’s idea), and ship off another 15% to this organization trying to hunt down a guy named KONY. I can’t believe they’ve been looking for him for ten years.
Dad is our accountant and spends most of his day at WeWork, which he says makes sense because he basically owns the place. At least mom spends time with me when I’m not making vids, home schooling me with the new DeVos EduPlan. I’ll be fine. Plus, Muffinz isn’t like other dogs, he trains himself on a neural network, so he gets funnier over time. I wish I did.
Online, people keep calling Muffinz 'parasitic to user generated content’, but really it is just a big robot that dumps money in our family bank account. One troll chirped me and said I was a half wit bitcoin miner without any bits of brain. Well, I’m 12, so maybe you should invest thirty-five million dollars in the fastest growing healthcare company ever, TheraDos, and then make fun of little kids? One of us is saving the world, jerk!
But when all is said and done, I don’t mind that my parents live a better life because of me. Mom says don’t complain. She says when I’m seventeen, I can start Illinois’ first TikTok house, but for now Muffinz comes first, then maths, and then maybe time to hang out with some IRL friends.
Anyway, Muffinz is now the mascot of three DTC pet food companies, I got a full ride to iStanford on the Scott Galloway Virtual Learning Scholarship, and if I get angry enough with mom, Brad & Angie have pledged to adopt me.
Inspo & Expo
Light: Our inspiration for this week’s Cultural Fan-Fiction is this Verge article about neural networks generating memes.
Medium: Protestchella = Protests x Coachella. Brilliant piece by weed raver Michelle Lhooq on how LA’s protests were a chance to break out those music fest fits that were sitting around all of quar. Thanks to Complementary Companion P.F. Moore for sending this one our way.
Heavy: This Mother Jones profile of Steve Bonnell, aka Twitch superstar “Destiny” is a fantastic dive into the psyche of one of the zeitgeist’s most compelling and curious characters. We first learned about Destiny on the NYT podcast Rabbit Hole, and his tactics of trolling right-wing hacks on video game live streams. A Brave New World.
Books Coming In The Mail
Lot, Short Stories by Bryan Washington
Very excited to see a Houston-native win the Dylan Thomas award for short stories.
The collection is a portrait of the author’s home town, one of the most diverse cities in the US. Half of the stories follow a young gay man, with a black mother and a Latino father, who wrestles with his own sexuality and the challenging attitudes of those around him. The rest roam among the city’s male sex workers, drug dealers and its lowest paid, charting the violence and uncertainty of lives in neighbourhoods caught between neglect and gentrification.
Breath is the new sourdough. We’ve been diving into understanding and controlling our breathing with our friends at Chorus Meditation and are thinking about how to focus on our lungs a little bit more.
No matter what you eat, how much you exercise, how skinny or young or wise you are, none of it matters if you’re not breathing properly. Journalist James Nestor travels the world to figure out what went wrong and how to fix it. The answers aren’t found in pulmonology labs, as we might expect, but in the muddy digs of ancient burial sites, secret Soviet facilities, New Jersey choir schools, and the smoggy streets of São Paulo. Nestor tracks down men and women exploring the hidden science behind ancient breathing practices like Pranayama, Sudarshan Kriya, and Tummo and teams up with pulmonary tinkerers to scientifically test long-held beliefs about how we breathe.
CULTURAL FAN-FICTION OR REAL HEADLINE?