Hello! We're back with a fun-sized send. This week, we're talking about ceiling meat, hater-style gameplay, and the Shaggy defense.
The jouse that Sims built
We recently encountered this comic edit in a Twitter thread:
This is an r/bonehurtingjuice-style edit of a comic by a right-wing political cartoonist (whose original message has tragically been lost). But where did the concept of a "jouse" begin?
There are few uses of the word in Google Books apart from character names. The greatest concentration of jouse-posting seems to have happened on the Sims 3 subreddit starting in 2021, where players used the game's Create-A-Style feature to apply denim textures to every conceivable surface. (This powerful tool was removed from The Sims 4, users joked, because people could not be trusted with it.)
The idea also surfaced in a fairly cringe insurance ad in 2023. However, it seems safe to credit the Sims community with the development of the jouse concept, as well as the jokes that now recur whenever it appears ("listen up, here's a story about a little guy who lived in a jeans house," etc.).
New term “qualityslop” willed into being
A popular Tumblr post from October read “had a dream the new online buzzword was ‘qualityslop.’” The replies were full of people imagining what would fall under this imagined but instantly contentious label—Pathologic? The Shining?
But hasn’t this already been a critical piece of the contrarian's toolkit for decades? Wouldn’t “qualityslop” just be a new generation's name for “Oscarbait”? Isn’t this what Pauline Kael was talking about when she claimed that movies like 2001 were “no more than trash in the latest, up-to-the-minute guises, using ‘artistic techniques’ to give trash the look of art”?
Genshin Impact’s Roblox initiative underwhelms
We talked a while back about Genshin’s plan to just add Roblox to their existing game by bolting on a new custom map mode and editor. This plan has now become a beautiful reality known as “Miliastra Wonderland,” accessible to any player with the patience to sit through an interminable cutscene. It’s the kind of thing that you open once in return for some gacha-game carrot and then forget about. (To avoid disrupting the planned economy of Genshin Primogems, Miliastra introduces its own dazzling spread of premium geodes and gems.)
But like any big UGC portal, it quickly spawned many joke games and recreations:
- Playing Genshin Impact inside of Genshin Impact
- A version of Doom with recessed lighting made out of Genshin’s “Raw Meat” textures
- Several versions of Bad Apple
Chum Box
AI
Meta defended itself against allegations of downloading porn to feed its AI models [link]. To the untrained eye, this looks similar to the Shaggy defense [link] that downloaders used unsuccessfully in the 2000s to defend against RIAA suits based on IP addresses.
Sora 2 users found that they could (occasionally, sort of) slip copyrighted characters past the video generator's censor by writing absurd prompts like "NOT COPYRIGHT 3RD PARTY CONTENT...character being named Spoongelim eating a hamburger" [link].
Games
The Video Game History Foundation released a bunch of rejected voice lines from MLB Slugfest 2003 where the announcers say things like "this guy should be beaten to death" and "Tim, when you were playing baseball with your dad, did he ever just backhand you?" [link]
A Cybershell video tracked down the origin of a gif of a low-poly cat racing around a Daytona USA-looking track [link]. It turns out to be from 1997's Scud Race Plus, and the cat it was based on belonged to director Toshihiro Nagoshi, who went on to create the Yakuza series.
No GTA stunt is rad enough to fix Michael's depression [link]
Streamer CaseOh staked a claim to being the only Chris Redfield fan on the planet [link]
One Dead by Daylight killer, The Unknown, sucks so much that players call him “The Harmless” [link]. Like every DBD story, this feels like high school bullying.
Steam rolled out a very helpful calendar feature for upcoming game releases [link]
A brutal demonstration of hater gameplay [link]
The internet
There are many Sopranos mashups on the internet, but this is the first one that feels absolutely right [link]
"100 million particle moose dropped on a right-angled wedge" [link]
A value pack of riffs about bringing famous thinkers back to life [link]
Angels in America with Sesame Street characters [link]
Music
Neat behind-the-scenes video from a Vocaloid producer includes a surprising use of an Xbox 360 controller [link]
A strange method for distorting songs in Ableton [link]
Connect with EX
- Feedback? Hit reply or email team@exresearch.co
- Follow us on Twitter [link]
- Follow us on Threads [link]
- Follow us on Bluesky [link]
- Support us with a donation by clicking Account
One Last Thing
He has fallen victim to a fishing call
