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Over the course of five Predator films, the titular alien hunters have taken on jungle grunts, LA cops, and even a few xenomorphs. But at a panel for the forthcoming sequel The Predator at Comic-Con International, it was revealed there was an equally super-powered warrior residing among the movie’s cast: Thomas Jane.

"Thomas," asked Sterling K. Brown, The Predator's Will Traeger, "would you do everyone a favor and show them your feet real quick?" Jane, the star of such Comic-Con-beloved hits as The Expanse and The Punisher, obligingly propped his bare toes on the table. "Thomas doesn’t wear shoes!" Brown exclaimed. "He walked everywhere in Vancouver, in the middle of winter, with nothing on his feet. I thought, 'You should be cold right now!'"

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The panel for The Predator was full of similarly personal revelations, as the film’s cast members—including Olivia Munn, Keegan-Michael Key, Jake Busey, Trevante Rhodes, and Augusto Aguilera—gathered in Hall H to reveal early footage from the movie, which is directed and co-written by Shane Black. The original 1987 Predator, Black said, "was a piece of perfect pop art: The alien craze of the ‘80s and the Rambo craze, put together. And it had a wink to it, because you had these muscular guys with weapons that were absolutely ridiculous." (Not to mention the occasional ridiculously choppy one-liner.)

Black's new version, he noted, was intended as a sort of "Dirty Half-Dozen.” In one clip screened for the hall, Munn—playing a government biologist—finds herself in a hotel room with a group of sarcastic ex-soldiers who've just escaped an encounter with a deadly Predator. "They have me on call," Munn’s character says, "in case there’s … contact." Throwing together a bunch of outsiders, and casting the movie with a squad of recognizable character actors, gave Black "a chance to bounce people off each other," he said,"and make these guys as relatable as possible."

That bounciness continued after filming was finished. "My favorite thing on a film is set building an almost insta-culture," said Key. "We spent a lot of time in my trailer watching YouTube videos, blaxploitation movies, Dolemite movies, The Room. We would do everything in our power to get some moment from those movies into our movie.” Key was especially keen on getting one of his favorite blaxploitation lines into The Predator. "I tried six times: 'Bitch, are you for real?'"

Black also debuted a sequence in which a Predator—after nearly offing an on-the-run trio played by Munn, Room star Jacob Tremblay, and Logan’s Boyd Holbrook—is annihilated by a bigger, meaner, never-before-seen Predator that’s eager for revenge. "There’s a faction on Predator homeworld that’s been bested not once, but twice, by earthlings," said Black. "They send their champions to earth, and they don’t come home. They don’t like that. So we figured they want to punch back."

So did Munn, who wanted to make sure her scientist character could handle a firearm with relative ease. "When you see a movie where a guy picks up a gun, he just automatically knows how to use it," she said. "And girls are just like, 'I don’t know…' I didn’t want her to be proficient, because she’s not a soldier. But I wanted her to know how [to shoot], the ways guys know how."

Yet the biggest skill on display was Jane’s foot-free lifestyle (the actor explained that he spent years in a shoeless society, and was kicked out after wearing shoes to a restaurant). It was a moment that made everyone in the room think: Are you for real? "As a black man who has fought really hard to get good tennis shoes," said Sterling, "and to have good coverage on both of his feet. I’m like, this is a white man who’s just like, 'My feet are tough enough.'" Whether they’re tough enough to help The Predator crew outrun the enemy remains to be seen.

You've got your Netflix subscription and Amazon Prime. You’ve got HBO Now, at least when Game of Thrones is on, and maybe pay up for a more specialized service too, like Crunchyroll or the WWE Network. It’s already a lot! Bad news: It’s about to get worse.

The notion that streaming services might someday totally supplant the monolithic cable package has glittered on the horizon for years now. But as that future becomes increasingly the present, an uncomfortable reality has set in: There’s too much. To Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, and HBO Now, add WarnerMedia, Disney, and Apple as omnibus, general-interest streaming destinations. Investors have poured a billion dollars into something called Quibi, which has an unfortunate name but exclusive Guillermo del Toro content. And the niche options continue to proliferate as well, whether it’s DC Universe or College Humor. If we’re not at the breaking point yet, we’re surely about to find it.

“Everybody wants to talk about how much money’s being spent on content. But as a consumer, don’t you already feel like you have enough content choices out there?" says Dan Rayburn, a streaming media analyst with Frost & Sullivan. "Our eyeballs and the time that we have to consume media of any kind is being challenged."

There’s nothing wrong, of course, with choice. That’s especially true if your interests run more niche, outside the relatively anodyne confines of a cable package, or even the relatively mainstream offerings of Netflix and Amazon. "The abundance of programming and commercial viability of smaller audiences is making it possible for storytelling from a much wider range of experiences to finally be available," says Amanda Lotz, a professor of media studies at the University of Michigan and author of Portals: A Treatise on Internet-Distributed Television.

But while tailored, a la carte services have long been the promise of streaming TV, it's starting to look more like a series of pricey buffets. Competing megacorporations are all pumping billions into original content, much of it designed for mass appeal. (Apple has reportedly mandated no "gratuitous sex, profanity or violence" on its incoming streaming service.) And even if each also produces more experimental or idiosyncratic options, you’ll be hard pressed to access all or even most of them. The show that scratches your itch won't necessarily be on a platform you can afford to pay for.

Jennifer Holt, UCSB

"Realistically you're not going to have a consumer with more than two or three services per month,” says Rayburn. Especially when you consider that these streaming services still largely supplement, rather than replace, traditional cable packages. There’s only so much disposable income to go around, no matter how much you care for The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.

"In a lot of ways it's an extension of the narrowcasting that began in the 1980s, with cable," says Jennifer Holt, a media studies professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. But by advancing that trend, it also exacerbates the fragmentation of culture that came with it. Again, that has plenty of potential benefit, giving otherwise marginalized perspectives more opportunities for representation. But it paradoxically may also make those shows increasingly hard to find.

"There was a time, the '70s or the '80s, when you knew what channel your show was on," says Holt. "That kind of got lost in a lot of ways, with certain streaming services. Now maybe the idea of branding this content will take on different dimensions. You’re going to have to know where to find it. It becomes more work."

Meanwhile, the splintering of services also threatens to hasten the decay of a broader, shared cultural conversation. "It starts to evacuate the potential for any real communal, cultural touchstone when we’re all watching completely different services," says Holt.

All else being equal, one might expect all of this to be a blip, a temporary flash of exuberance that will subside once good old fashioned market forces clear away the rabble. But the untimely death of net neutrality, along with a merger-friendly Justice Department, have left all else quite explicitly unequal.

"I think the bigger issue is what happens in the aftermath of net neutrality's elimination," says Lotz, who argues that allowing ISPs to enforce paid prioritization is "more likely to change the marketplace for the services in profound ways."

AT&T owns WarnerMedia, for instance, and so can not only potentially offer its impending streaming service at a discount—or for free—to its mobile or cable customers, but could prioritize its performance on its network, and downgrade that of rivals. (WarnerMedia hasn’t announced pricing yet, but if any of this seems far-fetched, note that AT&T already offers DirecTV Now discounts for mobile customers, and doesn’t count DirecTV Now streaming against data caps.) Comcast, meanwhile owns NBCUniversal, which gives it a sizable stake in Hulu; it also recently acquired Sky, which operates Now TV, a popular streaming service internationally.

The cable-content hybrid companies, in fact, win no matter what. Even if you pass on their streaming service, they can always make up the difference by charging more for broadband.

Dan Rayburn, Frost & Sullivan

And then there are the companies for whom a streaming platform is a means to a greater end. Apple isn't an ISP, but it does want to sell iPhones and iPads and Apple TVs, and will reportedly make at least some aspects of its streaming service free for hardware customers—just as, Holt notes, the early radio programs only existed to help radio companies sell more radios. Likewise, Amazon attempting to drive Prime subscriptions. All of which is to say, the field will stay crowded for longer than you might expect.

There are some bright spots in all of this, especially when you think small. "The services that work very well are the niche services, the ones that are targeting a specific type of user with a specific type of content," says Rayburn. Those more targeted services have also forged new business models; Rayburn points to CuriosityStream, which recently embraced sponsors to help lower prices for viewers.

And Holt notes that most popular streaming services currently have fairly liberal password-sharing policies; as long as that holds true, she says, piracy could be the tie that binds us.

As more megaservices fill the landscape, though, one wonders how long before the niche upstarts feel the squeeze. And as your streaming options continue to kaleidoscope, what's coming next looks promising, sure, but also daunting. Especially given who it's coming from.

"The combination of the digital distributor, whether it's the mobile phone or the ISP, and the content delivery, to me that’s the bleak future we’re headed toward," says Holt. "I don’t think it's going to work out for consumers."

This week, the competition between Steam and Epic's new online storefront heats up the frozen tundras of post-apocalyptic Russia, while zombie games hit their stride (for the third or fourth time), and the rumor mill is gearing up for a second version of the Switch hardware, right on schedule. Let's get to it.

Jeez, Resident Evil 2 Did Well, Huh?

Last week, the remake of Resident Evil 2 came out. And since then, it has shipped, according to the Hollywood Reporter, 3 million units around the globe. These are very, very good numbers, even beating out the newest entry in the series, the acclaimed Resident Evil 7. Just goes to show: Nostalgia sells, and Resident Evil is way more popular than its recent history might suggest.

After all, the franchise went through a long, long period of decline, only picking up in the past few years with good games that returned to its horror roots. But the fan base still exists, which means that we're probably going to see a lot more Resident Evil—and probably a lot more of these remakes.

Epic Games Scores an Epic Exclusive With Metro: Exodus

Exclusives may be common on consoles, but not for PC game stores. In some cases, a game might be limited to the store run by its publisher—like EA's Origins or Bethesda's game store—but third-party games tend to be available on all the major stores, including Steam, GOG, and (increasingly) the Epic Games Store. Not so for Metro: Exodus. The upcoming first-person shooter is, as of this week, an exclusive to the Epic Games Store and, after six months of anticipation, is no longer available on Steam at all (though preorders will still be honored).

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This is, pardon the language, a big frickin' deal in the PC gaming scene. We've been chronicling the slow-burn competition between Epic and Valve's Steam store for the past few months, but this is more than a slow burn; this is a shot aimed directly at the heart of Valve's monopoly. If major third-party games can just … disappear from the shelves, that spells legitimate trouble for Valve. And it's hard to think this will be the only time it happens. This year's going to be wild, y'all.

Nintendo Is Reportedly Working on a Smaller Version of the Switch Hardware

With the Nintendo Switch selling incredibly well and the console now well into its life cycle, it's only a matter of time before we reach that hallowed Nintendo tradition: the midcycle console upgrade. Until now, that tradition has been for handhelds—the 3DS had the XL, the DS had the Lite—but it's seeming as though the Switch will join that crew. According to a new Nikkei report, as interpreted by Variety, that something will be a smaller, lighter version of the hardware, with fewer features but a skinnier price tag.

To put on my speculation hat, that sounds a lot like a dockless Switch. While the Switch's ability to play at home and on the go is an essential part of the system identity—it's in the name, after all—to make a strictly handheld version makes a lot of sense, both from a consumer standpoint and from a design one. The Switch Mini, maybe?

Recommendation of the Week: Unreal Gold, PC

If you've never played the original Unreal, you owe it to yourself. One of the best early first-person shooters is also one of the most overlooked. While its successor, Unreal Tournament, became a mainstay of competitive gaming, the original isn't often talked about, which is a shame. It's creative, a little bizarre, and full of wonderful alien environments; the wide vista in the game's opening is still one of my favorite level design moments ever. Play this.

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Tech Effects: How Video Games Impact You

Can video games help improve hand-eye coordination? Can they help train your brain and improve your cognitive abilities? WIRED Senior Editor Peter Rubin tests his skills against a pro sports gamer to find out if gaming can improve your brain and body.

Click:rotary forged wheels

Steve Lacy’s “4Real,” which the polymath guitarist released on SoundCloud earlier this month, is a stew of delicious production; it’s got gushing bass, teenage quirk, and the sweet urgency of young love. The song’s borders are intentionally blurred—thematically, structurally—but what Lacy feels is unmistakably obvious: the connection he has to his unnamed partner is no illusion. “We kiss, we hug, we dance and fight/We laugh, make up, then we go all night,” he sings, before diving headfirst into the hook. “It’s such a thrill to love you when it’s real.”

It’s a love letter with punk spirit, and functions as something of an informal admission to the is-he-isn’t-he curiosities surrounding Lacy’s sexuality (without all the high drama others have placed on it). If you want to make something, Lacy told WIRED in April, “grab whatever you have and just make it.” With its echoes of Prince and Bilal, “4Real” confirms Lacy’s decidedly anti-pop undertaking: that a song can, and should, be a nebulous configuration—sometimes with no center, no formal structure, or even a skillful conclusion.

Lacy’s inventiveness is well earned. As a member of Los Angeles-based R&B outfit The Internet, he helped executive-produce the group’s Grammy-nominated 2015 album Ego Death, has collaborated with Kendrick Lamar (“PRIDE”) and Kali Uchis (“Only Girl”), and in February released his 6-track “song series” Steve Lacy’s Demo to much acclaim. The solo collection’s unifying sentiment was its tightly controlled production; at a slender 13 minutes in its entirety, its songs never felt like they might swiftly veer off the tracks. But “4Real” is a different kind of creative proposition for Lacy—raucous and reckless, with hints of madness. It’s a little like falling in love.

When the song suddenly cuts short—Lacy’s own doing, a move reflective of the freeform ethos SoundCloud often incubates—it doesn’t matter. His intention is not a neat resolution, or even a resolution at all, but to unsettle the assumptions of the listener. The DNA of music is meant to be fussed with, and Lacy disbands all formalities with “4Real.” What you think matters, doesn’t. In his hands, there are no rules for true songcraft—and the end result, wherever one lands, is all the more rewarding because of its abruptness, its surprise.

In recent years, artists like Frank Ocean, Young M.A, and iLoveMakonnen have ushered queer narratives in popular music, especially within hip-hop and R&B. With “4Real,” Lacy outlines his own narrative, however indistinct. When he uploaded the song to SoundCloud, the track image featured a pixelated photo of him (presumably) and another person (presumably a white guy) in affectionate embrace; the two look as if they might be kissing. “Is anyone gonna question if that is him and a guy? not that it matters but it would be cute,” one user commented. To which another responded: “I just noticed the same thing. Whatevs, homie’s doin his thing.” Lacy’s intention had come full circle—that beauty can be formed from an undefined place.

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How Hip-Hop Producer Steve Lacy Makes Hits With … His Phone

Steve Lacy is a pretty big deal. He's part of the band The Internet, he's a producer for J. Cole and Kendrick Lamar, and he just put out his first solo album which he made on his iPhone.

Things are surprisingly quiet on the Star Wars front right now, even though Solo is slowly but surely making its way to its release date and Episode IX is prepping to shoot in a few months. But, as everyone should know by now, there's always something stirring in the galaxy far, far away. (For all we know, there's a new Death Star under construction right now…) Need to get caught up on all the latest? You've come to the right place.

Rian Johnson Won’t Be Scared Off By Fans

The Source: Star Wars: The Last Jedi writer-director Rian Johnson himself.

Probability of Accuracy: If Johnson doesn't know his own mind, we should all be worried.

The Real Deal: For those worried that Rian Johnson’s trilogy of new Star Wars movies would be less ambitious than initially planned after his Star Wars: The Last Jedi was met with some fan rebuke for breaking some long-held beliefs, rest your mind. Things seem to be going just fine. "I feel like every Star Wars thing that ever gets made has a big, loud response because Star Wars fans are passionate and that’s what makes them awesome," Johnson said when asked about the response to The Last Jedi by Fandango’s Erik Davis as SXSW. "I don’t think it’s possible if you’re really telling a story you care about and having it come from your heart it’s just not possible to be intellectually processing what everyone else wants. Nor would it be a healthy thing, I don’t think that’s a good way to tell a story." Hear that, internet?

All the Things You Never Saw on Screen—Revealed!

The Source: The novelization of Star Wars: The Last Jedi

Probability of Accuracy: This comes with the official seal of Lucasfilm, and the input of Rian Johnson himself; it’s very accurate.

The Real Deal: In case you missed it, the new novelization of Star Wars: The Last Jedi features input from Rian Johnson—it also features a bunch of new material and explanations for things that weren't actually seen in the movie, like Han Solo's funeral. For those who don’t want to read the entire book to find out what was added, io9 has a helpful list of the new additions to the story. Our choice for the most important? Probably the details about Supreme Leader Snoke’s backstory, but we're a little Snoke obsessed. Perhaps the most interesting tidbits, though, are the glimpses of Luke Skywalker's alternative life that he saw in visions from the Force itself. It’s almost enough to make you want to pick up the book for real, really.

The Return of the Most Unlikely Bad Guys Ever

The Source: Leaked toy packaging

Probability of Accuracy: Unless the leak is fake, this seems to be surprisingly real.

The Real Deal: In a surprising turn of events, a toy photograph for the forthcoming Solo: A Star Wars Story has given fans a tease that a piece of forgotten Expanded Universe mythology might be making a comeback. As noticed by Star Wars News Net, the villains for the Han Solo prequel appear to be a new take on the Cloud Riders, a criminal gang that first debuted in 1977’s eighth issue of Marvel’s Star Wars comic book, back when everyone involved thought that a version of The Magnificent Seven with a giant green rabbit was the best way to follow-up the movie. We can only hope that this suggests that Solo is going to be far more camp than the trailer has made it seem so far. (And also that Jaxxon, the giant green rabbit in question, is going to make an appearance; after all, he’s already been announced as a canonical character.)

The Force Awakened Earlier Than Folks Thought, Apparently

The Source: An episode of the animated Forces of Destiny series

Probability of Accuracy: This is 100 percent canon.

The Real Deal: The debut of the second season of animated shorts in the Star Wars: Forces of Destiny series answered a question fans never even knew they had—namely, where did Leia get her bounty hunter disguise from the opening of Return of the Jedi? The answer, it turns out, is that it came from a character that wasn’t created until some 30 years after that movie was released: Maz Kanata, who stole the helmet from the real bounty hunter that Leia impersonated. Does this detail explain more than really is necessary? Sure, but it also makes the connections between the original trilogy and the current trilogy all the stronger, and that’s almost certainly the point that Lucasfilm had in mind when the cartoon was made.

The Next Movie Is Going to Be 'All Out War'

The Source: One of the current Star Warriors

Probability of Accuracy: Can a tease really be accurate or inaccurate?

The Real Deal: Meanwhile, thoughts are already turning to what’s going to happen in Star Wars: Episode IX, with John Boyega—currently promoting Pacific Rim: Uprising—telling reporters that, even though he hasn’t read the script yet, he knows it’s going to be a war movie. "Next for me filming-wise is Star Wars: Episode IX in July, and they’ve officially given us a note to start training soon. I’m going to take a holiday before that, because I think Episode IX you know, regardless of where the story goes, and I haven’t read it by the way, is going to be all out war so I know that I’m going to have to do all I can and train for that.” On the one hand, this sounds like an exciting scoop, but on the other, the movie’s title is Star Wars. If this wasn’t going to be a war movie, wouldn’t that be a little … disappointing?

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The Last Jedi Cast Answer the Web's Most Searched Questions

Star Wars: The Last Jedi stars Mark Hamill, Laura Dern, John Boyega, Daisy Ridley, Domhnall Gleeson and Kelly Marie Tran take the WIRED Autocomplete Interview and answer the Internet's most searched questions about Star Wars and themselves.

MoviePass Revives Its Unlimited Plan

March 20, 2019 | Story | No Comments

Some good news for once: After a two-week hiatus, the MoviePass unlimited subscription—the one that lets you see a movie a day, every day, in theaters, for $10 a month—is back. And MoviePass CEO Mitch Lowe says the company is "absolutely committed" to keeping it around.

That wasn’t always a given. Just last week at industry conference CinemaCon, Lowe said “I don’t know” in response to a question about the unlimited plan’s return. And given some of MoviePass' previous experimentation with its offerings—be it temporarily removing subscriber access to select AMC theaters in major cities, or to specific movies—it perhaps wouldn’t have been surprising if the offer that attracted millions of subscribers in a few short months really was too good to be true.

As of today, though, you can get back on the unlimited plan that MoviePass launched last August. You can also go with a variation on the plan the company temporarily replaced unlimited with: three movies a month, plus three free months of iHeartRadio All-Access music streaming, for eight bucks. One of the best deals around has returned—along with a seemingly renewed commitment from MoviePass not to keep its subscribers’ heads spinning.

After all, even that unlimited plan has changed its stripes a few times since launch. In addition to the aforementioned blackouts, MoviePass began limiting certain films to one viewing only. Those regularly introduced limits to unlimited—along with shaky customer service—have stretched subscriber patience thin.

"It’s fine-tuning this model," says Lowe. "Everybody wants a consistent offer. Believe me, I want a consistent offer."

To that end, Lowe says MoviePass is at least through experimenting with AMC theaters. "I can assure you that we are not contemplating or even thinking about removing any AMC theaters," he says. "We found out what we needed to find out, and decided that we want to be good partners and provide a good service to our subscribers, and our subscribers love AMC theaters."

Other recently introduced annoyances may remain, though, as MoviePass combats what Lowe says are the “hundreds of thousands” of subscribers who misuse their membership, using their MoviePass-issued debit cards to make purchases outside the scope of their arrangement. That can range from purchasing a more expensive 3-D ticket—MoviePass draws the line at 2-D screenings—to purchasing multiple tickets for a single viewing, so that, say, a small group can all attend the same Avengers: Infinity War showtime at MoviePass prices. Lowe says some people even accumulate multiple MoviePass cards, and resell the tickets for popular screenings for a profit.

MoviePass CEO Mitch Lowe

That explains why repeat viewings for popular flicks have become verboten, as well as a so-called beta program that asks certain members to upload a photo of tickets purchased with their MoviePass card, to confirm that they’re using their subscription as intended. Fail to do so more than once? The account gets cancelled.

A cynic might say that the system seems like a pretty good way to discourage high-volume users, the kind that cost MoviePass the most money each month. But Lowe says that frequency of use isn’t one of its triggers; the company looks instead for a “pattern of behavior,” primarily focusing on accounts that frequently switch devices. That helps limit fraud, but also creates collateral headaches.

But MoviePass has given itself no margin for error. It needs to bring in enough subscribers, quickly enough, that movie theaters and studios will have no choice but to cut revenue-sharing and marketing deals with it. And it needs those deals to be large enough to keep it from hemorrhaging cash. It literally can’t afford fraud, even if culling it dings honest subscribers in the process.

"Our goal is to be sustainable and offer the service to subscribers," says Lowe. "In order to do that, we have to have a business model that works. You cannot have a small percentage of people eating up a big percentage of your usage, and therefore no one gets the service."

That MoviePass puts the onus on subscribers, rather than building more protections into its app and card to prevent fraud in the first place, may rankle some users. But with any luck, the return of the unlimited plan—along with the commitment to its future, and the détente with AMC—shows that the company has moved past the rockiest stage of experimentation. And in fact, it's about to make some positive moves; Lowe says that by the end of May MoviePass will introduce plans that include more expensive screenings, like 3-D and IMAX, as well as plans to accommodate families and friends.

In the meantime, while a MoviePass subscription may yet come with unexpected hassles—especially if you’re falsely flagged for fraud—at least its core premise remains intact: a movie a day, every day, for $10 a month. It might not be perfect, but for most people it’s still worth the price of admission.

More MoviePass

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Movie Accent Expert Breaks Down Actors Playing Real People

Dialect coach Erik Singer takes a look at idiolects, better known as the specific way one individual speaks. To best break down this concept, Erik analyzes some actors playing real people. Just how close was Jamie Foxx's Ray Charles? What about Cate Blanchett's portrayal of Bob Dylan? Is Daniel Day-Lewis' Lincoln accurate?
Check out more from Erik here: http://www.eriksinger.com/

Last decade, the technology was questionable; this decade, the content. But today the greatest challenge for VR—as both an industry and medium—is no longer the tech or the content but the problem of time and attention. How, exactly, will or does VR fit into the collective human schedule? When and where will large numbers of people “do” VR, in a time when nearly every second of week is contested territory?

Today, I think only the deeply jaded would deny that VR has the goods, or is at least pretty close. The goggles could get better, but they work. Every year the creators of VR films and games produce a handful of stunning, memorable pieces (even if they haven’t always quite figured out the stubborn tension between narrative and interaction). Sundance is an important annual showcase—last year’s Asteroids, Miyubi and Chocolate were unforgettable—and this year brought new wonders like Spheres and Wolves in the Walls, among others. Sure, there could be more of it, and not all VR content is great, but something as simple as a VR tour of the Obama White House can be a memorable, affecting trip.
 
But when or where will people actually spend the time to see this stuff? That’s the hard question, and one that has really burned VR over the last few years. Media history makes it clear that a commercial medium can only survive if it finds itself a reliable, repeatable place in the national schedule for significant numbers of people. (Those that don’t, like the 90s Web-TV efforts Pseudo.com and MSN 2.0, simply die after burning through lots of money).

Looking back, every successful medium has either “killed” a predecessor (in the manner that television displaced radio in the home, or that streaming video is chipping away at cable) or “colonized” time and attention that was unused or used for something else. However, that was somewhat easier when people actually had free time. Today, we live in a media environment where billions of dollars are spent fighting for the time spent “waiting at the bus stop."

Making matters even more challenging: unlike other newish forms of media, VR demands not just passing attention but the absolutely highest quality of devotion. Other media can target brains that are doing something else as well. That helps explain the success of podcasting, which has plundered the driving hours, or social media, which thrives on what Jonah Peretti of Buzzfeed memorably called the “Bored at Work Network". Yet no one waiting for a bus pulls out VR goggles (at least not yet), and you still can’t turn to VR if you get bored at a meeting. Meanwhile, VR units face incredibly tough competition inside what we call our homes but are really more like media studios, festooned as they are with television, videogame consoles, computers, and phones, not to mention old-school interactive units like roommates or family.

All this points to an unexpected near-term future for VR. It wasn’t unreasonable to bet that VR would take over home prime-time hours, but that hasn’t worked out as planned—television and traditional gaming are just too tough as competitors. But the time that is open is the time people spend outside of the home, looking for something to do, alone or with friends. As Pete Billington, director of the critically acclaimed Wolves in the Walls, points out, good VR film experiences really aren’t that dissimilar from live, immersive theatre productions like Sleep No More or, especially, Then She Fell, both of which attract giant lines in New York City.

The solution, then, would be to focus on scaling up immersive theatre to the masses (perhaps focusing on character-driven VR, as Edward Saatchi, a co-founder of Oculus Story Studios, argues). It is the colonization of whatever time people might otherwise spend outside the home, one way or another—at theaters, movies, museums, art galleries, or even just bars—that holds the most promise for VR.

In fact, that’s basically what’s going on in places like New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and across Asia, where VR palaces and arcades are springing up across town like so many bowling alleys or discos in the 1970s. In New York alone there’s the Cinépolis Chelsea, which charges $10 to watch any of four VR films; an IMAX VR center that offers a mix of multiplayer games and movie-based ancillary experiences at up to $15 a pop; and VR World, which bills itself as the largest VR center in the Western Hemisphere, with $39 buying a customer two hours to try out different experiences. (It sells cocktails and plays dance music.)

VR producers could also take a shot at the time many people think they devote to health, whether mental or physical. If people feel some need to spend time relaxing—and if some forms of VR, with their influence over the emotions, can leave one in a blissful and composed mental state after a mere 12-minute experience—perhaps some VR experiences may earn their way into our schedules that way. This also might help solve the problem of making people come back more than once, with exercise-driven VR starting to compete with, say, yoga.

It all suggests that VR, despite what everyone once thought, needs to succeed outside the home before it can succeed inside. It needs to be of value out there before people are convinced they need it in here. Hence, as unlikely as it may sound, a technology that once seemed destined to produce a new generation of shut-ins might play a part in getting people out of their houses.

Early last winter, while browsing Manhattan’s Strand bookstore, roommates Carina Hsieh and Claudia Arisso came upon a keychain featuring a tiny version of the totemic, subway-friendly Strand tote bag. “Claudia said, ‘I wish there was a ‘Commuter Barbie’ who came with a Strand bag,’" Hsieh recently recalled. “And I was like, "Oh my God—we have to do that.”

The two women had never written together before, but they quickly devised a script for a “Commuter Barbie” sketch. Hsieh and Arisso, a packaging designer, created an array of Barbie-sized accessories, including a beanie—made out of a black-dyed baby sock—and gave Commuter Barbie a tiny pair of pink headphones (to help “tune out the creeps when you’re stuck in the middle seat”). After recruiting a pair of young actors, and hiring a jingle writer, Hsieh and Arisso used their Brooklyn living room to shoot the video, for which they spent around $1,600 of their own money. “The production value was a really big concern for us,” says Arisso, 24. “We wanted to make sure people kept watching after three seconds.” After a few weeks of editing, Hsieh and Arisso had a sharp, spot-on three-minute commercial parody ready to go.

Now, they just had to figure out how to get people to watch it.

Only a few years ago, the solution would have been obvious: Throw “Commuter Barbie” on YouTube, and watch it go viral. That’s the way it had worked since “the halcyon days of sketch video,” says Hsieh, 24, who’s also an editor at Cosmopolitan.com. “You'd get a link from a friend, and it would already have three million views.”

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The site’s arrival in 2005 had led to a boom in viral comedy videos, allowing D.I.Y. digital sketches like “Chad Vader” or “Bird Poops in Mouth” to dominate the web for weeks or months, eventually earning millions of views. But that era, Hsieh knew, was long gone: YouTube was so now overstuffed, it was near-impossible for a sketch to randomly break out, and they worried Facebook’s unpredictable algorithms made it tough to know how a video would be seen (or by whom). At one point, Hsieh and Arisso could have uploaded the sketch to Funny or Die to see if it could get some votes—but that site was hardly the hit-maker it once had been.

With no other options, the two women decided to push “Commuter Barbie” via Facebook and Twitter last April, to see how it would play. (They also put the clip on YouTube, but mostly as an afterthought: “That site was just a dead zone to us,” says Arisso). As it turned out, the “Commuter Barbie” creators had more than just a great sketch; they also had excellent timing. The video debuted just as behavioral problems with the New York subway—and the men who ride it—were becoming a city-wide concern, and within 24 hours, “Barbie” had earned write-ups in Gothamist, BuzzFeed, and the The Washington Post’s website (which declared it a “parody masterpiece”). It wound up getting nearly 900,000 views, more than half from Facebook—a hit by modern standards—and the attention helped land Hsieh a manager. Even the official Barbie Instagram account gave its seal of approval.

“We got lucky,” Hsieh says. “It was the ideal version of going viral–even if the numbers don’t necessarily tell that story.” But only a year later, she says, the rules for what works and what doesn’t online have totally changed. “I don’t even know how I’d release future videos,” she says. “It just feels like a weird new landscape.” And even Commuter Barbie doesn’t know how to navigate it.

It’s a common comedy-world dilemma now: In an era of niche audiences, social-feed upheaval, and an overcrowded/underfunded competitive space, the future of the scripted digital-comedy bit—once a staple of online culture—is looking appropriately sketchy. “It seems like a dead scene to me, man,” says comedy writer, performer, and director Matt Klinman, who’s worked with such outlets as Adult Swim and the Onion. In a Twitter thread last month, and in a subsequent interview with Splitsider, Klinman put the blame on Facebook, which he says has harmed publishers with its shifting algorithms and generally closed-off-feeling ecosystem (a common complaint among media executives).

But that’s just one of several factors that have made online sketch-comedy increasingly difficult to pursue. “I know a lot of people who just want to make something for fun and for free, and we have no idea where to put it,” Klinman says. “Where can you put a sketch where people would even see it?”

A good online sketch still has the chance to thrive in 2018: Performers like Jimmy Tatro and Dylan Marron regularly command big numbers on their videos, and as do established outlets like Smosh and College Humor. The recently revived Super Deluxe, meanwhile, has found success with a series of smart, strange, Facebook-friendly bits (including the work of Vic Berger, the best political sketch-artist of the digital era). And the medium itself can still produce the kind of must-watch sketch that comes out of nowhere, as with last month’s hilarious Stranger Things send-up “Joyce Byers’ Master Class.”

But the golden era of online sketch, when the goofiest idea could hit eight-figure views, is clearly over. Earlier this year, Funny or Die—which recently announced it was migrating its original website to Vox—announced a round of layoffs that included several short-form writers. Last summer, NBC Universal shut down Seeso, an all-comedy digital platform that had commissioned a handful of sketch shows. Seriously.TV, a Facebook-heavy, millennial-aimed comedy platform launched with support from Verizon, hasn’t released a new video on its social feeds since last fall. And with the exception of Saturday Night Live segments—always popular, especially if they involve Trump—it’s rare for a short-form web sketch to even approach the million-view mark anymore. To put it in Monty Python terms, online sketch is the parrot at the bottom of a cage: It’s hard to tell if it’s deceased, or simply stunned. But it’s definitely flat on its back.

Low Risk, High Reward

The modern web-sketch boom began, appropriately enough, on a lazy Sunday: In the early hours of December 18th, 2005, someone uploaded a ripped version of SNL’s “Lazy Sunday” digital short to YouTube, which was then just a few months old. The bit earned millions of views, as well as the wrath of NBC Universal, which had it pulled down a few months later. But the real measure of the sketch’s success was the numerous parodies it inspired, many of which went straight to YouTube. “Lazy Monday,” and “Lazy Muncie” were low-budget and star-free, yet they earned hundreds of thousands of views.

Suddenly, you didn’t have to be on SNL to get your crazy-delicious sketches in front of viewers audience. And while sites like College Humor had been increasing its comedy-video output for years, the sudden rush of sketches onto YouTube was proof that sketch comedy—a long-running artform that had already proved adaptable to stage, radio, and TV—was finally ready to spill on to the web. Soon enough, YouTube was a comedy Narnia, birthing dozens of hit clips, from the “Literal Video” of a-ha’s “Take on Me” to “Sexy Pool Party” to the music-spoof “Potter Puppet Pals”.

The platform’s egalitarian ethos and gatekeeper-free structure made it possible for young, unknown comedians to get millions of views, launching several careers along the way: Broad City began as a series of YouTube clips, while Insecure creator Issa Rae’s breakthrough came via her web series “The Misadventures of AWKWARD Black Girl.” “It was like, ‘Oh, wow—with a little bit of production value, and a funny idea, you can be huge on YouTube,” says Nate Dern, a comedy writer and former artistic director at New York’s Upright Citizens Brigade, or UCB. “At the time, that felt like a realistic way to like make it in comedy.”

One advantage of YouTube was they way it offered high visibility at a low budget. “Drive Recklessly,” by the sketch troupe The Midnight Show, starred Heather Anne Campbell as a car-crashing driver who suddenly finds herself staring down Hitler (approximately 43,147 sketches have been performed about Hitler in the last decade; “Drive Recklessly” is one of the few funny ones). The video was shot on a single weekend afternoon, and cost about five bucks. “I think we broke a CD jewel case and threw it in my face for the broken-glass effect,” says Campbell, who wrote the sketch. It went on to earn more than 4 million views, and landed Campbell, already an established writer, some high-profile meetings.

In the years following YouTube’s launch, these kind of cheap digital sketches functioned as the web-culture equivalent of a pop single: Three-minute blasts of distracting fun that were best enjoyed in the company of others. And they were everywhere. Comedy troupes with names like Olde English and Waverly Films were regularly knocking out cult-hit videos, and UCB eventually launched its own short-video arm (its biggest hit, “BP Spills Coffee,” earned 13 million views).

It didn’t take long for investors to show up. In early 2007, Anheuser-Busch teamed with a raft of comedy writers for original-sketch depot bud.TV. A few months later saw the arrival of Funnyordie.com, which enjoyed instant infamy via Adam McKay and Will Ferrell’s potty-mouthed “The Landlord,” which wedded the frills-free look of early YouTube clips with Ferrell’s Blades of Glory-era star power. Funny or Die attracted big names and sizable venture capital, thanks in part to its somewhat stumbled-upon formula for success: Tailor a sketch around a famous person willing to perform “undercover karaoke,” and you’ll get the web’s attention—as well as the attention of other celebs, who will want to get in on the act.

“That’s why those videos went so big: ‘Oh my God, Marion Cotillard put boobs on her face,’” says former Funny or Die writer and director Alex Fernie, who went on to such shows as Childrens Hospital and Do You Want to See a Dead Body? “It was shocking that we could get people to do these things.”

Peak Sketch

Between 2012 and 2013, sketch comedy reached its cultural zenith. Not only was it still possible to pull in several million views for a cheaply made short—often with the help of social media—but sketch was dominating TV for the first time since the mid-’90s, when In Living Color, MAD TV, The Kids in the Hall, and Mr. Show were all challenging the sagging SNL. Fifteen years later, Comedy Central had Key & Peele, Kroll Show, and Inside Amy Schumer, while IFC had Comedy Bang! Bang! and the Peabody-winning Portlandia (which itself had gotten its start as a series of short online videos, under the name ThunderAnt).

The demand for sketch, in every format, was so widespread that Funny or Die released what might be its finest, most self-lacerating bit yet: “Gungan Style,” about a comedy writer whose Star Wars spoof forces him to confront his own existential anxieties. (It’s the ultimate “make sure you watch all the way through” clip.)

“Gungan Style” may have been the first warning of the burnout that was yet to come, among both audiences and performers. “It expresses the exhaustion of being a sketch comedy creator,” says Heather Anne Campbell. “There’s this moment of self-actualization, of wondering, ‘What is this going to mean to people when I'm dead?" Online sketch comedy may have started as venue for realizing low-fi, almost throwaway ideas, but it had become a 24-hour industry that constantly required new material—especially now that Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel had adopted Funny or Die’s celebrity-participation model.

Meanwhile, YouTube was so overstuffed that amateur comedians were no longer competing for views with the sketch team down the block; they were competing with segments from The Colbert Report and SNL itself.

“All the homegrown stuff that was big in the birth of YouTube doesn’t exist anymore, because you have the glossier, fancier version of it online,” says Sachi Ezura, a producer on The Rundown with Robin Thede who has worked in development at such outlets as IFC. “So why would you watch something that looks like it was made in someone’s basement for 100 dollars?”

In the last few years, as view-counts started dropping and fewer comedy sketches seemed to be bubbling into mainstream awareness, even the most optimistic writers and performers were starting to wonder: How much web comedy could audiences stand? When will the bubble burst? And how was anyone making money off this? “I was getting paid to do whatever sketches I thought were funny,” Fernie says of the 2010-2013 golden age. “But if you’d asked me then, I would have said, ‘In no way is this sustainable.’”

Live By the Feed, Die By the Feed

In November 2016, Klinman released a short he’d written, called “Geologist’s Nightmare,” to UCB’s Facebook page. In the bit—which he produced with his sketch team, Whale Thief—Klinman plays a rock-lover haunted by the thought of some people being unable to spot a schist. By that point in his career, Klinman had worked for numerous comedy outlets, had a pretty good idea of what would work online (the Funny or Die video “10 Hours of Walking in NYC as a Man”, which he’d co-written with Dern and some others, had earned more than 7 million views). But the geologist sketch racked up just over half a million views on Facebook. “It did really well among geologists, which was awesome,” he says. “But there was no conversation around it. Before, if you did a big sketch, blogs and media would pick it up too. That just doesn't happen anymore.”

“Geologist’s Nightmare” was released not long after Facebook began pushing publishers toward native video—a move that would convince dozens of outlets to place their trust in the power of the feed. In recent months, a few companies have retreated from the strategy, notably Vox, which recently laid off several native-video employees. Klinman thinks online comedians would do well to back off from Facebook, too. “If you talk to the people who are doing the best stuff online right now, they’re all struggling,” he says.

Klinman claims Facebook’s discouragement of outbound links, as well as its opaque algorithms, has made comedy videos difficult to distribute, not to mention monetize. “It's completely out of your hands how your work gets out to people,” he says. “And if you make something ambitious, there’s no guarantee it won't get swallowed up by some algorithmic change that you have no control over.”

“We are committed to better supporting publishers and creators as they connect with and build their community on Facebook, and while we don’t always get it right, we think we are making progress,” Facebook responded through a spokesperson, name-checking comedy shows on the company’s Watch platform like "Charlene's World" and All Def Digital's "Dad Jokes." “News Feed still remains important for partners as a discovery surface, where people can find and engage around content that matters to them.”

Another Facebook hurdle, says Ezura, is that the platform tends to favor videos that are quickly digested and visually vibrant, and that can be viewed with captions on—not exactly the elements of a self-produced, three-minute comedy sketch. The site’s glut of clickbaity content, Ezura notes, can be demoralizing for those who got into comedy to make smarter, more daring material.

For anyone working in digital media in 2018, that complaint surely sounds familiar. But digital comedy—which rewards viewers who are willing to take risks on unknown, unconventional performers and ideas—has taken some significant hits in the last year. The recent Funny or Die layoffs, as well as the SeeSo shutdown, are a troubling sign that even the most resourceful comedy outlets are having trouble figuring out an increasingly iffy media landscape (though Funny or Die has had significant success in TV, producing such hits as American Vandal and Billy on the Street, and recently launched a new interview-focused web series with IMDb). Unless you’re making sketches for SNL, or for an outlet with a long-established audiences, the odds of reaching even a few hundred thousand people are slim.

Less Premise, More Person

But while many of Klinman’s peers agree that Facebook hasn’t been great for sketch comedy, they also point to a confluence of factors, from audience fragmentation to larger, web-wrought changes in comedy itself. The early ‘00s was a good time to be part of a smart troupe with a dumb name, but in the social-media era audiences prefer stand-alone personalities rather than group efforts. “I've pitched TV shows in the last couple of years,” says Dern, who’s writing a dissertation on comedy. “And especially in the last year, the powers that be are very interested in whether you're an influencer, or how many followers you have.”

A few years ago, it seemed as though sketch and improv had supplanted stand-up as the best-paved road to a comedy career. Now, says Klinman, “the smart comedians are going back into stand-up.” Solo performing can be cheaper than sketch, and it certainly fits the dynamic of social media: Facebook, for example, has helped earn big numbers for comedy series like “Help Helen Smash” and “Funny in Public,” single-performer shows that earn million of views.

But for a generation that came up with a team-focused comedy philosophy–who spent long nights in airless rooms, bouncing ideas off one another until one of them stuck–the retreat from sketch cam be a bummer. “The best comedy, and the comedy I came up doing, is collaborative—making great stuff with others,” sighs Klinman. ”And you just can't do that anymore.”

There’s also the possibility, of course, that sketch comedy is simply resting—and not in the dead-parrot sense of the word. In the nearly 15 years since YouTube made digital sketches an easily accessible form, humor has undergone several digital mutations: Blip-length Vine sketches; weirdo memes; punchline-providing GIFs; and a raft of comedy podcasts, which have become a major creative focus for performers who, years ago, would have been filming videos in their backyard. “The way that you can tell jokes now is more varied,” says Campbell. “I've laughed more at memes in the last year than I have at any individual sketch. And just look at the way Tumblr threads work—it’s like piling on jokes in an improv scene. Perhaps a two- or three-minute sketch is a little bit tired at this point.”

Campbell’s current gig is on the forthcoming Twilight Zone reboot—just one sign that, even though the sketch-boom has ended, the talents behind many of those hit videos have moved on to long-range, long-form success. Comedy Central’s dark satire Corporate was created by members of WOMEN, a Los Angeles-based sketch group that hosted YouTube videos for years. Members of the Birthday Boys, which created the classic 2010 sketch “Pool Jumpers,” landed an IFC show before they became fixtures on hit podcasts and within high-profile writers’ rooms. And on Sunday night, the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay went to Get Out’s Jordan Peele—one of the most celebrated sketch stars of the last decade (even if some fans still confuse him with football ace Equine Ducklings). “The people who cut their teeth on sketch are starting to tell bigger stories,” says Campbell. “They want to make movies, or things that emotionally affect people, because we’re all looking for a larger catharsis right now.

And in the next few years, there’s always the chance that some these sketch-vets will return to the form that made them famous—or that a new generation will take their place. After all, comedy is cyclical: In the early ‘00s, when there were only a handful of sketch shows on TV, the internet made room for a new form of short-form comedy, one that was raggedy and strange, but that eventually worked its way back into the mainstream. It’s a good bet that that some new strand of sketch—or some new form of online humor altogether—is taking shape now, simply waiting for the right moment (and platform) to announce itself. “I think we’re probably at that point now, where I bet we would start seeing something pop up that's a new voice, or a new interesting thing,” says Fernie. “Comedy likes living underground.”

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Three decades after Watchmen's release, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' dark, cerebral graphic novel remains one of most critically celebrated works of the superhero genre. On the commercial side, the comics world of the Justice League (Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, etc.) contains some of the most well-known superhero stories of all time. So last year, when DC Entertainment announced it was going to launch a series that picked up where Watchmen left off and included the Justice League, the move was met with no shortage of questions.

But for series writer (and DC chief) Geoff Johns, it was also necessary. "No one came to us and said, 'Hey, you should do Watchmen in the DC Universe,'" Johns says. "We know the skepticism going in there, and we tried to create a book of the utmost quality and craft beyond what we usually do."

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As the first issue of Johns' series revealed in November, Doomsday Clock takes place seven years after the events of the original, and follows Adrian Veidt—Ozymandias from Watchmen—as he leads a search for Doctor Manhattan in hopes of saving the world from his own plan to save the world. It's a weighty premise, and one that promises a big (or at least compelling) payoff, but the goal wasn't just to shock or awe. Instead, it's a character study of some of the most complex personalities in DC's universe.

“We’re trying to do things that are unexpected, and make the book feel more about people, but it's not about an 'event,'" Johns says. “We’re really trying to do an inward story here, a personal story. The plot is extremely simple: These people are trying to find somebody to help save the world. That’s it. That’s the story."

A significant amount of the anticipation for the series, obviously, involves seeing Watchmen characters meeting members of the Justice League for the first time. The creators wanted to do more than stage a bunch of epic showdowns, though. "You put Batman and Rorschach in the same room, how satisfying is that, really?" says artist Gary Frank. "It’s a very shallow type of fun if all they do is have a fight. Yeah, it’d be great for a couple of pages, but the interesting stuff is how these two characters relate to each other, how they respond to each other.”

Doomsday Clock's deeper purpose also lets them sneak in more meta-textual elements. In the series' second issue, released last week, there's even one—the so-called "Superman Theory"—that Moore himself might approve of.

"It’s a very simple question that these scientists are asking in the DC Universe, which is why are 97 percent of meta-humans American?" Johns explains. "There’s a big textured story in the background that will be unfolding, a conspiracy of sorts, and something that ultimately explodes [into the main narrative]. Things that seem in the background and easily dismissed, actually all become part of the story. As dense as the book is, there are no throwaway moments.”

The mention of back matter points to another way in which Doomsday Clock follows the lead of Watchmen. Like its predecessor, each issue is told in the nine-panel grid structure of Moore and Gibbons' original and each issue features journalism or other in-universe elements that introduce or expand on the central storyline.

That doesn’t mean Doomsday Clock is merely a retread of what came before. "We really wanted to maintain the feel, down to the paper quality, of the original book as much as possible, because the story was going to be so different," Johns says. "We wanted it to be both similar and completely different."

Johns and Frank see their latest series as the pinnacle of a collaboration that stretches back almost 15 years to their time collaborating on Marvel’s Avengers series. The two talk twice every day about the project, Johns says, adding, "I don’t think we’ve ever worked this closely on a book." And probably not as hard, either. Johns estimates Doomsday Clock scripts take five times as long to write as those for other comics. “I love it because it is different and new and it’s challenging," Johns says. "I’m working with the best people in comics. I mean, Gary Frank is the best artist in comics. You can’t deny it."

“I deny it,” Frank laughs. Johns is near apoplectic in disagreement, but eventually submits. "You don’t need to agree," he says. "Just wait until everyone sees issue three.”

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Teen Driving by the Numbers

March 20, 2019 | Story | No Comments

Kids aren’t getting behind the wheel as much these days. But contrary to popular belief, it’s not just because smartphones and social media let them stay connected.

71%

of high school seniors have a driver’s license—the lowest percentage in decades.

15%

of teens cite being able to communicate online as a reason for not getting a license before 18.

36%

say the main reason they’re not learning how to drive is its “overall cost.” State subsidies for high school driver’s ed classes are declining nationwide. Private driving courses average $350.

25%

of teens in households with incomes below $20,000 get their license before 18. That number increases to 52% in households with incomes of $40,000 to $59,999, and 79% in households with incomes of at least $100,000.

84%

of money spent on “taxi services” by users of the teen-focused debit card Current goes to Lyft and Uber, despite those companies’ policies prohibiting unaccompanied riders younger than 18. Companies usually don’t know a cardholder’s age, so there’s no way for ride-­share services to police who orders a car. The onus for reporting rule-breakers falls to the driver.

68%

of teens admit to checking apps while driving.

80%

of teens consider app use while driving “not distracting.”

12%

of crashes involving teens were caused by cell phone use, according to a 2015 study.

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Inside Oracle High •
Call Me, Maybe •
The New Cyber Troops •
Comp Sci Diversity •
Paths to Early Stardom •
Why Teens Don't Drive •
In Love on Strava •
Death of Middle School Romance •
Solving Health Issues at All Stages


This article appears in the April issue. Subscribe now.

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