Meet the Twitch livestreamers taking over YouTube, how the riots in France are translating onto social media, and get ready for a hyper-specific Halloween. But first:
Slang of the Week: “Booooo”
Want to spook your teen this weekend? Try saying “Booooo” to them and crossing your eyes. Teens are filming videos of themselves going back and forth between their friends, saying “boooo” and crossing their eyes as they get closer to the camera—then cutting their participation out of the video, so it’s just their friend looking silly (as opposed to both of them looking equally silly). According to a teacher who decodes slang on TikTok, this trend has found its way into the classroom with students using it as a greeting, or as a way to fill silence. The point is that it means nothing.
And now for our three conversations..
1. Peanuts and Queso
What it is: Day after day, gaming streamers @TheBurntPeanut and @CaseOh repost their Twitch livestreams onto YouTube—and rank among the highest-trending videos on the site. Who are they, and what is their content like?
Who they are online: @TheBurntPeanut (whose eyes and mouth are superimposed onto an image of a CGI peanut) has built a brand around trash-talking his way through first-person shooters like ARC Raiders, Escape from Tarkov, and the new Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4. His videos are frenetic, he calls his fans “bungulators,” and he livestreams simultaneously on Twitch (2.6M followers), YouTube (2.09M subscribers), and Kick (134.1K followers). @CaseOh, on the other hand, is a much more down-to-earth, self-deprecating influencer with a thick Arkansan accent. He plays indie horror games with jumpscares, shouts but doesn’t swear (at least not as much as Peanut), and playfully jokes with his audience about his weight. He reposts edited videos from his Twitch livestreams—where his mom moderates the chat—onto YouTube, where his following (11.2M subscribers) is even bigger than it is on Twitch (9.17M followers).
Continue the conversation: Why do you think these two streamers became so popular?
2. Mouvement Lycéen
What it is: France’s biggest youth protest movement in decades began as students protested for replacements for absent teachers and repairs on old school buildings. Now five weeks later, protests across Parisian metropolitan areas have resulted in the destruction of a 19th-century city hall, numerous demonstrations, and widespread looting.
Why it’s happening: On September 30, a 16-year-old was allegedly blinded in their right eye by police weapons. A week later, a 15-year-old’s hand was blown off in the protests by a police grenade—though accounts differ over whether he picked it up before it exploded. In the third weekend of October, more than 3,000 shops were looted, 2,500 arrests were made, and nearly 1,000 police officers were injured, according to The New York Times. Across the Atlantic, teens are coming across viral TikToks of the school conditions in France, depicting school buildings with broken toilets, rat infestations, and moldy ceilings. The French government has promised (paywall) to put forward a plan to address the students’ grievances by the end of October, but it doesn’t seem likely any quick fix will fully address the feelings of anger and abandonment these young people have expressed.
Continue the conversation: What have you heard about the protests in France?
3. Nicheoween
What it is: Hyper-specific Halloween costumes are expected to dominate tomorrow’s celebrations.
Why it’s new: Costumes used to be about dressing up as something everyone could recognize. But now, they’re likely to be a niche pop culture reference—maybe even a reference within a reference. According to Google’s Frightgeist, young people are dressing up as Nikki from Obsession (with her trademark red zebra halter top), viral NeeDoh and Dumpling squish toys, Agamemnon (from The Odyssey), Lily Lovebraids (from Poppy Playtime), and Captain Clark (from Backrooms). Meanwhile, popular DIY costume influencers aren’t just Harry Potter’s Hermione—they’re Hermione from that one scene at the Yule Ball. They’re Celia Mae, Mike Wazowski’s love interest in Monsters, Inc. If you don’t know who most of the characters ringing your doorbell tomorrow are, look out for anyone wearing a blonde wig—if they aren’t Princess Rosalina (from Super Mario Galaxy), they’re probably paying homage to Dolly Parton.
Let’s translate this one further…
For many people, Halloween is simply a time for trying on niche costumes, a time to demonstrate cultural savvy, and of course, a time for eating too much sugar.
But it is also a time when we are surrounded by reminders of our own mortality, and of the existence of a world beyond our own. From images of ghosts and ghouls to variously macabre yard displays, each year Halloween becomes a time to reckon with the fact that we are, as Genesis 3:19 puts it, “dust,” in a culture that usually tries to keep us from remembering that.
On a family walk after dinner last week, my two-year-old daughter pointed at a fifteen-foot tall skeleton and asked, simply, “Who’s that guy?”
And while I don’t think she’s quite ready to learn about everything above—the topic of bones hasn’t quite made it into our version of The One Conversation—that hasn’t stopped me from wondering how I might broach the deep end of these topics, if/when she started really asking questions.
“That’s a skeleton,” was all I said, trying to sound as non-spooky as I could.
“That’s cool,” was her only response. And then, she was ready to talk about clouds.
Perhaps for us too, it’s easy to blaze past the implications of these decorations, because we’ve gotten so used to them. But according to Keith Page writing for Mere Orthodoxy, the meaning of these decorations has also changed. The fifteen-foot Home Depot skeleton is now more than just a reflection of some spooky postmortem situation—it is also a reflection of the state of the world here and now. As Page puts it, “The lawn ornament that embodies our moment is the most disembodied one: the fifteen-foot skeleton. Our age may be comfortable with this skeleton because we have learned to distrust flesh-and-blood. For Christians, the calling remains the same: to be the body of Christ.”
Page points out that skeletons may now be more palatable decor than, say, statues of historical political figures—because a generic skeleton doesn’t come with any political baggage. But perhaps the church too can take a cue from the changing meaning of the skeleton. We, also, were meant to do more than simply gesture toward what might happen to us after death; we were also meant to infuse the world here and now with life.
For more context and nuance, check out our Roundtable podcast at 12pm Fridays on Spotify, Apple, YouTube, or wherever you listen to podcasts. In the meantime, here are three questions to help you continue the conversation with your teens:
- Why do you think our culture gets so into Halloween?
- How often do you think people think deeply about the spooky decorations they see?
- Do you think it’s good to have a time of year to reflect on death? Why or why not?
Parenting together,
Evan Barber and the Axis Team
In Other News…
- JAŸ-Z, who once rapped, “I said no to the Super Bowl. You need me, I don’t need you,” is the official halftime performer of 2027’s Super Bowl.
- The Milwaukee Brewers defeated the Tampa Bay Rays Wednesday night to earn their first ever World Series title, and more people watched than expected!
- The finale of YouTuber Amelia Dimoldenberg’s hit interview show Chicken Shop Date, where she interviews celebrities on, well, a date in a chicken shop, is getting a one-night theatrical release.
- Dictionary.com’s word of the year is “maxxing,” which is technically a suffix, not a complete word. ☝️🤓(It’s a little better than last year’s, which was 6-7). Also, we made a YouTube video about Looksmaxxing.
- Jennifer Lawrence has had quite the week, making Dancing with the Stars contestant Connor Wood crash out (in a good way), appearing on the podcast Call Her Daddy (confirming that she’s in the forthcoming The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping), and getting meme’d over her deadpan stare in the announcement of her haircare line.
A note on how we use AI: At Axis, we are working hard to stay human. Every week, a small team of writers based in California, Colorado, and New York writes this newsletter. We continue to do all the writing, fact-checking, and hands-on developmental editing. We sometimes use Claude or Perplexity for preliminary research, grammar checks, and titling suggestions. All em-dashes are our own—because we love them.