When beekeepers get in beefs on TikTok, I am here to tell you about it.
This week’s biggest internet fight: BeeKeeper brawl on TikTok
Like any sensible person, I think we should kill all bees and the rest of nature as quickly as possible, but there are apparently people out here who actually like bees, and no one likes bees as much as Erika Thompson. But there’s some serious drama buzzing around TikTok’s favorite beekeeper.
Thompson is the undisputed queen of online bee-related video content. She regularly racks up tens of millions of views from fans who love watching her delve right into colonies full of stinging monsters to relocate bees to new hives, mess around with swarms, and probably pollinate flowers herself. And she does it all without any safety equipment—no bee mask, bee suit, or even gloves.
A lot of TikTok beekeepers are not fans, though, particularly a nameless beekeeper at LA Honeybee Rescue who posted a series of videos calling out Thompson for setting a dangerous precedent, covering up help from her husband, and misrepresenting the nastier side of bee-life.
“I don’t see her using power tools. I don’t see her using ladders… we all know you’re faking. She looks really pretty doing it because it’s fake,” The beekeeper said stingingly on the takedown video.
“I had bees get through my hood and sting me all over my face when I was 35 feet up in that tree,” she added.
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I’m no apiculturist, but honey, maybe the bees keep stinging your face because you have so few TikTok followers? Maybe they smell your jealousy? Either way, let’s hope the drama consumes the full attention of all the world’s bees, distracting them from pollinating our crops, so nothing can grow again and we can end this sad charade once and for all.
This week in celebrities you’ve never hear of: Khabane Lame
As far as I know, TikTok’s latest instant-sensation, Khabane Lame, has offered no opinion of beekeeping protocol, but his channel is the funniest thing on the internet anyway. Lame’s schtick is simple and genius: He reacts with a perfect deadpan headshake to overly complicated and/or ridiculous “lifehack” videos, demonstrating how easy it is to not hack something—to just peel a banana and eat it, say. (It’s easier to watch than describe, so check it out.)
Before Lame started posting last year, he was an unemployed factory worker in Italy; now he has more than 65 million followers, and he did it without fancy production, brand sponsorships, or Hollywood money backing him up—just a solid idea, a cheap camera, and pitch-perfect facial expressions.
Viral video of the week: Army of the Dead pitch meeting
A couple weeks ago, I geeked out over then-upcoming zombie heist flick Army of the Dead. This week I offer my apology in the form of an imaginary pitch meeting for the flick from YouTubers Screen Rant.
(Heavy Spoilers Ahead!) The video exposes every logical leap, bad decision, abandoned subplot, and failure of this turgid, stupid movie, including the fact that the owner of the casino hires a crew to steal money that already belongs to him by breaking into a safe instead of just giving them the combination to the safe, the plot-convenient fact that helicopters can fly out of Las Vegas but not into it, and the characters’ tendency to engage in long heart-to-heart talks while their imminent demise at the hands of zombies is just moments away. The one thing they missed, though, is how graceful Army of the Dead’s zombies are. I can deal with fast zombies, strong zombies, and even zombies having zombie babies, but, as my brother-in-law Dana pointed out, some of the attack scenes look like the cast of Jesus Christ: Superstar has risen from the grave, and that’s a step too far.
This week in Pride: Internet mocks corporate Pride gear
It’s June, Pride month, and that means the annual internet tradition of mocking the tone-deaf way multinational corporations market to the LBGTQ community.
From Nike’s brand new “Be True” kicks to WalMart’s “Born this way” rainbow shirts, everyone is getting into the “we love gay people—this month” spirit, and the internet is firing back with memes and jokes. Here’s a funny collection from Buzzfeed, and check out Twitter’s Chris Thorburn photoshops of rainbow-logos from evil corporations in dystopian science fiction movies.
While most of the ribbing seems to be in good fun, some people online are legit pissed (angry people online? I can’t believe it!) I understand how corporations noticing what you’re about and trying to sell it back to you is ridiculous and enraging—but on the other hand, brands recognizing that LGBTQ people are a just another market segment to exploit seems like progress to me.
The first TikToker in Space
In what I can only hope becomes a widespread trend, a TikToker is being shot into space. It’s not the next evolution of cancel-culture though; space tourism company Virgin Galactic is sending bioastronautics researcher/online influencer Kellie Gerardi into space to conduct experiments while weightless.
Gerardi, who has more thank 400,000 followers on TikTok, said her dream is “uninterrupted consecutive minutes of time in space in microgravity to do my research.” And the dream is about to come true.
“We’re sending her into space, but there are no plans for her to return,” a Virgin spokesperson did not say. “Ideally, her body will drift forever in a black and soundless void,” they did not add.
