Everyone watched the Mike Tyson vs. Jake Paul "fight," but the young people you'd think would be pulling for "their" guy didn't seem evident online or in person. The fight was a bucket of ice water dumped on everyone's head, but it taught young people an important lesson: Someday, they too will be diminished by time, sustained by memories, and getting smacked around the ring by some punk.
Friday night's fight between boxing great Mike Tyson and YouTube star Jake Paul is in the history books, and the general consensus is it was a nightmare. Here's a recap if you were lucky enough to have missed it because your Netflix was buffering: A wizened Tyson doddered into the ring and boxed for a couple rounds where he didn't look that terrible, but by round three, Iron Mike was gassed, winded, and useless. Showing admirable restraint, Jake Paul didn't punch Tyson's head off, treating the old lion gingerly for the remaining six rounds of tepid combat. The judges gave the match to Paul in a unanimous decision, and we all went to bed feeling sad.
Just about everyone, in the crowd in Dallas and online, seemed to have wanted Tyson to beat Paul's brakes off. He was probably the greatest boxer of all time in his prime and we'd like to see him shine just once more. More importantly, though: While Jake Paul is household-name famous, people don't seem to like him very much.
After the fight, people wanted Tyson to have won so much, they invented conspiracy theories. They're alleging that the match was scripted. They're poring over fight footage for proof that Tyson was pulling punches, or that Paul's tongue-waggling was a signal for Tyson to take it easy, or they're placing the fight within a larger conspiracy theory involving the Illuminati and Freemasons. But in reality, the fight might have been "rigged" in that neither fighter was going to kill the other over a circus match paycheck, but even though the fight was light sparring, it was obvious that Jake Paul isn't a real boxer and that Mike Tyson isn't either anymore. It was proof that the all-time champion of boxing and every other sport is Time, and Time is undefeated.
There was one good thing that came out of Tyson v. Paul: a hilarious video of Mike Tyson's butt. During a pre-fight interview with his son, the champ predicts a "vicious win," then walks away from the camera revealing he's only wearing a jockstrap. The comic timing is unassailable. The clip has been viewed over 31 million times. Check it out yourself:
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At 58 years old, Iron Mike Tyson looks fantastic, and you might react to the viral clip of his hinder by saying, "lookit that cake!" The slang meaning of the word "cake" is a nice-looking butt.
The words "huzz" and "bruzz" have been taking over TikTok over the last few weeks. Huzz is a stylized way of saying "hoes." It was popularized by 22-year-old streamer Kai Cenat, who also brought us "Gyatt." Cenat uses catchphrases like "anything for the huzz" on his streams. Like most current slang, it really comes from African-American vernacular English.
Huzz quickly gave birth to "bruzz," which means "bros." That, in turn, gave birth to a whole "-uzz" school of slang words. You could say your grandma is your gruzz, freshmen are fruzz, your mom is your muzz and your dad is your duzz. It's actually kind of fun, in a brain-rot way.
The final entry in my slang-trifecta is the word "yunc." In Lifehacker's overview of youth slang, "unc" is defined as a slightly older person. It's short for "uncle." Yunc is a variation. In AAVE, a "yn" is a "young n-word." So "yunc" means something like "young uncle," or a person who may be young but has uncle vibes or unc status.
You might be aware of the "tradwife" movement, where young women are asking themselves, "why don’t we all just get back in the kitchen?” But every action has a reaction. In this case, the reaction is the rise of the "type-B wife."
Where type-A, tradwife spouses post TikTok videos showcasing their superiority at domestic tasks, type-B wives are more chill and post videos demonstrating the disorderly reality of domestic life. These are the young wives who don't fold laundry and who sneak a Marlboro Light after school drop-off.
Young women defining themselves by which type of wife they are could be seen as problematic in itself, but on the other hand, people are going to talk about the roles they fill, and younger people embracing a type-B lifestyle is a satisfying response to the hustle culture and perfectionism trend that's so often seen on social media.
Type A vs type B isn't the only conflict on the internet this week. The online world is also deep in debate over the issue of whether supporting yourself as a streamer is as hard as having a 9 to 5 job.
The argument started when FaZe Clan member ("Faze Clan" is a competitive gaming group) and Twitch streamer Plaqueboymax said, on his stream, "Being a streamer, or any face on the internet, is harder than a 9-5 in certain ways because it fucks you up mentally."
The responses from anonymous people in comment sections were fiery. “Go to a McDonald’s drive through with your Lamborghini and tell them that your job is harder than theirs,” one commenter suggested. But others took a more even-handed position, pointing out that streamers spend a lot of time playing games online, there's a ton of pressure to compete in a competitive market, and that playing games with the intention of making money from people watching you is a way different thing than playing a game because it's fun.
This all feels to me like a modern-day discussion of the perils of fame. Plaqueboymax's point is more nuanced than many people are taking it. He doesn't say that one type of job is easier than another, but that being a publicly known face comes with difficulties that being a wage slave does not. As much as it seems that streamers/movie stars have ideal lives, fame and money really do have downsides that mortals never have to deal with. While almost anyone would choose "rich and famous" over "poor and nameless," no one's life is free of nightmares; they just change shape depending on your station.
