Welcome back to The High Low!
We’re officially at the end of Q1 (that’s a little business-speak for all you always-professionals out there). And while it’s been an unsettlingly eventful first three months of the year, this past week alone has been big in the tech & AI world. Between an AI pioneer shuttering and a jury finding tech giants guilty of making social media addictive and harmful, it’s still hard to say how this will impact society (if at all) for the rest of the year. Besides that, our favorite reality competition shows have been sparking a lot of conversation and controversy, Céline Dion is back, and there was another art heist in Europe — plus so much more!
One more thing I wanted to mention: a friend of a friend created a brilliant satirical website poking fun at AI in education. It’s called PureGenius and it is exactly that! To fully appreciate the work put into it, you have to engage with the little “Support” chat window in the bottom righthand corner. I promise it’s worth it!
✨Read to the end for a video introduction to the cutest criminals.
Survivor 50’s Angelina Rightfully Calls Out the Show’s Editing
CBS’s Survivor is currently airing its 50th season — something fans have been anticipating for the last few seasons. It’s cast entirely with returning players; some who have won their season, a few who have come very close to winning, and others who have lost multiple times. The contestants include fan favorites like Cirie Fields (dubbed “the best Survivor player to never win”), Ozzy Lusth (practically a real-life Aquaman and Tarzan in one), and Emily Flippen (the financial analyst known for her blunt wit). Mike White, the creator of The White Lotus, also came back for Survivor 50 along with his former castmate and good friend, Angelina Keeley.
Ok, that’s enough exposition. Let’s get to what this is really about: Mike was voted off the island; Angelina was sent packing right after him; and her exit interviews since then have been iconic, eye-opening, and entirely spot-on. In basically every interview she’s given, she’s mentioned how this season’s edit is disappointing because of how invisible the female contestants are in each episode. She makes her disapproval very clear in her interview with Entertainment Weekly and brings receipts of how “production is failing the women of this season.” Even when she appeared on CBS Mornings, she quickly mentioned the lack of female voices on this season, saying, “I hope production steps that up because I think that’s really a shame.”
On Instagram, Angelina actually gives her best summation of why the editing of the show, particularly this season, is of concern:
Look, I know reality television is entertainment, but it’s also a part of the zeitgeist. It’s narrative—and narrative shapes perception.
At its best, media expands what we see and who we value. At its worst, it feeds our base human instincts and panders to the ugly parts of culture.
So far on Survivor Season 50, the depiction of women players is falling very short. No one expects equity in a game that is inherently zero sum. But we do expect care in how stories are told, particularly from a monumental season intended to celebrate the franchise’s 25 years.
We expect Tiffany to have more confessionals than a random celeb that no one asked to see. We expect to hear from a blindsided castaway rather than a scene about farting. We expect more than old basic stereotypes.
It’s interesting to see who from the cast left comments on this particular post. Nearly all of the women from this season (and ones from other seasons) left positive, supportive comments. Of the men, I only see Kyle Fraser and Charlie Davis. (There may be others, but I’m just saying what I’m seeing…)
Another Survivor legend, Kelley Wentworth, has also been vocal about how the show has been edited to prioritize male contestants, sometimes giving a false narrative. In the most recent episode, the edit seemed to give Rizo credit for Charlie’s elimination, but it was clearly Dee Valladares’s plan, and it couldn’t be pulled off without Kamilla Karthigesu.
This type of erasure or rewriting of what’s actually happening is only one example. This has been an issue with Survivor long before Season 50 — a fan actually lays out how the show has been edited all these years, depending on whether the winner is male or female — but people expect better for this milestone season. Luckily, the internet is filled with superfans with brains and a sense of humor, calling out Coach’s stupid nicknames and making it clear that Survivor has always been about the girls and the gays. Let’s see what this week’s episode holds. Will it continue to be a bro fest or are producers (including Jeff Probst) actually listening?
• ART •
🖼️ Looks like there’s been another museum heist. This time, the thieves snatch $10.3 million worth of artwork in only 3 minutes from an Italian museum. Among their haul were Renoir, Matisse, and Cézanne works. This latest robbery has once again raised concerns about the security of European art institutes.
🎨 There’s something undeniably powerful about artist Ashley Nora’s beautiful portrait paintings that render Blackness in blue, surrounded by ornate white frames. This interview with the artist gives great insight into her work. (I might be biased, since I edited it, but it’s a great interview!)
🌿 Artist David Morrison creates hyperrealistic illustrations of flowers, seeds, and plants. His botanical drawings are so realistic I can feel my throat getting itchy, my eyes watering, and a sneeze coming on.
🐳 There’s a whale sculpture in Zhanjiang, China by sculptor Ferdi B Dick. But it isn’t just any sculpture, it’s a giant, 9-meter-tall figure that looks like an enormous balloon animal breaching out of the tiled ground of a water fountain.
• TECH •
⚖️ A California jury has found Meta and Google guilty of building social media platforms that are “engineered to exploit the developing brains of kids and teenagers.” Instagram and YouTube, in particular, were “deliberately built to be addictive and the companies' executives knew this and failed to protect their youngest users,” according to this ruling. In a separate trial — this one in New Mexico — Meta was ordered to pay $375 million in damages for “knowingly [harming] children's mental health and [concealing] what it knew about child sexual exploitation on its social media platforms.” It’s hard to say whether either of these verdicts will truly change the state of social media; whether we’ll see more regulations, restrictions, or bans; but one thing seems clear: social media is rotting young brains.
🪫 Besides social media, there’s another brain-rotting tech of late, and it’s calling it quits. OpenAI has announced it is shutting down Sora, its video-generation app. This also means its $1 billion deal with Disney is done. So why did OpenAI pull the proverbial plug? According to “a person familiar with the matter,” Sora was losing about $1 million a day. BBC gives a quick breakdown of everything that went wrong.
🤖 So, social media and AI are facing some challenges. Surely the robotics side of tech is doing just fine… right? Turns out there’s an ongoing problem with delivery robots crashing through bus shelters. Is this how The Matrix began? It’s no wonder that humans are now pretending to be low-res NPCs. Might be our only way to survive the robot apocalypse.
• ENTERTAINMENT •
🎤 For her birthday on March 30, Céline Dion gave the public a surprise gift: she announced she’ll be returning to the stage to perform 10 concerts in Paris, starting in September. Given her health struggles in recent years, this is an incredible comeback! Presale begins on April 7 on CelineDion.com
🛟 Baywatch is getting a reboot, and the cast includes “influencers” like Sports Illustrated model Brooks Nader who is now having to defend herself for being cast on the show despite her lack of acting experience. The 90s TV show about beach lifeguards launched the careers of people like Pamela Anderson and Carmen Electra, so Nader’s inclusion doesn’t feel like a revolutionary pivot from the original’s casting choices. People will always be angry about something, I guess.
💄 ***SPOLER ALERT*** The most recent episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race was a total shocker. The clear frontrunner, Jane Don’t, was eliminated. Her first time in the bottom and she had to sashay away. This is the biggest gag in seasons, and I’m looking at the remaining queens and questioning how it’ll all end. Juicy Love Dion is cute and a great dancer but surely she isn’t taking the crown. Neither is Darlene Mitchell, despite her country bumpkin charm and Jack McBrayer-like smile. I liked Nini Coco in the beginning, but she hasn’t been getting a winner’s edit. So now it looks like the winner will be… Myki Meeks? She’s done well, but the sad thing is her win (assuming she wins) will always be marred by “Jane Don’t should’ve won!”
💍 The new preciousss Lord of the Rings movie will be written by Stephen Colbert. The late-night talk show host whose run at CBS is coming to a close in May has long been a Tolkien superfan, and this next adventure seems to be a perfect fit that came at just the right time.
Some film/TV trailers gaining buzz (good and bad) this week:
📺 Euphoria: The third and final season of Euphoria is fast approaching to keep us all on the edge of seats and holding our breath through every nerve-racking episode. The first two seasons were intense but this third one looks like one long car chase on a narrow road along the edge of a mountain. Actually… I’m not sure I‘m ready for this level of intensity!
⚡️ Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone: HBO released the trailer for its Harry Potter TV series and the reaction has been… well, not exactly magical. Vulture has deemed it “Muggleslop.”
🚂 Stop! That! Train!: RuPaul unleashed two gag-worthy moments this week. The first was Jane Don’t’s elimination, and the second was dropping the trailer for her upcoming feature film. Honestly, can’t wait to see this star-studded spoof comedy à la Airplane! and Naked Gun. Beloved drag queens make appearances (of course Jujubee is in it), but so does Sarah Michelle Gellar!
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✨ Thank you for reading to the end. As promised, here is a video introduction to the cutest criminals.
See you next time! 🖤🩷
