Latest news with #Rizzler
New York Post
25-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Post
Is he the new ‘Rizzler' kid? Internet is obsessed with dancing little boy: ‘Love this kid'
He's got the moves. With all the chaos going on in the world, sometimes all it takes is a funny, wholesome video to bring people together. A young Asian boy is going viral for busting a move to a Pitbull song — and the internet can't get enough of him. Advertisement X (formerly Twitter) user @itsme_urstruly shared the adorable video with the caption, 'This is absolutely how everyone should feel music.' The tweet has almost 14 million views, with many people agreeing with the X user's sentiment. Advertisement 'Wow, love this vibe!' one person wrote. 'He's got the vibes of a drunk salaryman [white collar worker] at karaoke at 4am, the expressions are on point,' hilariously read another tweet in response. 'Love this kid!' read another tweet. 'Me in the club this weekend, 4 shots in,' joked another tweeter. Advertisement Another X user shared the video writing, 'The Chinese are closing the gap on Rizzler technology… it's never been more over.' If you're confused about what the term 'Rizzler' means — it's the nickname of a young New Jersey social media personality, Christian Joseph. Since 2023, Joseph has created a name for himself by creating humorous videos and by making the 'Rizz Face' — an expression where the 9-year-old squints his eyes, while stroking his chin. People say the Rizzler has an old-school Italian man trapped inside his body. Advertisement Some defensive X users didn't think the dancing kid even came close to the OG Rizzler. 'Not even close. One of Rizzler's defining traits is that he has the old soul of a 60-year-old Italian American construction worker from the Bronx with COPD trapped in a boy's body but also retains youthful wonder and whimsy. This kid is just a kid — he could be anyone.' 'No. They can never be him,' someone else quipped. Yet, someone else agreed deeming this dancing kid the Chinese rizzler jokingly writing, 'I have a team of 20 people searching RedNote for the Chinese Rizzler.' While others were more neutral: 'Every country has a regional Rizzler for sure. RedNote is a Chinese social media app. It gained popularity in the US when people were fearful of the potential ban of TikTok in the US.
USA Today
03-05-2025
- Entertainment
- USA Today
Julia Louis-Dreyfus relatably had absolutely no clue who the Rizzler was
Julia Louis-Dreyfus relatably had absolutely no clue who the Rizzler was Christian Joseph, the 8-year-old better known as "The Rizzler," has taken the internet by storm. He's got a large following on social media, is known for his distinct facial expressions and is a huge New York Knicks and Mets fan. Despite his massive rise to popularity -- he has more than 1 million followers on Instagram -- there was at least one Hollywood star that wasn't familiar with his charisma. The Rizzler attended the New York City premiere of the new Marvel movie, Thunderbolts*, dressed like David Harbour's character Red Guardian. He got a chance to meet the stars of the movie, including Julia Louis-Dreyfus (Valentina Allegra de Fontaine). Turns out, the former Seinfeld actress had absolutely no clue who she was meeting. "No offense to that nice child, but I didn't know who he was," Louis-Dreyfus said in an ensuing interview. This feels like the plot to a Seinfeld episode, which is high praise.
New York Times
11-02-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
With Clicks Into Oblivion, Frying Your Brain Is Fun
Fried memes and hysterical gibberish suffocate the internet nowadays. Every platform is thronged in digital chaos: psychedelic and surreal Instagram Reel art; X users cracking jokes about 'gigachads'; an 8-year-old influencer nicknamed the Rizzler. The deranged nonsense dominating the web recently led the publisher of the Oxford English Dictionary to name 'brain rot' its word of the year. While brain rot can refer to harm, like the way screen addiction can wither attention spans, it can also be humorous and fun, like mega-distorted images and edits. A new browser-based game, Stimulation Clicker, turns brain rot into a joyous pastime while also satirizing how awful it can feel to mainline the web. Stimulation Clicker revolves around a simple concept: Tap a button to get a 'Stimulation,' the game's form of currency. Players use Stimulations to buy upgrades, which are all internet ephemera: gameplay from the mobile hit Subway Surfers; a mukbang A.S.M.R. clip; a hydraulic press crushing clay. These videos begin to fill up the screen and rack up passive Stimulations (so you do not even have to click the button), which let you buy even more expensive and powerful upgrades. By the end, tens of thousands of Stimulations accrue every second as the screen judders with clips, lights and sounds. 'I wanted to capture the experience of being terminally online,' said the game's creator, Neal Agarwal. 'Everything is vying for your attention. It almost causes a feeling of vertigo, where you become nauseous. You're not even sure what's important to you anymore.' Agarwal has made a variety of browser-based oddities and has said his list of game ideas has reached 1,500 and is still growing. But Stimulation Clicker was extra meaningful for Agarwal, 27, who said he was basically 'patient zero' for screen addiction. He grew up obsessed with internet forums and Scratch, the kiddie-oriented, block-based coding platform that got him into game production. Stimulation Clicker, which took four months to develop, was inspired by Cookie Clicker, the idle tapping game, and Upgrade Complete, which pioneered the meta idea of upgrading the game itself as you are playing. What makes Stimulation Clicker thrill is how cheekily accurate and intricate the gameplay is. One upgrade allows players to stack Stimulations by completing Duolingo questions; another gives players a fictional email inbox that comes complete with fraud messages. Late in the game, players can multiply their Stimulations by riskily investing in stocks and crypto coins. Agarwal teased he had even more ideas that did not make it in, like a dating app that would let players swipe on suitors. He also wanted to let people participate in remote jobs and take imaginary Zoom meetings. While no definitive science shows that the internet rots brains, one expert, Dr. Meredith Gansner, said it was possible that excessive internet use could alter one's cognitive functioning. 'A phenomenon called 'mental fatigue' exists, characterized by drowsiness and feeling like one's brain is perhaps less capable at processing information than before,' said Dr. Gansner, who works in psychiatry at Boston Children's Hospital and Harvard Medical School. 'Mental fatigue is often described after bouts of intense cognitive engagement, so long periods of internet use involving rapid-fire digital stimuli and information overload could qualify.' Stimulation Clicker offers a hypercharged microdose of this kind of fatigue, letting players speedrun their way to a brain-breaking amount of content. (The popular streamer Ludwig provided a 10-minute clip of him doing squats, eating a sandwich and basically gesticulating at nothing.) The game feels true to how digital disarray can overwhelm the psyche, making it feel like a thousand tabs are running in your mind at once. Luckily, light is at the end of the tunnel. Once your screen is drowned in stimuli, you can purchase the Ocean, which teleports you to a placid, water-soaked horizon. It's the end. Agarwal knew he could have kept Stimulation Clicker going forever since the upgrade system is mesmerizing. But he did not want to be a hypocrite by hooking people to a game about screen addiction. 'I wanted to capture that feeling of when you finally get out of the brain rot hole,' he said. 'How good that initially feels, when everything is suddenly quiet again.'
