![]() ![]() Rajen's video showed a tamer iteration of the trend. "People probably thought we were humiliating ourselves." "Doing these types of things, you actually get a lot of stares," said Devan Rajen, another 18-year-old student pictured in the video who posted the video from his own TikTok account. Part of this unity, they admit, is the embarrassment they experienced beforehand in participating in the gag. In fact, many of the boys in this particular video had never met before, but decided a video with this many participants was too good to pass up. "And then we saw this bunch going up the escalator, and we sort of met halfway." ![]() "After we finished the movie, we went out and we were going down the escalator," said Joshua Law, an 18-year-old student. The boys in this particular video say that the now viral clip is more a product of coincidence than planning or intention. The video is overlaid with text that expresses their simple request: "22 tickets for Minions: Rise of GRU please." Some pictured toward the end of the procession clutch small Minion plushies while looking straight ahead. In one video that received nearly 170,000 likes and more than 1 million views, a large group of more than 20 smartly dressed teenage boys in Singapore ascend in a line on an escalator and then walk out of frame, stone faced and with rigid posture. The film reportedly grossed an estimated $164 million domestically in its first week. With the success of Minions: The Rise of Gru and movies like Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, it seems like movie studios are getting comfortable with having audiences of more than just kids.Aside from social media prevalence, the trend may have something to do with Rise of Gru enjoying huge box office success since its release last weekend. They even created advertisements based on The Office, which is a show especially popular among teenagers and people in their 20s. They caught onto the memes early on, and leaned into them without becoming too pandering. We can't look past the brilliance of Illumination's marketing (Illumination is the studio behind Minions). But Minions: The Rise of Gru broke Independence Day opening weekend box office records, and I don't think memes are solely to blame. Sure, this is largely because of the memes. The average age range of people who went to go see The Rise of Gru its opening weekend were 13-17. After all, they may say, isn't that kids stuff? But who doesn't love a good Pixar or Miyazaki movie? If you're on the younger side, you've likely had to defend animation or anime to your parents or older relatives. It may seem odd to older generations (Gen X, boomers) for teenagers to get so excited about Minions, but today's young adults were raised on animation. I can talk about meme culture, Chads, incels, and the differences between Millennials and Gen Z all day, but I've left out one pretty big thing: It's just fun to get hyped about a movie. Anyway, put a pin in that it'll come back around in a bit. Patrick Bateman was often featured in the "Tickets to Joker" meme because he's a character that straddles the line between the Chad and incel archetypes pretty perfectly. Hailing him as what men should aspire to be is the joke. He's desperately trying to act like a smooth Wall Street type to cover for the fact that he's a sexually depraved homicidal maniac. If you haven't seen American Psycho, let me first say that Patrick Bateman is not the picture of suave, cool, alpha-maleness. I mentioned Patrick Bateman, and he's pretty crucial to the whole #gentleminions phenomenon. The joke of incels going to see Joker suddenly turned into: Only suave alpha-males go to Joker. There's also a running joke that many young men, in an effort to be cool, will model their personalities after movie characters like Ryan Gosling in Drive or Patrick Bateman from American Psycho. "Tickets to Joker" was soon accompanied with meme figures that represent cool guys, like GigaChad. ![]()
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