Pop Culturista

The Real Business Of YouTube Hustle Gurus The rise of these so-called “gurus” have to lead to people either falling for their schemes and scams, or continuing the trend and mindset of the lack of creativity, breaks, and individuality as the best way to achieve productivity and success.An interesting thing about these “influencers” is that they tell the same story: they grew up poor, moved to a new place, and worked hard because they want to get rich. The underdog narrative allows them to convince you that if they can do this, so can you. This is alright in the beginning when they probably encourage their viewers and followers to strive harder or heed their advice. But when their stories get out of touch, it’s when things take a different turn. Take, for example, Sebastian Ghiorghiu. This 24-year-old runs a “seven-figure marketing agency.” Mostly, a clip of him has gone viral on different platforms for two things: the sheer audacity he had saying that, or just how out of touch he was with the reality for other people in the world. “If you’re a guy in your 20s and you don’t have a Lamborghini, you should actually sit down and have, like, a serious discussion with yourself as to why you don’t have a Lambo,” he said on a podcast. “It is so incredibly easy, and there’s so much money out there.”With how regular people have to look so hard to find a position open for them (and pray hard that it pays alright) and also chase other part-time jobs to make ends meet, Ghioghiu says how easy it is to have a luxury sportscar is just baffling. How does he do it? Well, he and other hustle gurus actually lean into real estate, selling online courses, crypto gambling, digital marketing, YouTube ads, and, crucially, drop shipping, Vox reveals. Drop shipping is the practice of purchasing cheap goods and selling them on a legitimate-seeming website for higher profit. They’d advertise this method as an easy way to earn “passive income,” and then advertise their viewers to pay (and sign up) to an influencer’s multi-thousand dollar online course that may or may not actually teach you anything.Read more about the hustle of these “gurus” here.Image credit: Sebastian Ghiorghiu/YouTube

Nicolas Cage Went All In to Play DraculaThe new horror comedy Renfield's plot centers around R. M. Renfield (Nicolas Hoult) as Count Dracula's assistant/slave who wants to break free from the vampire. But you and I know that all eyes will be on Nicolas Cage as Dracula himself, stealing all the scenes he's in. The character is a perfect template for Cage's delightful overacting. Director Chris McKay says that during filming, Cage would stay in character all day long, and even comes across as Dracula while they were discussing filming between takes.It's not the first time Cage has immersed himself in a role to the point of staying in character. It's also not his first portrayal of a vampire, if you recall the 1988 movie Vampire's Kiss. He apparently enjoyed portraying Dracula, and is open to, even hinting at, the chance to reprise the role in another movie. Renfield opens on April 14th. -via Uproxx 

Christopher Walken Dancing In His Movies All Compiled In One Music Video Christopher Walken is an actor known for his roles in Annie Hall (1977) and The Deer Hunter (1978). But aside from having a good reputation, people were shocked to see him tap dance so well in Steve Martin's Pennies from Heaven.It turns out that this actor actually was a dancer first before he became immersed in the world of acting. Walken took his first lessons when he was just three years old! "It was very typical for people—and I mean working-class people—to send their kids to dancing school," he told Interview Magazine. "You'd learn ballet, tap, acrobatics, usually you'd even learn to sing a song."He studied tap dance and toured in musicals. He’s talented in every way, from dancing to acting. "I think that if he had been around in the heyday of MGM, he would have been a big star of musicals on film," Craig Zadan, Executive Producer of Peter Pan Live! stated in an interview. A genius from HuffPo Entertainment decided to show modern society how good the actor is at dancing by putting together one video showing Walken’s dancing in 50 films he’s starred in. While it had been taken down a few years ago, it re-emerged in 2014, and it’s honestly something nice to watch on the Internet. Image via YouTube 

The Simpsons Turned Into Real-Life PeopleIt’s kind of horrifying to look at if we’re being honest.Hindreley Diao, an artist and contributor to the online magazine Bored Panda decided to create a human-looking version of the popular characters from The Simpsons. He used a combination of Photoshop, FaceApp, Gradiente, and Remini to create these… bizarre (and a bit unsettling) images. As to how he got up with this idea, Diao writes in a piece for Bored Panda that he was inspired by how cartoonish the proportions and colors are for animated characters. The artist asked the question of what would happen if they became real flesh and blood. "I've done some similar posts by other authors here on Bored Panda. I wanted to try something out myself, and so I dove into the world of AI. This time, I challenged myself to try to do one on the theme of cartoon characters,” he explained. “In terms of how they all turned out, I'm more and more pleased with the results with each post I make.” Characters such as Moe Szyslak, Milhouse van Houten, Bart Simpson and Ned Flanders were rendered and put through these applications to look like people we can see in real life. "I really liked how Moe Szyzlak, Ned Flanders, and Milhouse Van Houten turned out because initially, I thought that the Simpsons drawing style would be very hard to emulate on 'real life' terms, but they are actually very easy to recognize," Diao shared.Image credit: Instagram/@hidreley

If You're an Action Hero, Your Name is Probably John, James, or JackJohn Rambo, John Wicke, John McClane. If you follow action movies, it might become apparent after a while that John is an overly-common name for action heroes. So is James and Jack. Many people come to this realization on their own, but even Hollywood figures have noticed it, although no one admits to naming a character that way on purpose. But does it just seem that way after you've noticed it? Demetria Glace wanted the hard data, and crunched the numbers. Wikipedia lists 2,206 modern action films, beginning with Dr. No in 1962. Glace removed the movies with ensemble heroes and female leads and used a list of the remaining 790 movies featuring a solo male hero. The most popular name of those heroes was John, with 74, followed by 50 heroes named James, and 37 named Jack. All other names were way fewer. Even when the list was revised to take out sequels (adjusting for James Bond), the results were similar. Sure, those are popular names overall, but the number of action movie heroes were still outliers when compared to real people given those names at birth. And compared to villains in the same list of movies. Why is this happening? Glace gives us four theories and their pros and cons. None seem to be the definitive answer, but maybe a combination of those theories, laid out at Salon, explain all those Johns, James, and Jacks. -via Metafilter 

These Two Late Night Show Hosts Kept Their Studios In The Dark After Swapping Shows I wonder if they’ll be able to top this one, folks.Considered one of the most outrageous (and very well-planned) pranks in modern television, late-night show hosts Jimmy Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon decided to swap shows on April Fools, and none were the wiser about their little scheme. While the event seems to look so simple, like the hosts would just charge to different sets at the same time, it actually took a lot of planning and preparation, as these two hosts revealed. The two had to be very secretive about the process so the prank will have its full impact. Fallon was initially skeptical about the whole thing. "I’m not really a prank guy, so I didn’t know if we could pull this off. Like, two seconds before they announced me, I was nervous. I was like, ‘I hope they like me.’” He shared. Fallon also revealed that he had to double-tape his show, hop on the plane, and meet Kimmel and his wife seven hours later. Fallon would go on to reveal alongside The Hollywood Reporter that once he arrived, it was quite the process to get ready. “ Seven hours later, Jimmy and [Kimmel’s wife and show co-head writer] Molly [McNearney] were waiting in the parking lot to greet me. We got into hair and makeup and started filming. After that, they flew immediately to New York," he said. It took a year of planning to execute the April Fools’ prank and it is surprising that they were able to hide it from their networks. "Really, the only people who knew were me and Jimmy … and Matt Damon. I was surprised on how the networks didn’t really fight us on it. It seems like something we shouldn’t be able to get away with," Fallon revealed.