I can remember, when I was young, having an iron-solid moment of clarity. I couldn’t have been much older than 15 when I decided that I would grow up to be both disgustingly professionally successful and model-beautiful. To achieve these goals, I reasoned, I would need to apply to every single Ivy League university and I would need to assume responsibility for a lifelong project of beauty; I was also just dying to grow up and have sex. Adolescence was not doing it for me. All my dearest aspirations pointed toward the future, where, someday, I would pass through a gossamer veil and meet a poised, indefatigable woman: my fully actualized self.
Today, at age 30, I often feel ancient — not because my 20s are behind me but because I routinely fail to understand some of my peers. It seems to me that many of them are exhibiting troubling preoccupations with infantilism. Perpetual adolescence seems to fit them like a glove.
We aren’t wholly to blame for succumbing to protracted states of arrested development; they have, to some extent, been inflicted upon us by our environment. Inflation, the cost of housing and epic student debt make it feel too expensive to aspire to adult responsibilities like property or children, or else it’s too hard to promise yourself hockey-stick career growth when layoffs loom around every corner. Still, I refuse to accept the ease with which an entire generation appears to have embraced baby stuff as a balm.
The most nagging example of this, unfortunately, requires me to discuss an actual child: a feisty social media phenomenon called “the Rizzler.” I should specify in advance that I do not wish to spearhead a smear campaign against someone who probably can’t do fractions yet; what I fear and abhor is what the Rizzler’s widespread popularity represents.
They are buying into the widely adopted lie that baby behavior is enough.
He also goes by the name Christian Joseph. He is 8 years old. His primary claim to fame is a facial expression called the “rizz face”: raised eyebrow, pouty mouth and a Tony Soprano-ish stroke of the chin. (The word “rizz,” for the uninitiated, is a truncation of “charisma,” popularized by Generations Z and Alpha.) His star was born in November 2023, when a TikTok of the kid cracking wise in a Black Panther costume went viral. Many more goofily staged TikToks would follow, in which the Rizzler brimmed over with the kind of saucy attitude people find endearing in prepubescents. He had one tiny foot planted in the East Coast Italian American culture that the rest of the country is deeply amused by and another in the long tradition of “America’s Funniest Home Videos.”
The videos burnished the child’s internet fame until organizations thirsty for celebrity cameos could no longer ignore the value of siphoning off this brain-rot content’s popularity. Last October, the Rizzler made an appearance at an “Alumni and Celebrity” Knicks game. Shortly after that, he popped up on the Mets’ stadium screen at Game 5 of the National League Championship Series. The savviest moment in his ascent came when he joined forces with a family of similarly viral figures — a blustery ex-wrestler father and his son who call themselves the Costco Guys — and was absorbed into their shtick so seamlessly that many viewers didn’t realize he wasn’t actually related to them.
The Costco Guys have released a series of original songs — one of which, “We Bring the BOOM!” made it into the top 10 of the TikTok Billboard Top 50 chart. Together, the Costco Guys and the Rizzler have made an appearance at an All Elite Wrestling event. Days before Halloween, the trio sat for an interview with Jimmy Fallon on “The Tonight Show,” which, even taking into account mainstream TV’s now-established acceptance of viral stars, felt like a huge coup. Fallon, a host well known for his sycophancy, himself went viral that night because he could not sustain his usual act: He visibly and repeatedly winced at the Costco Guys’ frequent battle cries of their catchphrase, “BOOM.”
The Rizzler is making the most of his moment in the sun as the internet’s favorite goofy nephew, a role you could dismiss as harmless. But he is also the exemplar of a broader cultural problem, one that is accelerated by the sheer volume of infantile, short-form, TikTok-ish internet content that delights viewers for a few brief moments before they swipe on to the next awkward comedy skit, weird animal, meandering breakup story or small child mugging for the camera. Over time, digested in larger quantities, this entertainment sands away the distinctions between this and that until context collapses into a river of color and sound. To prefer one bit of media over another — to have taste — is a characteristic developed with maturity; it is babies who are hypnotized by bright colors and sharp movements. Babies and, perhaps, an escalating number of screen-addled adults. Even if TikTok really is shut down in the United States by the end of the month, capping at least one spigot of puerile content, the damage will have been done.
It often seems as though the nation’s young adults, lulled into a fuzzed-out, calmative state, are passing on the opportunities afforded to them by their new independence — light substance abuse, poor romantic decisions — in favor of tucking themselves into bed at 10 p.m. on weekends. Or witness the juvenility of popular “romantasy” fiction — the literary phenomenon in which, forsaking even the juiciness of mass-market thrillers, lukewarm faerie smut passes for titillation. Stanning major pop stars, once a firmly teenage class of behavior, has worked its way up the age bracket; screens big and small remain crowded with superheroes and outer-space side quests. “Disney Adults” have their defenders.
I can live with the idea that erudite sophistication and subtle carnalities are out of fashion; these superior methods of self-expression will make their comebacks at some point. But adults going gaga for the Rizzler cannot be what passes for culture in the interim — not least because their endorsement signals to a nation of other impressionable children that asinine eminence is something to aspire to. Fully grown people are sitting and scrolling, having a chuckle over the Rizzler and his occasional verbal outbursts. In addition to feeling mildly less bored, they may be convincing themselves that acting like a kid counts as adequate entertainment. They are buying into the widely adopted lie that baby behavior is enough, and that it will sustain you.
This regression has consequences. A.I.-assisted workarounds to producing fully formed original thoughts are growing in popularity. Persistent overstimulation and the rise of “Cocomelon”-core content make it seem as if few people still possess the stamina to read books. Having a lot of sex, arguably among the greatest adult pleasures, certainly doesn’t feel that cool anymore. Instead we trawl the dopamine deserts of the same social media apps, looking for loud noises and bright colors to puncture the malaise. We have near-unlimited access to information and somehow fail to be curious about any of it.
True charisma has never been a scarcer quantity, which is why we’re looking for it in all the wrong places. As in a pint-size mascot for juvenilia called the Rizzler, who in a more just world would be performing skits at the dining-room table for his immediate family, undiscovered by the internet, looking forward to the day he grows up and becomes exactly who he wants to be.
Source photographs for illustration above: John Lamparski/Getty Images; Todd Owyoung/NBC via Getty Images.
Helen Holmes is a writer and reporter in Brooklyn. She has covered culture for The Daily Beast, ARTnews and the Observer.
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