Digital Culture’s 2024 Year in Review

2024 was a wild year for the internet. Filled with momentous online beefs, freaky game releases, fascinating film adaptations, pop star discourse and platform legal troubles, this year was truly a riveting one for the internet’s archives. Before the new online year finds its way upon us (with its TikTok ban and Elon Musk’s continuing changes to X rapidly shifting how we make culture online), we must reflect on our experiences with this captivating year online. Here are the Digital Culture beat’s assorted thoughts, our year’s stand-out moments, from memes to discourse to good and bad releases, from the online year that just kept on giving.

  — Senior Arts Editor Holly Tsch and Digital Culture Beat Editor Campbell Johns

“Barbie” Oscar ‘snubs’:

2023’s “Barbie Summer” did not stay contained to 2023. Greta Gerwig’s (“Little Women”) film has continued to grip the internet with the strength and ferocity that the iconic and original promotional pictures garnered. “Barbie” produced some of the strongest discourse about a film the internet has seen yet, which carried into the new year with the release of Oscar nominations. 

“Barbie” was nominated for the 96th Academy Awards eight times, with Ryan Gosling (“La La Land”) and America Ferrera (“Ugly Betty”) receiving supporting role nominations. Lead Margot Robbie (“Suicide Squad”) and director Gerwig, however, were notably left off of the ticket. To many, this absence reeked of the misogyny the film worked to combat, and as such led to a completely out-of-control online swarm. This discourse got so large that Hillary Clinton chimed in and many members of the cast released statements. This was all happening after Jo Koy’s controversial Golden Globes monologue calling “Barbie” a film about “a plastic doll with big boobies,” another stone thrown into the pit of whirling dialogue about the film’s reception and sexism. While many productive conversations about performative feminism came out of all of this, a lot of this discourse — especially in retrospect —seems to be immensely heightened from a summer drenched with bright pink where everybody had a say on “Barbie.” 

Digital Culture Beat Editor Campbell Johns can be reached at caajohns@umich.edu.

Death of a Wish release:

2024 was so packed with good indies it’s easy to forget some of them came out this year. On that note, melessthanthree’s Death of a Wish was the surprise hit of the year for me. It’s a hack-and-slash with an art style that extrapolates the teenage DeviantArt “Warrior Cats”-esque style into a striking impressionist neon look with scratchy lines and beautifully edgy character designs. The gameplay makes effective use of the crunchy 2010s era screenshake and freeze frames, and start to finish it was a joy to play.

The story is where the game might lose people — taking the angry gay kid beefing with their Catholic parents and extrapolating the entire world out from that center. It’s a bit immature and maybe also a bit of an acquired taste. It has its moments of genuine beauty and grace in storytelling, but just as often channels the cry-typing implied by its artistic influences. 

Death of a Wish is everything I love in a best-list slot. It’s a game that swings constantly and looks damn good doing it. For the gritty, screen-freeze combat, the all-time great art style and the story that takes itself just as seriously as that emo teenager, check it out.

Senior Arts Editor Holly Tsch can be reached at htsch@umich.edu.

Drake vs Kendrick:

While the Drake-Kendrick Lamar feud started long before 2024 (and has already been written about here at the Daily), it was in April and May of last year that it escalated and became the center of pop culture and online discourse: Lamar, of course, “won” the beef, releasing songs that were more incisive, less self-sabotaging and overall just … better. “Not Like Us,” released May 4 (and then performed five times at The Pop Out), was the final nail in Drake’s coffin, but the feud has continued to shift and escalate. While Kendrick released his newest album, GNX, and J. Cole, the oft-forgotten third player in the beef, released a song claiming that his pulling out of it was somehow a noble act, Drake was filing paperwork. He sued Universal Music Group, alleging that the stream numbers on Kendrick’s disses were inflated by controversy-seeking labels. This lawsuit, of course, has only provoked further mockery, not helped by Drake once again releasing and then deleting a song. His continued insistence that he’s unaffected by the beef contradicts his actions and looks more pathetic every day.

While Drake’s coffin is temporary, the impact that this feud had on 2024 was immense. For the first time ever, Kendrick Lamar, an artist known for his layered lyricism and Pulitzer-winning songwriting, surpassed the monthly listeners of the poppiest rapper on Earth. Not to say that Lamar doesn’t have pop sensibilities — DAMN. proves otherwise — but it’s odd to see an artist as critically acclaimed as he is also become one of the most popular in the world, largely over an internet beef at that. While I’m glad to see an artist I love get his flowers, it does mean that saying Lamar is my favorite artist has become the equivalent of saying Ed Sheeran is the GOAT. As of now, I’m looking for a cooler, more underground “favorite artist.”

Daily Arts Writer Ariel Litwak can be reached at arilit@umich.edu.

Arctic Eggs release:

For the Holly Tsch certified bizarre-shit-game-of-the-year, The Water Museum’s Arctic Eggs takes the cake. While Mouthwashing swept the end of the year awards for the uncomfortable-unconventional-PS1-inspired-science-fiction-game-that-takes-about-two-hours-to-finish award, my choice goes to Arctic Eggs.

Built on top of a strange and clumsy mouse-based frying pan gameplay, Arctic Eggs guides the player through short writing on the nature of skill development, contraband and scarcity, along with a bit of interrogation on the nature of this type of “weird game.” Where Mouthwashing struggled to connect its game to the writing, Arctic Eggs has a skillful fluidity and unity that makes it click. The mechanical clumsiness bleeds into the interpretive dialogue and the dreamy imagery. In just two hours, it hits comedy, tragedy, body horror and an open, peaceful ending.

If you have a taste for floaty, open-ended dialogue and crave games with cohesion in writing, play and theme, do yourself a favor and pick up Arctic Eggs.

Senior Arts Editor Holly Tsch can be reached at htsch@umich.edu.

Shin Megami Tensei V release:

When Shin Megami Tensei V released, it quickly became one of my favorite games of all time. I only had two major criticisms: it being exclusive to the Nintendo Switch — a console that could barely run it — and an incomplete, seemingly rushed story. This year’s rerelease was an opportunity to fix both of these issues and create a definitive Shin Megami Tensei experience — whether this was achieved is debatable. 

One thing isn’t debatable; it’s no longer a Switch exclusive, which is fantastic news. Getting to experience Shin Megami Tensei V’s gorgeous art style in crisp 4K at a consistent 60 FPS made Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance worthwhile by itself. There are also many gameplay improvements — Atlus has a knack for rereleasing their games with gameplay changes that make the originals look like garbage in comparison — new areas, new bosses, new demons, a redesign for the main character and a new story. Unfortunately, the story is still not great, replacing the rushed, empty feeling of the original’s with a confused plot that doesn’t quite take advantage of what makes Shin Megami Tensei so great — its ability to force difficult moral choices onto the player. Somehow, the story of a game that has been in development for eight years still feels like it’s not quite there. That said, the gameplay is still so fantastic that I have no qualms about recommending this game, simultaneously one of the most accessible and deep experiences that Atlus has ever made. 

Daily Arts Writer Ariel Litwak can be reached at arilit@umich.edu.

On ‘Clairo shade’:

This year Clairo released Charm, an album of extreme importance to me which also welcomed in something possibly more important — the concept of Clairo shade. While Clairo shade is everything and everywhere, I will break it down as best I can.

Clairo shade calls attention to the inherent mistreatment of Clairo when any other piece of music or artist is being discussed and praised online. Some of my favorite examples include the lack of Clairo on former President Barak Obama’s famous summer playlist and the idea of Katy Perry trying to pull focus from Charm. There was also what has come to be known as the “lesbian rooftop party Bushwick incident,” where at a party with a cake iced with “Clairo shade,” somebody allegedly crashed through the skylight. What became joked about as another instance of Clairo shade, pulled attention away from Charm. 

All of this awareness of the cultural impact of Charm and the complete rejection of Clairo shade in any form is more than important to me. It is a way to live my life, a way of thinking about music, a thinking that defined my year.

Digital Culture Beat Editor Campbell Johns can be reached at caajohns@umich.edu.

Astro Bot release:

A surprising Game of the Year contender and eventual winner, Astro Bot is a game that certainly deserves its many accolades. It’s a great 3D platformer at a time when there are very few great 3D platformers. The levels are fun, the collect-a-thon aspect is solid and rewarding, the graphics are great and the PlayStation fanservice kept a smile on my face throughout the entire experience. I’m not even that big of a PlayStation fan, but with references to more than 170 characters, there’s bound to be something for everybody to enjoy. That said, it’s a PS5 exclusive, which limits its potential audience to roughly fifteen people, and it is, in my view, slightly derivative of other 3D platformers. It particularly reminded me of Kirby and the Forgotten Land — by no means a criticism of either game, just something that kept popping into my head as I played through Astro Bot. 

While its Game of the Year win is still somewhat shocking to me, and the game doesn’t reach the highs of the most critically acclaimed 3D platformers (Super Mario 64, Odyssey, etc.), it does what it sets out to do: give its players a few hours of memorable fun while showering them with reminders of PlayStation’s remarkable legacy. 

Daily Arts Writer Ariel Litwak can be reached at arilit@umich.edu.

Metaphor: ReFantazio release:

Capping off Atlus’ amazing 2024, Metaphor: ReFantazio was a stylistic and thematic departure for the studio, with an immersive high fantasy world, near-perfect graphics and visual design and lovable characters. It sits in a limbo between mainline Shin Megami Tensei, Persona and a more traditional RPG, but manages to balance these disparate elements into a mostly cohesive experience that flows beautifully. There is (comparatively) little grinding and tedium, but this also means there isn’t that much exploration. Still, if nothing else, the locales are beautiful and the dungeons are serviceable.

What Metaphor: ReFantazio does best is refine the Persona formula, combining a dungeon-crawling RPG and a time-management-focused visual novel, each facet of the game influencing the other. Both halves are fun and challenging in their own ways, ensuring that the gameplay stays fresh throughout: If you’re tired of fighting weird butterflies, just go hang out with one of the local crazies and watch 70 hours fly by. While I do have many qualms with Metaphor: ReFantazio, it was certainly one of my most unforgettable gaming experiences of the year, and I’m glad that other people seem to be loving it. 

Daily Arts Writer Ariel Litwak can be reached at arilit@umich.edu.

Silent Hill 2 release:

Furthering the trend of horror remakes popularized by Capcom, Konami released the Silent Hill 2 remake earlier last October, and fans aren’t really sure how to feel. It’s clear that the developers took a ton of inspiration from the Resident Evil remakes, and while it modernized a lot of the older mechanics, it also took away from the quiet mystique people have grown to love about the franchise.

Obviously, the graphics and general face-lift are the game’s most noteworthy overhaul. The fog is absolutely stunning, the voice acting remains discordant and awkward and even pyramid head remains a nightmare — though the terror is nowhere to be seen. After the first couple of hours, it seemed like I was spending more time learning the enemies’ movements than running away from them. Whichever enemy wandered into my vicinity found themselves severely beaten with a wooden plank, all while I had a shotgun in my back pocket with nigh 100 shells. The same exact resource-scrounging mindset I have in games like The Last of Us or Resident Evil translated exactly, and that just made the game worse. It was fun, but if I wanted that type of thing, I’d just play the games it was trying to emulate. I don’t want another shooty game, I just wanted to scream my head off while running around a ghost town.

Maybe the tank controls were painful to deal with, but they were there for a reason — to take away the control we were used to. Now that I can move the camera and shoot my guns as effortlessly as a Leon Kennedy, everything feels gamey and “normalized”, and I can’t help but get a bad taste in my mouth. If what the gaming audience wanted was another Resident Evil remake, we got it, but for those of us who enjoyed Silent Hill 2 for its scrupulous portrayal of a cis-het man’s guilt, maybe steer clear.

Daily Arts Writer Nathaniel Ross can be reached at nateross@umich.edu.

‘Holding Space’ for the “Wicked” press tour:

With the recent release of “Wicked,” a certain clip from the movie’s press tour has consumed the internet, inspiring memes and edits of every kind — all because a reporter asked Ariana Grande (“Don’t Look Up”) and Cynthia Erivo (“Harriet”) about “holding space.”

During the interview, journalist Tracy Gilchrist mysteriously informed Grande and Erivo that viewers had been “holding space” for the lyrics of “Defying Gravity,” one of the musical’s most iconic ballads. Erivo looked positively flabbergasted, saying she had no idea this was going on, but that it was “really powerful.” 

Such an emotional reaction is not all that surprising considering that the “Wicked” press tour has consisted of countless moments just like this. Both actors have shed many tears and even resorted to holding each other’s fingers as a sign of emotional support. What set this clip apart, however, was just how little sense any of it made. What does “holding space” mean? Why was Erivo crying? Why did the journalist let this happen?

If I’m being honest, I still don’t know. 

Daily Arts Writer Rebecca Smith can be reached at rebash@umich.edu. 

Artificial intelligence labor rights and the Actor’s Strike:

Amidst a year of layoffs and lapsed contracts in the video game industry, interactive media voice actors in the actors’ union Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists went on strike for protection from their voice or likeness being used by AI without consent and compensation. The strike started in July and negotiations are still ongoing. 

Generative AI is currently a hot commodity in the industry ranging from corporate offices to creative fields — such as music — visual arts and acting. As a result, the laws and regulations surrounding AI have been tested and called into question repeatedly in the last couple years. Notably, actress Scarlett Johansson sued OpenAI in 2023 over the theft of her voice, and several major newspapers including The New York Times sued both OpenAI and Microsoft for a breach of copyright.

The current negotiations include some pretty well-known game development companies such as Electronic Arts, Epic and Insomnia and even extend to mass media companies Disney and Warner Bros. Video game companies are infamous for mistreating their employees — voice actors included — and the current digging-in-of-heels on guaranteeing actors fair compensation for their image is to be expected, if still disappointing. As pointed out this year by Geoff Keighley, host of the annual Game Awards, the games industry is nothing without the people actually making the games. Hopefully, the rest of the industry can internalize this soon enough to give voice actors the protections they deserve.

Daily Arts Writer Lin Yang can be reached at yanglinj@umich.edu. 

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