My son is always trying to show me videos on his phone. I genuinely appreciate that he wants to share things that he finds amusing with me, but my response is always something along the lines of, “Please don’t show me another video on your phone,” to which his response is, “No. You have to see this.” And then he backs me into a corner and shoves his phone into my face and shows me something like He-Man singing 4 Non Blondes or a meme about a four-year-old competing on America’s Got Talent, a “boomer” show he’s never watched.
Yesterday, he made me watch a guy who looks like a rejected member of Right Said Fred sing a song about a rectangle and insisted I write about it because the guy is apparently fascinating. I probably wouldn’t have, but the song has been stuck in my head, on repeat, for the last 16 hours. Not even the full song. Just a 44-second snippet. It is a nearly two-year-old video that my son insists has been a regular fixture on the social-media platforms of the youth.
@seanstephens.music Performing my new song in Times Square 🚨 Rectangular is out today, so I’d love to hear what you guys think!! 😄 #newsong #timessquare #nyc #music #newmusic #newyork #musician #fyp #singer #newrelease #musictok #newartist #artist #songwriter #live #singersongwriter #musiciansoftiktok #singersoftiktok ♬ Rectangle Sean Stephens – Sean Stephens
It really is catchy. It comes from Sean Stephens, the 50-year-old CEO of Treefrog Inc. and co-founder of PerfectlySoft Inc. I have no idea what those companies are, but the video/meme went insanely viral. It perfectly embodies the Gen Z sense of humor, which my son describes as “suspended between irony and earnestness,” or “irony in quantum superposition,” which he calls “Schrödinger’s Irony.” It’s an older guy in a suit with green hair singing a ridiculously catchy song about not conforming and being yourself: “I feel no hole.”
An interesting sidenote is that last year, after he’d already gone viral, Stephens and his family, including three kids and his mother, were kidnapped in the Mpumalanga Province by men impersonating police officers. They assaulted Sean with a pistol and threatened sexual violence against his daughter unless he cooperated. Over three hours, while being held in the covered bed of a pick-up truck, the abductors drove them around to various ATMs and forced them to withdraw around $10,000 in cash. Thankfully, they were eventually released and returned safely to Canada.
The experience, however, reshaped his interpretation of another song he’d written ten years prior, as he explained in another video.
@seanstephens.music Here’s the story behind my kidnapping (and the song I wrote about it) 👀 Want to hear how it all went down? #originalsong #originalmusic #singersongwriter #musician #ceomusician #fyp #viralsong #musictok #truestory #staysafe #altrock #musiciansoftiktok #storytime ♬ Mamkhulu – Sean Stephens & Black Market Chaos
I get it. It’s hard not to like the guy’s infectious earnestness. The song is catchy and harmless, and he just seems like a guy who wants to spread joy. I can’t hate it. The kids are gonna be OK!
