Mewgenics Viral Steam Launch & Ilia Malinin Olympic History [Buzz]

[00:00] Lila Grant: Welcome to Buzz, your daily roundup of everything moving the needle on social media. [00:05] Lila Grant: I am Leela Grant. [00:07] Jonah Klein: And I'm Jonah Klein. [00:08] Jonah Klein: We've got a massive show today, from a 14-year-old indie gaming project making history to literal Olympic history being written on the ice. [00:16] Lila Grant: Jonah, we have to start with the cats, specifically the cat army taking over steam. [00:22] Lila Grant: Mugenics is fantastic. [00:23] Lila Grant: finally out and the numbers are like absolutely staggering. [00:27] Jonah Klein: It's wild, Lila! [00:29] Jonah Klein: This game has been in development for 14 years. [00:32] Jonah Klein: 14! [00:33] Jonah Klein: Most internet trends don't last 14 days, let alone a development cycle that long. [00:38] Jonah Klein: But it hit the number one spot on Steam's top sellers list almost instantly. [00:43] Lila Grant: Iconic. [00:44] Lila Grant: And get this, it recouped its entire development budget in just three hours. [00:49] Lila Grant: People are obsessed with the roguelite cat breeding mechanics. [00:52] Lila Grant: My TikTok feed is nothing but people trying to breed the ultimate cat to crawl through dungeons. [00:58] Jonah Klein: It's not organic buzz. [01:00] Jonah Klein: When a developer sticks with a quirky vision for over a decade and it pays off like this, [01:06] Jonah Klein: the internet rallies around it. [01:08] Jonah Klein: The hashtags Mugenics and Cat Army are just flooded with these bizarre, beautiful feline warriors. [01:14] Lila Grant: Speaking of beautiful, can we talk about what happened at Milano Cortina 2026? [01:19] Lila Grant: Ilya Malinin is officially not from this planet. [01:23] Jonah Klein: The quad god, Lila, he did a backflip, a legal backflip in the Olympics. [01:29] Jonah Klein: We haven't seen that successfully executed and ratified since 1976. [01:34] Jonah Klein: And he didn't stop there. [01:36] Lila Grant: The quadruple axle. [01:38] Lila Grant: He landed the only ratified one in competition. [01:41] Lila Grant: His spins were clocked at a 350 rpm. [01:45] Lila Grant: If you watch the viral clips on X, his body looks like a literal blur. [01:50] Lila Grant: He led Team USA to gold by a single point, 69 to 68 over Japan. [01:56] Jonah Klein: It was a razor-thin margin, but Malin's technical difficulty is just light years ahead of everyone else. [02:03] Jonah Klein: He's making figure skating mainstream again. [02:06] Jonah Klein: Even people who don't follow the sport are sharing that backflip clip. [02:10] Lila Grant: It was pure cinema. [02:12] Lila Grant: But while Malinin was soaring, the mood was much darker over at Allen Fieldhouse for the Arizona Wildcats. [02:20] Jonah Klein: For sure. [02:20] Jonah Klein: Total heartbreak for Arizona. [02:22] Jonah Klein: But what a moment for the Jayhawks. [02:25] Jonah Klein: Kansas was playing without their star freshman, Darren Peterson, [02:29] Jonah Klein: and they still managed to pull off an 82-78 upset [02:33] Jonah Klein: over the number one undefeated wildcats. [02:36] Lila Grant: The rock-chalk reactions are everywhere. [02:40] Lila Grant: Handing Arizona their first loss of the season at Allen Fieldhouse [02:43] Lila Grant: is peak college basketball drama. [02:46] Lila Grant: It really feels like March Madness came early this year, Jonah. [02:50] Jonah Klein: It really does. [02:51] Jonah Klein: The energy in that building was insane. [02:54] Jonah Klein: It was insane. [02:53] Jonah Klein: But shifting gears to football across the pond, Barcelona fans are currently in a state of crisis. [03:01] Lila Grant: It's the Marcus Rashford news. He's officially out with a knee injury ahead of the Copa del Rey clash against Athletico Madrid. [03:09] Lila Grant: This transfer was already being debated to death, and now this. [03:13] Jonah Klein: The discourse is brutal, Lila. I mean, people are calling it the Rashford curse. [03:19] Jonah Klein: Barcelona brought him in for a huge impact, and an early injury like this just fuels all the skeptics and the transfer regret memes. [03:28] Lila Grant: Fabrizio Romano's post about the injury is just a war zone of opinions right now. [03:33] Lila Grant: Whether it's bad luck or a bad signing, it's the biggest talking point in European football. [03:39] Jonah Klein: And while Barcelona deals with that, creator culture just reached a massive new milestone in Japan. [03:46] Jonah Klein: The group top four, Kyo, Retort, Ushizawa, and Gatchman, just announced a Tokyo Dome event. [03:54] Lila Grant: A two-day event in July, right? [03:57] Lila Grant: They're expecting 100,000 fans. [04:00] Lila Grant: That is Mr. Beast level territory, but for the J creator space. [04:05] Lila Grant: The announcement post had over 127,000 likes in a matter of hours. [04:10] Jonah Klein: It's wild to see gaming streamers and YouTubers packing out stadiums that usually host the [04:16] Jonah Klein: world's biggest rock stars. [04:18] Jonah Klein: It just goes to show how powerful these digital subcultures have become globally. [04:23] Lila Grant: From cat armies to Tokyo Dome takeovers, it's a big day for the Internet. [04:28] Jonah Klein: Absolutely. That's all for today's Buzz. I'm Jonah Klein. [04:32] Lila Grant: And I am Leela Grant. We'll catch you tomorrow with more of what's trending. [04:37] Lila Grant: Stay savvy. Find us at buzz.neuralnewscast.com. [04:42] Lila Grant: Neural Newscast is AI-assisted, human-reviewed. [04:45] Lila Grant: View our AI transparency policy at neuralnewscast.com.