☆Working in Roblox, Rotting and Culture Curators☆

Hi!!! Welcome!! This is a newsletter that has taken the IRL weekly trends briefing, and transformed into the written word. All this information is a weekly digest of current news, trendy soundbites and sharp insights so that you can quit reading and still sound smart. Gathered from articles, newsletters, reports, and TikTok: It's like Blinkist for culture.

Algorithm References

Just a few references from the past week…

• This creepy, random sound is back with people editing their animals in a similar style to JasperTheDoll in the original

• Thank you Andy for sending through a politician getting milkshaked in the UK. Unfortunately this politician has a good team and he responded with a funny TikTok

• This trend feels so tumblr, and it’s people showing what items they’d (ironically) bring if they got kicked out of the house… lots of vapes.

• Another one that feels super old, but people are texting their partners and asking how many likes for them to buy an expensive item e.g. this Prada bag or this coffee machine.

• This AI Dance trend is quite creepy - both in the fact that it’s AI and it’s super easy for it to be generated for you, and that this cat looks spooky. (we did it for BWS if you wanna check it out)

• Pack my drink bottle with me trend is hilarious and so unserious. We’ve seen many versions of especially Stanley Cup owners going OOT on their accessories, and now there are satirical versions that I love.

• Shout to Val for sending this, IKEA is launching a virtual store in Roblox, where players can work and earn €14.80 per hour. I’m intrigued by the mechanics of this, and have many questions.

• Apparently Dr Pepper is doing very well, thanks to yet another Stanley cup craze where people were filling up their cups with a LOT of the soft drink. Now it’s no.2 in American - thank you to Duncan for sharing this.

• Vit sent this funniest image of the month - Bill Gate’s drinking Boba.

• CEO’s saying stupid stuff - Spotify CEO said making content is free and Chipotle CEO defending their shrinkflation portion sizes,

Articles

Lots of articles, studies and newsletters this weeeek - I got them from over 200 newsletters so please enjoy!!!

Topic: Alcohol and Non-Alcohol - These are more FYI links, than things I have strong opinions about. This space feels volatile, yet unoriginal and I’ve come to the conclusion - that is ok because it’s still interesting.

• Who Let the Fizz Out? Why Bubble-Free Booze Is on the Rise

• Meet Ooso: Sparkling Tea Inspired by Natural Wine

• THC Drinks As Alternatives to Alcohol

• This is more Algorithm reference, but this video of Kylie and Kendall Jenner drinking a beer feels suss and very staged.

• TikTok sommeliers and Keira Knightley articles: how wine culture is changing on and offline

Topic: Merch

• Why Does Gen Z Love Nirvana Tees, Thrasher Hoodies, and Bass Pro Shops Hats? - Feeling real zillenial when I write this, but this headline feels like it was written in 2015 and Glassons just brought in band tees.

• The End of Merch - kinda interesting, kinda one dimensional. I do believe though this is an article that feels like it was written by someone who lived in a different time than me, where our starting line for something like ‘merch’ is completely different - so I am aware of my biases there too that.

• why is wearing merch so embarrassing? - I deeply relate to this feeling, and I suspect it’s a mixture of a fear of being seen and a touch of cancel culture bleeding into our perceptions of what is cool vs embarassing.

Topic: Brands being brands

• Béis is going after the male demographic by rebranding the Airport Dad - Feels like a nice touch on internet culture (reflecting IRL culture), showing up in marketing. Idk if it hit the mark but that’s ok.

• Erewhon’s selling a ‘sunscreen’ smoothie because it’s summer and we’ll pay for it - Vacation can’t do much wrong in my eyes <3

Extras

• The Art of Scaling Taste - How MSCHF turns irreverent ideas into a real business.

• Vaping is horrible for you, and I am intrigued when I see brands like Otherways create gentrified/silicon valley’d versions of them.

• Overmining, extracting and under funding, are we killing culture?

• Rot All Over - brain rot and rotting are super topical right now. IMO this is good, as long as we’re not entering anti-intellectualism and individualism that can come with rotting.

• Anything from The Social Juice! E.g. this recap of last week’s culture world, or just generally their opinion on anything

• How the founder of Starface pimple patches is building an empire of Gen Z brands

• The Flatlay is Back - event just the title confirms that everything should be ‘back’

• Gen Z is entering the C-suite and getting rid of meetings, set work hours and more - good for them!!

• It’s the Real Thing - The emergent aesthetics of artificial intelligence

• Where did all the fun beauty packaging go? - This reminds me of a great article “The Age of Average”

• Bella Hadid's New Brand is a Tragedy - this is so sad!! I had high hopes for this brand, as well as all the comments during the announcement of her product. This is a nice summary of why it kinda fell flat unfortunately.

• The New Generation of Online Culture Curators - sorry for the NYT article but I am a sucker for seeing the term' ‘Online Culture Curator’ and I shall be claiming this language for myself.

Weekly Question

Thank you for getting this far. I look forward to hanging out with you all next week!

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