All Caught Up: the AI sexbot revolution, secondhand Rimowa, conservative Cosmo
Down to be severed?
Good morning, friends. I woke up with a list of grievances heavy on my chest, so let’s get into it.
I posted this on LinkedIn this week, but…
We start by making work for people — then somewhere along the way, we start making it for each other. For the clients watching, the strategists lurking, the creatives who might repost it with a knowing nod. Lately, so much marketing feels like it’s not for the audience on the other end, but for the industry looking in. Not for people. Not even for customers. For the folks who will green-screen themselves in front of it, carousel it into a thought leadership post, or drop it into a deck labeled "Trends We’re Watching Q2."
It’s marketing made to be seen by marketers. Work that exists more comfortably in group chats than in the world. From Poppi vending machines to The Ordinary eggs, to even the more “thoughtful” work — so much of it gets flattened into content about content. Commentary over communication. Strategy as spectator sport.
And I get it. The game is visibility. Virality. A portfolio moment. But sometimes I wonder: if the work only hits once someone explains why it hit, did it ever really land? And then this week’s hate read dropped, and this paragraph has been pinging around my brain like one of those early 2000s DVD screensavers.
The consultancy is the culture. It has become aspirational to perform labor for a brand. Where the influencer is praised for publicly shilling logo-bedecked debris on their TikTok account, the creative is who makes it happen behind the scenes. Somehow, that's even worse.
The second thing on my mind is a healthy degree of friction. Mostly prompted by this SSENSE piece on Rachel Tashjian. She keeps her newsletter on a strictly IYKYK basis, and that makes it special. So much of modern life is about removing friction. We hold meetings to optimize process, reduce clicks and speed up conversion.
My peer at U.N.N.A.M.E.D., Elliot Vredenburg, wrote a piece all about Bad Design being Good, actually and it’s been on my mind too—because where’s the edge? Seamlessness is treated as the ideal. But often, what makes something feel human is the slight resistance it offers. And honestly, I don’t remember most of the "frictionless" experiences I've had, but I do remember when I've had to take an extra step to get something, like Tony Wang's research dossier.
The Opulent Tips newsletter is invite-only. You have to email Rachel to get on the list. It’s not efficient or scalable, but that’s the point. The friction is deliberate. It creates a threshold and, in doing so, signals intent, taste and care.
In a culture built around ease, friction can function as editorial control.
This week's picks include 23andMe filing for bankruptcy, the weight of the internet and unsexy SKIMS.
Christina’s weekly scroll –
Gen Z is choosing social/creator content over streaming and movies because they think it’s just not worth the price…
Seems like Apple is feeling the impact too, losing over $1B a year on streaming, making it the only Apple service that isn’t profitable (!)
What color is Gen Alpha’s Millennial Pink? All of them, of course. Plus:
Feeld x Gustaf Westman, lmaoooooooo!
Nikita note: Is every brand just now catching up to this dude or did his stuff get duped to death and now he needs to brand shill?
Wild stat: Erewhon sells around 40,000 Hailey Bieber smoothies every month.
People in Silicon Valley are leveraging Christianity to get closer to Peter Thiel.
Napster just sold for $207 million to Infinite Reality, which plans to create virtual 3D spaces where fans can experience concerts and listening parties together.
After five years, the Frick Collection is reopening next month <3
Young men have gone MAGA. Can the left win them back?
Is it possible to calculate the weight of the internet?
Nikita’s weekly scroll –
The Evie woman has sex, works and is a mom. She just can’t be feminist. Inside the conservative woman’s Cosmo.
I miss when billionaires did cool shit like build libraries and bridges. Now we just watch them live out the long-tail impacts of being bullied in public. Unrelatedly, the Celtics sold for an eye-watering $6.1B to Bill Chisholm.
Forget the lipstick index, it’s all about hand creams and hand sanitizers as status symbols. I know Christina briefly touched on this a couple of weeks ago, specifically with Touchland, but there’s something percolating in my mind—signals around the economy, cleanliness as virtue, etc,
I don’t need to tell you twice that fascism is just repression, but this piece on fascist fetishcore really left a mark on me.
Unrelatedly, the performance of sexiness is the furthest thing from… well, sex. And the Skims Ultimate Butt is the living embodiment of that.
In a move that surprises no one, Skimberly is bringing SKKN into the SKIMS umbrella. She bought the IP back from Coty. Kylie is stuck there, though, fwiw.
I feel like we often joke about previous relationships being training grounds for broken men before they move onto the next woman, who they’ll treat right. What if a robot was the trainer?
Supposedly, households with female breadwinners have a higher rate of divorce. The breadwinning is the headline, but I’m sure most of us can infer what lies beneath is likely an uneven distribution of household responsibility. Just one women’s opinion.
46% of Gen Z is down to be severed. Taking head empty, no thoughts to another level.
A few years ago, we had The Skincare Boom, which was followed by The Haircare Boom (umm, I saw a scalp anti-aging serum the other day), and now we see a lot of women convinced they are balding. I feel like part of this is reality (COVID, stress, aging-related hormonal changes from the loudest online cohorts) but also another case of the beauty industry inventing problems to be mad at.
Estée Lauder hired a sleep advisor.
Pop the Balloon will be on NETFLIX! What a come-up.
23andMe filed for bankruptcy. If you did all that… you should probably delete your data.
Americans under 30 are miserable. Water is wet.
An online “culture” doesn’t exist. Unsure if I agree with this one, per se.
Alongside the fetishization of personal style is the fetishization of items that feel like they’ve lived a life. And Rimowa is selling pre-worn suitcases that are beat up so you can cosplay worldly.
JP Morgan renames DEI to DOI, focusing on opportunity over equity. This is not my expertise, but just an interesting signal.
Amazon bought LeBron's podcast. And in other James news, Savannah launched a skincare brand.
Notable friend of the ‘sletter
launched this fun AI project for Nike.Edible arrangements noticed they were sitting on edibles.com and were like, hmm we should do something with that!
MoVinG aT thE SpeEd of CuLtUre and all that, but UPS launched a tariff calculator, lol.
˚₊‧꒰ა ☆ ໒꒱ ‧₊˚Little Treat Corner ˚₊‧꒰ა ☆ ໒꒱ ‧₊˚
Christina’s weekly report:
READING: Different takes on the astrological signs as Sopranos characters.
EATING: Sfogliatine glassate.
PLAYING: MoMA has an exquisite corpse AI game and it's reeeeally good!
OBSESSING: Over the meeting I’m having later today! 🤫
RECOMMENDING: Get some sleep.
TREATING: Myself to a mani AND pedi this week.
Nikita’s weekly report:
READING: Everything I linked. I am but one woman.
EATING: Laoban sesame chicken bao buns.
PLAYING: The Ambani wedding episode of The Kardashians.
OBSESSING: Over it being like 80 degrees on Saturday.
RECOMMENDING: Buying a desk. I finally got one.
TREATING: Myself to pretending my laptop doesn’t exist.
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