[SIC] 240: Worry Wolf

Volume 5, Number 32

The [SIC] newsletter on Thursdays is free, and will be forever, unless I change my mind. Unlikely.

But you CAN pay, if you want. I’m into it. Monthly or yearly, or founding support. Paid subscribers get an additional [SIC] Sundays newsletter each week. And founding supporters get invited to a dinner at my home in NYC with special guests.

Meantime, enjoy. And do please pass along to people you like (or people you need to be smarter).

Corollary sources this week (all worth your review, and all easily discoverable): Forefront / Patent Drop / Daily Upside / Ben’s Bites / Nieman Lab / Motive Unknown /  morning consult/ Loren Ipsum / Ben-Evans / Roca News/ Rolling Stone / Garbage Day / Brendan’s Communication Miscellany / Morning Brew / 1440 / Chartbook / Morning Consult / Dirt

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Hi all,

I had my first paid unsubscribe yesterday. I mean, credit cards numbers have expired before, gift subs have ended, but nobody’s ever *opted* out of the paid tier of [SIC] before.

As you’d imagine, this has brought on questions for me. What else should I be doing to provide value? What am I doing too much of? What am I missing?

I haven’t asked you all in a while - but given the launch of Substack’s new notes feature, which I’m debating using, I’d love it if you let me know, by replying to this email, or better yet by leaving a comment below.

Corollary to that: the People Vs Algorithm podcast guys (my media sherpas of late) made an offhand comment last week, about the first 5000 subscribers being the hardest to get. I just crossed 4000, and while that’s doubled in the last year, it feels like slow going - so that in mind, I’ll ask a favor: if you find this newsletter useful, take a second and recommend it to somebody you think might find it useful, too. I’d be grateful. Here’s a button:

Ok - back to normal programming.

Favorites this week: [SIC] Talks Alum Matt Klein’s highly salient Gen Z trends conversation is great. (Separately, do please join me in voting for Matt’s Zine as ‘Best of the Internet’ in this year’s Webby Awards)

Also essential: “Enshittification” oracle Cory Doctorow goes deep on Chokepoint Capitalism on The Culture Journalist, and the aforementioned People Vs. Algorithms go in on the super-pertinent Fear and Loathing, AI Edition episode.

More listening: from [SIC] homie Syd Allen-Ash: “I made a new episode of Toenails — it’s a historical deep dive into why we enjoy moving together, and why society might want to move us apart.

Thanks, Syd! And thanks Erik, Celeste, Iolanda and David for contributions this week. Thank you, friends.

Elsewhere in [SIC] homies: How to Dress Like the Main Character according to Heidi Bivens, who had a big week with the release of her Euphoria Fashion book and her appearance this week on the Throwing Fits podcast.

Thingtesting talked to [SIC] homie Holly Ong of fave Singaporean sauce brand Sibeiho.

Also in the news: big shout to [SIC] homie Jordan Silver and Silver Lining Opticians who got a mention in this WSJ piece about how Gwyneth Paltrow’s Courtroom Glasses Have Already Taken Off With Gen X.

And to [SIC] Talks alum Ruba Abu Nimah for her guest spot with BMW and two-time SOTY Tyshawn Jones.

Ok - now the links.

“The Netflix Sweater” as Imagined by the Blackbud Spy Pain sletter emulator.

======[SIC] 240: Worry Wolf======

Zeitgest / Gestalt

• 2023 is a (digital) lavender haze. It is now WSGN’s "color of the year." / Glossy

• The AI boom is creating a new logo trend: the swirling hexagon / FastCo

• Corollary, from Iolanda Carvalho: There's no escaping... 😉 the Barbie Selfie Generator /barbieselfie.ai

• Also inescapable: Why journalists can’t quit Twitter” / Platformer

• Even tho Twitter put a “US state-affiliated media” tag on NPR’s account / WaPo

• Cause, like, If Twitter finally dies, where do we find the smart people? / LATimes

• Maybe on “Baby’s First Social Media Handle”? / NYT

• Related: when kids discover their parents’ old social media. And turn it into TikToks / Embedded

• Also. Why every app now feels like Tiktok, but worse / NYMag

• Related: Music fandom’s problem is TV’s opportunity  / Music Industry Blog

• Boys and the search for a non-toxic masculinity / FT

• Corollary: The pear ring “is a social experiment set to disrupt the dating lives of GenZ” by… wearing rings/ Screenshot

• From David Bloom: “… A useful framework for thinking about markets and opportunities well beyond politics…..” [Do You Live in a ‘Tight’ State or a ‘Loose’ One? Turns Out It Matters Quite a Bit.]/ NYT

• From Celeste Blewitt: “Great read, even though it's from last week, it's an interesting discussion given that it's continually evolving on the daily. Plus the discussion on AI images and the like, great overall short read on all the social media conversations.” [How The World Is Turning Against Social Media] /The Guardian

• The CryptoGuys are all renaming themselves AIGuys / Twitter

• More decontextualization: Those weed bodegas are ART / Hellgate

• While in Brooklyn, Raving, Co-opted and Reimagined / The New Yorker

• Another from Celeste: “This is great, going deep into all the buzzwords, and the fact that pre-pandemic, they most likely didn't exist. Fascinating to think how the last three years have changed the landscape. ' [‘Workplace Buzzwords to Take Seriously And Those To Ignore’]. / FT

• Apparently also to be taken seriously? Gen Z really wants to work for the federal government, or maybe Big Tech / FastCo

• While for old guys like me, A new approach to upskilling is the key to navigating economic uncertainty. Rethinking how we build skills for the future of work / Quartz

• But guys, Would Life Be Better if You Worked Less? / WSJ

• And When Did Our Personal Lives Get So Professional? / NYT

• Hence? Welcome to the Comfy Office of the Future / Wired

• Which is maybe? Why won’t US workers take their vacation days? / Bloomberg

World Order

• A Global Tour of the Biggest and Best Wire Ever Made. Epic piece of journalism from Neal Stephenson about the longest fiber-optic data cable on Earth / Wired

• How 1970s California created the modern world / Engelsberg Ideas

• Corollary: The tiny blog taking on Big Surveillance in China / Wired

• The most spoken languages in the world, ranked / Reddit

• Italians can no longer access ChatGPT / TechCrunch

• But over in Spain, from David Bloom: “Interesting use of a supercomputer’s power to create a virtual version of Barcelona to allow city planners to test planning scenarios to see how resources are distributed throughout the city…” [Barcelona tests 15-min city viability with the help of digital twin] / The Mayor

• Closer to home, a US agency is launching a 6-year, $300M project to build a massive Alzheimer’s database / Reuters

• While a startup called Modern Synthesis has found a way to mix sugar from plant waste and microbes to create “microbial textiles.” / Fast Company

• Also mostly positive: Millennials are not as badly-off as they think — but success is bittersweet. Highly educated and with earnings to match, this generation still falls behind boomers in the housing market / FT

• And Gen Z is blowing past other generations when it comes to 401Ks and retirement savings / Fortune

• But… GenZ is approaching a ‘student loan cliff’ that could shock the US Economy/ Fortune

• In the meantime, they’re gonna shop! From Iolanda Carvalho: “Gen Z will drive explosive growth in secondhand sales" per the Thredup Resale Report 2023 / ThredUp

The Speculative Future

• Caroline Busta and Lil Internet of New Models published a piece on "holographic media" you should read / Outland

• The promise – and peril – of synthetic media are coming into sharp focus / The Drum

• IE: “Google contractors say they don't have enough time to verify correct answers from the company's AI chatbot and end up guessing” / Insider

• A case in point for The AI Overconfidence Edition, then? / Why Is This Interesting

• ChatGPT is a reasoning engine, not a knowledge-base / Every

• hence: The ChatGPT King Isn't Worried, but He Knows You Might Be / NYT

• And BloombergGPT aims to be a domain-specific AI for business news / Nieman Lab

• There’s an AI that initialises a project, designs and codes the entire app, manages the GitHub repo, and deploys it as a use-able website - all at the whim of a voice command / Twitter

• While Instant Videos Could Represent the Next Leap in A.I. Technology / NYT

• Apropos: Baidu is seeking to patent tech which generates videos from a reference photo /USPTO

• Snap is seeking to patent NFT dynamics, or a system that allows a user to mint NFTs and allocate them to themselves or other users / USPTO

• [SIC] homie Trevor McFedries talks the origins and trajectories of Lil Miquela / Spotify

• How artists engage with Generative AI / YouTube

• Related, from Syd Allen-Ash: Space10 is trained an AI model on ikea catalogs from the 70s and 80s - and made a cool little optimistic film about AI being a collaborative tool / Fast Company

• While [SIC] homie Noah Brier’s BrXnd.ai announced the speakers for the first event on May 16th and it looks great / BrXnd.ai

Pop Cultures

• “Blurred Lines,” Harbinger of Doom. How Robin Thicke, Pharrell, and T.I.’s cursed megahit predicted everything bad about the past decade in pop culture / Pitchfork

• 'Ziwe' Got Cancelled / TVLine

• Meet the man behind the internet’s favorite outfits / NYT

• What’s a creative director for, anyway? / SSENSE

• Mapping the Fan Journey in Music and Web3. This report from the Water & Music team maps the fan journey in music and Web3 from project discovery to post-mint community engagement / Water & Music

• Why Gucci’s latest fragrance is made from recycled carbon / Vogue Business

• Alex G on British slang, Scottish service stations and Lil Yachty / The FACE

• At Shanghai Fashion Week, One Word Was On Everybody’s Mind / Jing Daily

• Mark Wahlberg's mission to turn Las Vegas into 'Hollywood 2.0' / Fox Business

• Corollary: Everyone Who Ran Hollywood Used to be Young. What Happened? / The Ankler

• Tina Barney on Photography as a Way of Marking Time Across Generation/ Time Sensitive Pod

• As New York Drill Goes Viral, Local Acts Struggle to Play Shows in Their Hometown / Rolling Stone

• Jing Daily offers its Verdict On Decentraland Metaverse Fashion Week 2023 / Jing Daily

• And goes deep on What A Simulation Reveals About The Critical Role Of Luxury Storytelling. Luxury brands that achieve the highest desirability are comparable to an opera — everyone knows precisely what to do and the execution is flawless / Jing Daily

• The mixed-up history of the shuffle button. How one button redefined our relationship to music/ The Verge

• 'Fortnite' Is The Future Of Music Streaming. Epic Games has been taken music licensing to new levels to fill out Fortnite’s radio stations / Kotaku

• Could Robert Kyncl’s ‘multiplier’ plan improve the way artists are paid from music streaming?/ Music Business Worldwide

• From Erik Lavoie: “My contribution. Everyone is doing classical, [even Thomas Bangalter from Daft Punk] i guess what is really old is now new again” / NYT

• ‘It was utterly wild’: the story of a 1970s erotic magazine for women / The Guardian

• A former Protocol editor buys part of the company’s email list to launch something new / Nieman Lab

• Evidence of: the non-partisan news dream “The quest for non-partisan news will continue, even if there’s little evidence of market demand. And that’s because rich elites love the concept.” / The Rebooting

Media Happenings

• The "Open Sourced" Social Media Era. Twitter has released the code that chooses which tweets show up on your timeline to GitHub and has put out a blog post explaining the decision / Twitter

• While Substack’s new short-form ‘Notes’ feed looks a lot like Twitter / TechCrunch

• Post, a publisher-focused Twitter alternative, launches to public / TechCrunch

• ‘It’s not sexy, but it is magic’: why media agencies are infatuated with AI / The Drum

• But can the Media business Survive the AI Onslaught? / People vs Algorithms

• And If AI destroys the media industry, then who will feed the chatbots? / Simon Owens

• Multiple Deals Show Opportunity in Niche Media / A Media Operator

• Tho Gal-dem, an online magazine brand staffed by and telling the stories of women and non-binary people of colour says business is no longer feasible / Press Gazette

• And Paramount slows down its podcast production launch pace as market comes 'back to Earth' / Digiday

• 'Hot Ones' Was a Slow Burn All Along / NYT

• [SIC] homie and The Athletic CCO Sebastian Tomich Says Sports Fans Want Ads / AdExchanger

• While alma mater Vice Sets Slate Of Docs At Tubi Including 'The Cult Of Elon' / Deadline

• Spotify is shutting down its live audio app Spotify Live / TechCrunch  

• Arsenal FC teamed up with travel company Staynex to launch a football NFT blockchain-based project that offers access to match tickets and luxury accommodations / Binance

• The secret sauce behind LinkedIn's $5bn advertising business / The Drum

Market-ations

• Scott Galloway and co ask: Can ChatGPT write a positioning strategy? / Section

• While unsurprisingly Meta wants to use generative AI to create ads / TechCrunch

• TikTok and Instagram Search: What Brands Need to Know About Social Media's Next Battlefield / AdAge

• IE: A marketing professor gave his students a challenge: If they made a TikTok video that got a million views, the final exam would be canceled. Within days, if not hours, a student succeeded / NYT

• Ergo: The Influencer Industry Is Having an Existential Crisis / The Atlantic

• Hence: Brand Influencer Platform LTK launches Social Media Advertising Via Content Creators / Mediapost

• But if It's Advertised to You Online, You Probably Shouldn't Buy It. Here's Why. / NYT

• So why do brands want to turn their websites into marketplaces? / Thingtesting

• Elsewhere in marketplaces: Defensible NFT Bazaars: How NFT Marketplaces Capture Value / W3B

• To that end, maybe Web3 isn't as dead as it would seem, as agencies play with new data-generating models / Digiday

• Case in point: Bombay Sapphire readies world's largest AI art event. Bombay Sapphire and Baz Luhrmann have teamed for "Saw This, Made This," an art installation experience that combines user-generated art and paintings made by an AI-powered robot / Marketing Dive

• And Ralph Lauren’s new Web3-centric Miami store accepts crypto and includes a partnership with Web3 community Poolsuite/ Vogue Business

• Beck's created “the first beer and marketing campaign made with AI’ /Channel X

• While IRL: Budweiser released a series of playable vinyl beer coasters for music fan / Famous Campaigns

• Heinz Turkey finds a Pantone label hack to disrupt ‘Ketchup Fraud’ / The Drum

• Netflix's Approach Shifts, Pushing Content That Can 'Pop' / NYT

• Netflix made a line of handbags from the material of this enormous ‘I Am Georgina’ billboard / AdAge

• And Jacquemus turned handbags into cars /IG

• Nike unveils period-conscious England women's kit with blue shorts / Dezeen

• L’Oréal to Acquire Aesop / WWD

• World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) and Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) are merging to form a new $21.4B company / AP News

• Esports teams are expensive brand exposure — and sponsors are wising up to it / Digiday

Food / Drink

• General Mills is transforming its iconic cereals, such as Cinnamon Toast Crunch, into ingredient brands to allow consumers to enjoy the iconic flavors in new and exciting ways, such as in yogurt and pancakes/ Fast Company

• From Celeste Blewitt: “So true, love the descriptions of the salad, and it's varied ingredients. The additions, the subtractions, how to make the salad 'healthy' or tasty. Fun read.” [ No More Caesars, Please]/NY Mag

• Sid Lee's guerilla campaign in Toronto and Ottawa revealed the human costs behind restaurant food through QR codes on menus, raising awareness about the issue and empowering consumers to make ethical choices / Trend Watching

• While Boston's food forests are a movement to conserve nature in urban areas, providing habitat for animals and social connections, as well as community well-being and social justice / The Conversation

• Save the Planet by Eating This Big Ugly Fish / Wired

Useful Diversions

• Tonight: meet me at the Maia Ruth Lee opening @Tina Kim Gallery from 6-8p.  Maia (and husband and OG [SIC] homie Peter Sutherland) are the best! / Instagram

• Saturday:  Matt Kenny opening 6-8p at fave gallery Halsey McKay’s new Greenpoint space  - 60 Greenpoint Avenue, Brooklyn / Halsey McKay

• And since I’m California-bound next week, 10 Art Shows to See in LA This Month / Hyperallergic

  

  Borrego Springs CA a decade ago. We’ll see what the superbloom looks lik, next week,.

======[SIC] 240: Worry Wolf======