[SIC] 269: No Bye No Aloha

Volume Six, Number Nine

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Corollary sources this week: Semafor/ After School / Morning Consult / Kicks You Wear / The Information / PSFK / Linkedin / Politico / Morning Brew / The New Statesman / Dealbook  / Axios / Nieman Lab / Kottke / Quartz / Champion

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Hi all.

Lots to do this AM and just realized that I’d managed to badly misnomer (mis-number?) last week’s edition, naming it [SIC] 271 when it was obviously [SIC] 268. So had to correct that, fix this one and generally try to limit any other mistakes born from rushing out the door. Apologies in advance.

The Whole state of things did bring to mind a piece at made me smile this week, Development Hell’s “On Irregularity. (The difficulty of writing for Substack).” Here’s a key quote, lifted from Neal Ungerleider’s excellent Context Collapse, which I’d subscribe to if I were you:

“Substack, it turns out, is a hungry, hungry monster. There are actual real people, many of them paid subscribers, who will notice if I don't write anything. These people, unlike random TV and film executives, are spending their own hard-earned money on this nonsense and must, therefore, be catered to in earnest, and with the requisite amount of enthusiasm”

Which is to say, I get that, and I’m trying to cater to you here - so lmk how I’m doing if you feel like taking a second. Because sometimes it’s hard to tell. You can also upgrade, or gift yourself a paid subscription (and expense it) to get a mini-digest (10x links only) most days. Here’s a button:

Meantime, thanks Neal and all the original sources cited below, and thanks to B. Emm, Nimrod Kamer, David Bloom, Geoff Renaud, Iolanda Carvalho, Molly Raskin, Celeste Blewitt, and Leann Abad for contributions this week. I am and remain greatly obliged. Keep em coming.

Now, these damn links.

Ben

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The Macro Narrative

• How to Exclaim! / The Millions

• For instance: Everyone is a Luddite now! / Wired

• And Moomins is boomin! / Dirt

• From B. Emm: “Been trying to map what's going on with art and social media for a while, like, over a beer, not as a report, and this touches a lot of good (and bad) points. [The World’s Most Popular Painter Sent His Followers After Me Because He Didn’t Like a Review of His Work] / Artnet

• Because? Modern brand stories are vibrations that become strong enough for the culture to hear: The glory of storytelling / The Sociology of Business

• From Nimrod:  “My wife just published this 🍥 the prince was my best friend”  [The Grift, the Prince, and the Twist]/ Airmail

• Another from B Emm: “There's also, shamelessly, this one. You can make your own mind up.” [ Not Just A Vibe-Shift, A Core-Shift. We’re Going Post-Aesthetic] / Medium

• Related: Cool people gentrified the internet / Embedded

• Ergo, Ryan Broderick’s Garbage Optimist Manifesto? / Garbage Day

• From Molly: The Makings of a Literary It Girl / Nylon

• Corollary: Emma Cline’s story “Upstate,” where the moral of the story is that hammocks should live outside, Djuna / The New Yorker

• More choices with words: Typography Horoscopes: What your font choice says about you and your future / It’s Nice That

• So Fanum Tax. From Molly: Blessed and emoji-pilled: why language online is so absurd / Dazed

• So actual tax: Landlordism is killing culture / The New Statesman

• Corollary, from Piers: You Can No Longer Tell How Old Someone Is Just by Looking at What They Wear [because] Fast Fashion Has Led to the Collapse of Age-Coded Clothing / Millennial American Dream

• Ergo, from B Emm:  [The teens have made Nirvana “preppy.” They don’t care what we think] / Slate

• Oh also, from Piers:  a  new kind of shopper dropped. ‘Zero consumers’: What they want and why it matters / McKinsey

• Related to that: Too many people own dogs / The Atlantic

• But if a home checks all their boxes, people don’t care if it’s haunted! / Zillow

• Case in point: Do Kate Middleton and Prince William Have a Ghost in Their Country Home? / Vanity Fair

• Speaking of home countries: Sweden is sick of people confusing it with Switzerland / The Drum

• More confusion: American trust in media has fallen again to a historic low, according to new polling/ Gallup

• And hence: Americans are following the news less closely than they used to  / Pew

• In contrast: Why the U.S. Can’t Quit Tipping” / WSJ

• Or “Taping”: Meet the first-ever mixtaper at The New York Times / Nieman Lab

• Somehow corollary: Cybertruck: A Vision of Transportation in a Post-Collapse World / The Lindy Newsletter

• Ergo: The Real Reason You Should Get an E-bike: they're fun! "One of the best ways to improve your life: Ditch your car." / The Atlantic

• Airport lounges are booming, and everyone wants in (on the free food) / CNBC

• After a summer of Barbenheimer and Beyoncé, can US consumers still afford the holiday season? / CNN

• Hence: How retail brands are trying to cash in on ‘funflation’ / Modern Retail

Generationations

• Why Gen Z loves surrealism—and which brands are doing weird right / AdAge

• How AI is reshaping mentorship for Gen Z workers / Digiday

• Meet some of the Gen Z entrepreneurs behind the next AI innovation wave / Digiday

• Also somewhat surreal, from Celeste: “This is a moment of heartwarming, brilliant design and a retirement experience with a difference. How it really should be” [Britain's Best New Building Is A Retirement Home] /The Guardian

Platformations

• Amazon Confronts a New Rival: TikTok / WSJ

• In China: The livestream e-commerce bubble has begun to deflate this year, with the saturated industry facing an economic downturn / Rest of World

• And yet, from Molly: The Junk Is Winning. TikTok’s experiment in shopping has quickly become another place to hawk products / The Atlantic

• Hence: What should brands know before jumping on TikTok Shop? / The Drum

• Meanwhile: TikTok is testing 15-minute videos / TechCrunch

• From Iolanda: "An expansion in its video formats is surely designed to further broaden its appeal and engagement. “ [TikTok Comes for YouTube’s Territory] / WARC

• The YouTube Indicator to Watch. Will short-form video ever generate meaningful revenue for creators on YouTube, TikTok and Instagram? The next three months will go a long way to answering that question  / The Information

• Meanwhile, Twitch announced several major updates to its platform over the weekend at TwitchCon / Twitch

• All of which overshadows The Death of BeReal / Dazed

Stylistics

• The Monday Media Diet with Sami Reiss is a banger / Why Is This Interesting

• Related: Reiss’s How To Actually Buy Furniture on LiveAuctioneers / Snake

• Luxury fashion has a problem with women / Jing Daily

• Convenient then? H&M Group’s New AI Tool Lets Anyone Play Designer / BoF

• Related? Why Does Everybody Dress Like They Have a Stylist? / GQ

• Even?! From Molly: Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, Ghost Influencer / NYT

• Alessandro Sartori on luxury in China and Zegna’s collab with The Elder Statesman/ Jing Daily

• Lionel Messi has made Inter Miami’s eye-catching jersey the hottest piece of sports merchandise on the planet / NYT

• Or, you can opt for a jacket made of bacteria / The Future Party

• Also ‘yeah, no’: Could fashion week survive without sponsorships? / Vogue Business

Culturations

• *GOAT: Who is the Greatest Economist of all Time? / Marginal Revolution

• Also thinking goated: A24 has designs on becoming media’s answer to LVMH / The Generalist

• From Leann: “Have you seen this yet? worth including in SIC!” [Will ‘Don’t Look Up’ Director’s New Series Work On TikTok? It Will Need Better Luck Than These Social Media Efforts] / Forbes

• More social: Flight of the Drones Lights Up Central Park / NYT

• Quite a bit darker: from B Emm: “Nice little expo on the early Goth scene (which I always think of as the cockroach of subcultures, in the best possible way) and given the way fashion and culture are orientating it's probably required reading” [Rare Creatures: the Book of Goth]  / Goth Shop

• Corollary, from ‘Celeste: Cigarettes and clay sculptures. I remember reading a few pieces in SIC a month or two ago on the kitsch movement cigarettes are having. This leans into it,The Queen Of Clay: Alma Berrow Is The Hot New Artist On The Scene' / Tatler

• On the topic of figurative art: How Did a Museum Misplace a $3.7M Rodin Sculpture? / Hyperallergic

• While in contrast, SFMoMA acquires more than 100 works by artists with disabilities / The Art Newspaper

• Meanwhile, from Iolanda: "Disclaimer - I love everything Joana does…"[ Joana Vasconcelos’ ‘Plug-in’ Retrospective Buzzes with Three Decades of Energy and Power] Colossal

• Another from Iolanda: "For the seventh year in a row,recorded music revenues in the United States rose, hitting a record high of $15.9 billion.” / Visual Capitalist

• Hence? Pirate station NTS Radio is now partially owned by Universal Music Group / First Floor

• Corollary to that, from Molly: Ode to East L.A. Punk and the Backyard Gigs We Inherited / Spin

• From Piers: “a good one I think”: [Aphex Twin’s 7 Best Video Game Samples] / Pitchfork

Technopolis

• Getting Things Done Together. Can the arrival of smarter collaboration software help fix knowledge work? / The New Yorker

• A startup is claiming to induce lucid dreams with AI / Slate

• Proof that … "The tech hype-cycle is spinning ever faster" / Dezeen

• Tho?! Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses: a turning point / The Verge

• From David: Apple, caught by surprise in generative AI boom, to spend $1 billion per year to catch up / CNBC

• Booming systems: YouTube Music now lets you generate your own AI playlist art / Engadget

• While ChatGPT is getting pretty good at writing phishing emails / Axios

• Related: Here’s a look at how the newly up-to-date ChatGPT reports the latest news / Nieman Lab

• Like this news flash: Some college students are dropping out to chase AI money / WSJ

• …While that same boom is giving new life to San Francisco / WaPo

• But really, In the race for tech workers, Seattle is beating SF/ WSJ

• From Geoff: “Woah” The Space-Based Drug Factory That Can’t Come Home / ieee.org

Media-tions

• From David: “Interesting piece on the fast-changing (and worsening) market for major media companies at a time when everyone seems to expect a lot of consolidation of smaller players.” [Paramount's Shari Redstone is open for business, but business may not be open for her ]/ CNBC

• Madison and Wall, an insights firm for Wall Street, forecasts advertising in the streaming age will focus on two tenants [sic]: more premium and fewer overall / The Hollywood Reporter

• Hence: ‘Pause Ads’ Creep Onto Hulu, Peacock and Max as Streamers Seek New Revenue / Variety

• Automattic is acquiring Texts and betting big on the future of messaging / The Verge

• Related: How social media professionals rewrite brand playbooks amid the onslaught of emerging social platforms / Digiday

• So maybe? The BBC is the last defence against a post-journalistic world / The New Statesman

• Jezebel, one of the iconic and influential brands of the blogging era, is for sale again as its owner focuses on male readers / Axios

• Apropos:  Flying Media Group Acquires Marine Print Titles from Bonnier / A Media Operator

• While The Messenger is “out of money,” its president reportedly said  / The Daily Beast

Market / Influence

• VML SMH: As agencies merge, agency brands may wane in importance / Digiday

• Especially since LinkedIn influencers are a thing now—and brands like Intel and Hootsuite are courting them / Fast Company

• Haaaa as if: How Campari engineered Aperol’s rise in the US / Marketing Brew

• EMS is leaning into humor & affordability for its brand refresh / Modern Retail

• While (no relation) Hotdoggers Dietz & Watson Are Back for Spooky Season to Introduce Frank & Stein’s / IBB Online

• General Mills has leveraged augmented reality (AR) to launch a unique gaming experience for its Monster Cereal/ AdWeek

• Apropos of monsters:  Hasbro announced a collaboration with Marvel to bring superheroes to its billion-dollar collectible card game, Magic: The Gathering / Marvel

• And Kim Kardashian’s Skims launches menswear line / The Drum

• Meantime, Beauty’s Biggest Conglomerates Are Selling Off Their Brands / BoF

• Corollary: DTC Grocery Brands Thrive On Social, But Can They Win In Retail? / AdExchanger

• In contrast, Hermès Defies Luxury Sector Gloom / BoF

• And Brunello Cucinelli’s sales in Asia surged 49.7 percent year on year to $243.2 million (€218.6 million) in the first nine months of the year / Jing Daily

• Nike, Dove team to tackle high turnover rate of teen girls in sports / Marketing Dive

• The changing face of sustainable branding / Creative Review

• Or, no face? Death Wish Coffee's New NIL Deals Are Anonymous / AdAge

• Related: adidas just signed a new multi-year agreement with the Overtime Elite basketball league to become its official apparel and footwear sponsor / Sports Illustrated

• And Premier League Considers Salary Cap Amid Ballooning Player Costs / Front Office Sports

• Two great tastes? Putting the Rolling Stones logo on FC Barcelona shirts is a stroke of merchandising genius / Creative Bloq

Eats, Drinks and Ephemera

• What Was the Tasting Menu? Did Momofuku Ko die so a regular dining experience could live? / The Melt

• How tableside flambé became the hottest thing in fine dining / Eater

• A bottle of the “most sought-after Scotch whisky” is being auctioned off / Quartz

• Corollary: Why Olive Oil is So Expensive Right Now / NYT

• She made a TikTok video about pesto. It inspired people to spill their secrets / NYT

• ‘Andy Warhol’s biggest dream come true’: how cans became aspirational /  The Guardian

• Companies are using AI to give food more accurate expiration dates / The Atlantic

• Pringles and The Caviar Company have partnered to create limited-edition boxes of Pringles and caviar / Stylus

• While Tim Hortons and BAILEYS are bringing the iconic flavour of BAILEYS to drinks and baked goods / Tim Hortons

• And Cheetos to launch two new snack flavors / Food And Wine

The Natural (?!) World

• Open Plans created a pop-up installation in Williamsburg to showcase how parking takes up space that could be used for housing / Gothamist

• Global forest loss peaked in the 1980s. But there’s a lot of variance in where trees are being knocked down / Works In Progress

• Shower as often as you need — which might not be every day / NYT

• Especially since covens of witches on paddle boards are appearing on lakes and ponds / NYT

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