[SIC] 278: Are Era New

Volume Six, Number Eighteen

Ben Dietz

Jan 04, 2024

[SIC] Weekly is a digest of pertinent developments, sent Thursdays to nearly 5000 subscribers who’ve individually opted in.

Paid subscriptions are also available. Many paying supporters expense their subscriptions as research for their work in marketing, advertising, entertainment and tech.

Paying subscribers get an additional [SIC] Day microdigest of 10 links every Mon, Tues, Weds, Fri, and the [SIC] Sundays dispatch. And founding supporters get invited to dinner parties at my home in NYC, with special guests.

[SIC] is a one-person operation that grows via word-of-mouth. Pass it along to people you like. Here’s a button:

Share [SIC] Weekly

Corollary sources this week: Public Announcement / Jing Daily/ The Future Party/ Our Gang News / Blazer / Elevator / Roca News / 2PM / Marginal Revolution / Kottke / After School / Understanding TikTok / 1440 / Semafor / The New Statesman / Future Perfect / Politico / Dealbook / The Deep Dive / Retail Dive/ Snaxshot / Network Notes /Brendans Communication Miscellany / Nieman Lab

Hi all,

Hope the fortnight since I published [SIC] Weekly has been gentle to you and yours. It was bittersweet for me, at best; my grandmother passed away on Christmas morning, after 104 years of enviable life. She was a legend, a true matriarch and one of my lifelong role models, for her unending curiosity, deep generosity and almost unbelieveably positive spirit, right until the end. That she departed on Christmas was a comfort: it was a famous moment for her to host and entertain throughout most of my life and a wonderful time of togetherness for us, as for so many others. She was, as my mom wrote me today, a treasure in our lives. She’s sorely missed. We’ll join the family and her friends in celebrating her life this weekend, and forever after.

Lifestage changes like this can’t help but call for reassessment; hence the lack of a newsletter last week, and of a [SIC] Talk in this edition. I took the time to do a purge of underutilized subscriptions, listserves and bookmarks, with hopes of making this weekly digest more focused. I made a new header image. And I actually got ahead of scheduling some [SIC] Talks for the coming weeks. Looking forward to having one almost every week for you in 2024.

Apropos of those Talks (most of which still live over on IG @dietznutz) : my last guest Sami Reiss (of the excellent SNAKE newsletter) did me the favor of linking to [SIC] yesterday in his first auction roundup of the year, and it brought a bunch of new readers. Thanks Sami - and thanks to Piers Fawkes, Ricky Engelberg, Geoff Renaud, Iolanda Carvalho, Celeste Blewitt, Molly Raskin and David Bloom for contributions this week. Compiling the weekly digest is way less fun without help, and I invite ideas from any and all. And apropos of Sami’s recommendation, word-of-mouth referrals to [SIC] have always been my #1 source of new subscribers, so if you know anyone who’d be into it, here’s a button:

For the new folks and the OGs: a reminder on how I intend this digest to be used: There’s a lot here. Nobody reads all the articles. You’re not supposed to. Instead, read the headlines (or skip ahead to the sections you care about) and take it all in. There: you’re up to date. Now, if you have time, go back and open a few tabs. With apologies to Paul Munford and Casey Lewis, I recently started doing a little roundup of links ‘before the jump’, to illustrate. To wit:

Heading into this year’s TikTok Elections, a question: Are young people actually progressive?. And was this the year of peak woke? Ergo? The discourse: Substack Turns On Its 'Nazis Welcome!' Sign. "The key point: your reputation as a private site is what you allow. If you allow garbage, you're a garbage site. If you allow Nazis, you're a Nazi site." Hence: Casey Newton calls for Substack to remove pro-Nazi content (and plans to remove Platformer from Substack if it refuses). And fave Tabber “Rudy” Foster went right ahead and did it…

Which brings me to the last thing: this Substack freedom of speech/Nazi discourse is execrable, annoying and totally worth engaging in. I don't really want to undertake a move off a platform that’s been fundamental to publishing and turning [SIC] into a thing - but it’s not a great vibe at the moment, so I’m investigating options. Any thoughts, lmk in the comments, or by direct reply please. And watch this space.

Ben

A run of 20 Wild Turkeys, Christmas Morning.

=======[SIC] 278: Are Era New=======

The Macro Narrative

Collage is the greatest of the arts / In Bed With Social
It’s Time to Embrace Slow Productivity. We need fewer things to work on. Starting now / The New Yorker
Related: Reclaim your brain: why it’s time to stop scrolling our lives away / The Guardian
Because? Being Bored Is A Good Thing /FT
And we’re Improving Ourselves to Death. What the self-help gurus and their critics reveal about our times / The New Yorker
Corollary: What to Read If You Want to Reinvent Yourself / The Atlantic
Related: The bliss — and benefits — of slow reading / FT
But How Do You Even Sell a Book Anymore? As sales slump, the labour of trying to bottle hype is largely left to writers / The Walrus
And, related: why does no one write like Tom Wolfe any more? / The New Statesman
A Guide to Getting Rid of Almost Everything / The New Yorker
Or, if you’re over it: The Secret Pleasure of Breaking New Year’s Resolutions / Time
Speaking of resolutions, from Iolanda: "Planning to save more money is top of mind for … 2024 / Statista
Because: Year in a word: Cozzie Livs / FT
Corollary: Hack, rizz, slay and other words to avoid in 2024. Public Announcement addition: This year, instead of “hits differently” try “is different” / NPR
Apropos of words to avoid: The “general public” is a myth / Linkedin
So Why Are We Obsessed With Naming Things? / Byline
Because? From Celeste: “to learn a language is to learn slang and short hand speak. Excellent references to ways in which we all learn” [The Most Fun Way To Learn A Language] /The Atlantic
Elsewhere, from Piers: “I guess we all know this but it’s a good wrap up to the wrap up.” [The Year the Millennial Internet Died] / Wired
So what, then, to make of Pinterest’s 2024 Trends Predictions? / Pinterest
Or any of the decks on this Google Drive, teeming with over 120 reports on the 2024 trends / Google Drive
Will 2024 be the Year of the Streak? / Fast Company
Speaking of streaky: If ‘dry’ January sounds daunting, try ‘damp’ January instead / WaPo
Mais Non! The French refuse to make “Dry January” a thing / The Guardian
Elsewhere, from Celeste: Ozempic Changed The Way People Saw Food / Bon Appetit
And: “ just finished the Dan Frommer episode on the Taste podcast-worth a listen re Ozempic, Sweetgreen and all the food ideas / Spotify
Meanwhile, Vibrating Pills are the New Ozempic / Snaxshot
Since we’re going all the way: Full send. or: Hail Melon, full of grace, the wall is with thee / Fostertalk
Fast and furious corollary: There Are Two Types of Airport People / The Atlantic
Everybody Wants to Be a Blacksmith Now / NYT
Also throwback-related? How polyamory became so popular / The New Yorker
And since we’re ‘enlightened?’ The Future Could Be Buddhist / The Lindy Newsletter

Generationations

Meet "Gen Alpha" / Axios
And! The Lonely Teens on TikTok / The Cut
Plus! From Celeste: Zillennials In The Mil-liminal Space: …The Contemporary 'Micro-generations In The Misty Marshland Between Established Epochs' / Tatler
When am I gonna stop being wise beyond my years? / The FACE
How The Dreamers Revealed Generational Disappointments / Frieze
Is this it?: Millennials are entering middle age, and their economic conditions aren’t what they expected / NYT
The Timeshare Comes for Us All / The Atlantic
From Molly: Baby boomers did one big thing we should all be grateful for / Business Insider
Platformations
TikTok became a kingmaker of brands for Gen Z, from Clinique to Kraft / Fast Company
Ergo: TikTok will raise the fees for sellers on TikTok Shop from 2 percent to 8 percent in July / WWD
So now 2024 will be a make-or-break year for TikTok Shop / Glossy
Elsewhere: LinkedIn is attracting major advertising spend as brands decamp from X / Insider
While Twitch said that it’d start banning users who even pretend to be naked / The Verge
Speaking of “sharing”: Instagram Quietly Makes Share Counts Public / Adweek
While Facebook Is Being Overrun with Stolen, AI-generated Images That People Think Are Real / 404Media
Also maybe not real? What is North Sea TikTok? / Bustle

Stylistics

From David: “We’ve been discussing pieces of this for quite some time in Kouch Collective, but this brings together the broader idea, of how digital fashion is driving IRL fits/drips/looks/uh, clothing as well.” Digital fashion inspires Gen Z’s physical style The metaverse drives real-world sales for brands / The Future Party
How GTA spawned the world of virtual fashion / The Future Party
Speaking of spawning a world: The menswear playbook / Sociology of Business
Related: Brands To Watch In 2024 / Street Night Live
Elsewhere, it’s the 2024 China core trend forecast. From 'old money style' to 'Y2K,' here are five trends shaping China’s fashion landscape in 2024 / Jing Daily
Related: From Piers: “Nice overview”: Recommerce Revolution: From Thrift Store Finds to Digital Dominance
But how Did Nu Metal Become the Hottest Thing in Fashion?/ GQ
This feels of a piece: A 9-Month Cruise is TikTok’s favorite new “reality show” / NYT
Conversely, from Celeste: 'Are We Seeing The Slow Decline Of The Travel Selfie? /BBC
Apropos of throwback imagery: “archive recommendation this week from the aptly named people over at Archivepdf. There are some really nice full scans of some great books here” / ArchivePDF
On the topic of imagery: A.I. Is the Future of Photography. Does That Mean Photography Is Dead? / NYT
Are Meta's smart glasses the next big influencer trend? / Jing Daily
And do we therefore need: 10 fashions to help you confuse facial recognition systems? / Quartz
More questions: What should fashion education look like in the digital era? / Jing Daily
Oh also: the Ludicrously Capacious Bag could be yours, along with a bunch of other Succession props / Heritage Auctions

Culturations

Mickey Mouse has entered public domain and my childhood is already ruined / Creative Bloq
Related, frrom Piers: “Quite a round up” [Mickey Mouse Is Copyright-Free and the Internet Is Making the Most of It] / Hyperallergic
And: “More on this.” It's not just Mickey: 10 characters and cultural works losing some copyright protection, from Peter Pan to Charlie Chaplin / Business Insider
Speaking of rehashing the greatest hits: Not a single new album graced the UK's Top 10 best-selling albums of 2023 / Network Notes
Also old but good: Unearthed From the ’90s The artist and former gallerist Aaron Rose had the coolest indie gallery in an era of creative explosion in downtown New York. A new book (of old work) captures that long-lost moment / NYT
And “Real Estate,” a new photo book from Lee Friedlander, features 60 years’ worth of images capturing American communities / NYT
Her Sculptures Were Ignored for 33 Years. Then She Got a New Roommate / NYT
From Piers: “As I’m also from Croydon, this NY story of a turn of the century icon is a bonus" [the day a young Kate Moss hit the fashion stratosphere] / The Guardian
Elsewhere: Inside Kigali’s Booming Creative Scene / Service95
8 Painters To Watch in 2024, According to Insiders / Artnet
And The must-see exhibitions in 2024/ The Art Newspaper
Also a must, from Celeste: 'Tatler Meets Socks House, The Social Satirist Of-The-Moment, To Discuss Anonymity, Authorship and Emerald Fennell's Latest, Saltburn' / Tatler
But?! Saltburn might actually be Twilight fanfic / Vulture
Speaking of flick fans: Wes Anderson and his production company have launched a digital film club called Galerie / Indiewire
Which will probably ignore the Most Profitable Film in History / YT
Because?! From Molly: Stan culture has lost sight of its limits / i-D
Related, obvs: Eminem and the White Rapper Problem / YT
Less problematic? Or moreso? Spaceboy Pop Is Blasting Off / Byline
Also blasting: Why is the quality of recorded classical music so rising? / Marginal Revolution
Why all museums need an in-house TikToker / The Art Newspaper
Cause, like, this Silly Museum About Crabs Has Serious Things to Say / NYT
Also seriously silly: Elite chess players keep accusing one another of cheating / NYT
And also weird, from Piers: “Nice profile piece - gives good sense of the energy that drove Nintendo" [Nintendo’s design guru Shigeru Miyamoto: I wanted to make something weird ] / The Guardian
Related: a new study reveals that playing the popular Nintendo Switch game “Super Mario Odyssey” can reduce depression symptoms / Frontiers of Psychology
And speaking of frontiers: Normcore Singapore’s Mutant Queer Future / Rave New World

Technopolis

[SIC] homie Noah Brier is holding another edition of the BrXnd Marketing x AI Conference in NYC this year: May 8, 2024, at NeueHouse. I went last year, and will again this time. Highly recommended/ BrXnd
From Piers: Is the UK Government planning a voluntary national AI code of conduct in 2024? / Diginomica
New York Times sues Microsoft and OpenAI / The Verge
This weird cyborg head for ChatGPT is freaking me out / Creative Bloq
‘How not to be stupid about AI’. I do hope some of 2023’s panic is receding / Wired
The AI revolution’s first year: has anything changed? / FT
Apropos: Bot takes: ChatGPT, Bard and Claude ponder 2023, pitch holiday TV ads, and predict 2024 / Digiday
Also: Data poisoning: how artists are sabotaging AI to take revenge on image generators / The Conversation
Another way to wield AI art, from Geoff: Liz Renstrom’s teen AI teen mag “Yummy” /Artnet
And: This film does not exist: Frank Pavich explains how A.I. created images from a version of “Tron” that was never made / NYT
Corollary to that, though, hardcore fans are resisting anime’s embrace of computer-generated work / NYT
From Molly: The New Way Brands Are Battling, and Sometimes Even Beating, Bots / BoF
Speaking of battling: Silicon Valley’s quest to live forever has many warring factions/ Business Week

Media-tions

The year of augmentation / The Rebooting
Because? A news bundle will never save the media industry / Simon Owens
Hence? The Messenger Plans Layoffs Amid Hunt for Cash / NYT
And is said to have weighed shutting down the beleaguered digital news start-up /Semafor
While Cheddar, the embattled financial news site, put some employees on unpaid leave / NYT
Ergo: Media execs set sights on non-ad revenue streams in 2024/ Digiday
And The New York Times Magazine ends its poetry column / NYT
Conversely: Conservatives’ “anti-woke” alternative to Disney has arrived / Nieman Lab

Market / Influence

More particular verbiage: The business terms that entered our lexicon this year / Fast Company
Corollary from Islanda: With Gen Z all about the group chat now, here’s how marketers are adapting Digiday
Cause, like, Advertisers — they’re just like us ( and don’t want to be solely advertisers, but part of culture)
/ Digiday
Hence?! Sports stadiums are becoming adult playgrounds / Axios
But where has all the store seating gone? / Marketplace
Also gone: No more free returns: 81% of retailers charge fee / NYPost
Conversely: Chipotle guac is FREE if you login 20 minutes of activity on Strava / Chipotle
Liquid Death commits mountains of murder in Fortnite / Muse by Clio
Gen Zers can recognize brands based solely on ‘sonic memes,’ report says / Marketing Brew
Yet McDonald's ads always better than Burger Kings/ Creative Bloq
Barilla has a bunch of playlists on Spotify for timing how long to cook your pasta for, like 11 minutes of rap/hip hop for fusilli / Design Boom
Elsewhere: Martin Scorsese will direct his first Super Bowl commercial, for Squarespace /AdAge
Corollary: He Revived Old Spice. Can This CEO Save a Sneaker That Lost Its Cool? / WSJ
From Piers: “Inside this is the story of the changing landscape of brand partnerships for celebs & sports” [The Managers Who Helped Make Travis Kelce a Celebrity]/ NYT
About which Molly quipped: “v timely as I embark on my annual Entourage rewatch” / [Link mine - Ed] Reddit
Related: Male Athletes Will Reign as Top Fashion Ambassadors /
These Are the Logos Used by Tourism Boards in Each U.S. State and Around the World / My Modern Met
Local corollary: Microsoft Shells Out $76 Million USD in Wisconsin Pumpkin Farm Sale / Hypebeast

Eats, Drinks and Ephemera

Nine predictions for how we’ll eat in 2024 / NYT
Has Gratuity Culture Reached a Tipping Point? / New Yorker
Because at this point? Dining out has become a rich person’s sport / The Future Party
Except for the “Poverty Elites,” apparently. From Ricky: “Funny article Michael Miraflor posted” [Let Them Eat Crab Cake] / NYMag
Apropos: half of all the beef consumed in the US on a given day is eaten by just 12% of the population. And members of that 12% were most likely to be white men between the ages of 50 and 65." / Technology Review
Americans’ increasing diet of chicken and dairy has taken a toll on underground water supplies / NYT
Related: What Tyson Foods’ terrible year means for the future of Big Chicken / Sentient Media
Tequila sunset? Demand slowdown poses dilemma for agave growers / FT
Winemakers in England reap rewards of warming climate / FT
In Spain, vermouth is more than a drink. It’s a national pastime / NYT
Chronicles of a Bubble-Tea Addict / The New Yorker
From Gordon Hull “This was interesting” [How Van Leeuwen Built a $300 Million Empire] / CNBC
From Celeste: The Man Who Made The Australian Cafe (And, Yes, Avocado Toast) A Global Phenomenon / The New Yorker

The Natural (?) World?

Back to the Land: Young Italians find la dolce vita in a return to farming / The Guardian
Corollary, from Celeste: “Great seasonal, uber British, topical piece on not only the culture of cooking, but also focusing on the idea on looking to the past, to techniques and slow food” [Max Jones And The Call Of The Culinary Wild] / FT
Not a cat guy: How the “No Kill” Movement Betrays Its Name / The New Yorker
East Coast cities are slowly sinking / VT.edu
More cheerfully: They needed a home for 80,000 puzzles. They found an Italian castle / NYT