This week on my internet (10th Oct)🦋

The downfall of Taylor Swift, Why you need £3.1 million, and wtf is the Job-pocolypse

Happy Happy Friday,

Buckle up for the train wreck of a week it has been (for Taylor Swift).

Culture Beat

🧡 Taylor Swift released The Life of a Showgirl last Friday. Whilst every single one of her albums is usually met with negative review, this one seems particularly divisive. The lyrics are so bad that you can’t tell the difference between them and random Tumblr quotes. Key things to note: the lyricism and acoustics feel like they have absolutely nothing to do with being a showgirl. Based on the marketing and the aesthetic of this whole album, we were expecting “The life of a SHOWGIRL” not “the LIFE of a showgirl”. Unfortunately, we were wrong.

😒 Taylor wrote a diss track about Charli XCX, as a response to Charli’s song ‘Sympathy is a knife’ - managing to call her a coke head and likening her to a tiny chihuaha barking from a bag. (Some background context: Swift briefly dated Matty Healy, the 1975 bandmate of Charli’s now-husband, George Daniel, in 2023.) Sympathy is a knife a deeply complex realisation of insecurity when faced with someone who you could “never be”, but embodies the success of where you’re trying to go. Let me be clear, this is not a diss-track. Fans are disappointed in Taylor for punching down on someone who didn’t deserve it. Everyone is comparing it to Regina George from Mean Girls. Someone said it should’ve been about Trump and it would have made the album - I’m inclined to agree.

🪵 There is a badly written three minute track about her fiancee’s (Travis Kelce) appendage, aptly titled “Wood”. No one wanted it nor asked for it, and frankly it PMO that if you ignore the lyrics it happens to musically be the best song on the album.

֎ Taylor’s team also very obviously used some generative AI in the promotional material for her album, and fans called on her to “do better”, especially as someone who’s always been so vocal about artistry. She had both the means and the time to hire someone to create props and film her videos, yet actively chose not to.

💸 This album has 28 different variants, from unique exclusive vinyls, to bonus CD’s - without all of them you apparently won’t be able to access everything (from acoustic versions of songs to studio voicenotes) - If we couldn’t tell from the commerce choices, Taylor’s response to the album’s negative reception has made it very clear her top priority is money. Greed knowns no bounds, and neither does Taylor swift. “the rule of show business is - if it’s the first week of my album release and you’re saying either my name or my album title, you’re helping.” This album wasn’t for the fans, it was for her and her future husband.
https://www.reddit.com/r/SwiftlyNeutral/comments/1o0lklw/taylors_response_to_the_album_reception/

✍️ Other points to note: PigeonTok loves the album, as does DracoHarry Stans, Google search trends from the day are fascinating, Elizabeth Banks reaction videos are adorable.

🎤 Bad Bunny was announced as the SuperBowl’s half time headline performer. Why, I hear you ask, would people be upset about the worlds 3rd most streamed artist of 2024 (behind only Taylor Swift and The Weeknd), performing at such an event? As a Latin artist, his songs are unsurprisingly, in Spanish - people are enraged they won’t be able to understand. Bad Bunny clapped back on SNL telling people they have 4 months to learn the language. Politically, there is an element of Bad Bunny being Anti-ICE and NFL being a MAGA heavy sport. Chicago is the most recent state to be battling ICE National Guard deployments, but the city is fighting back with salt trucks, gang hits and street chases.

🎙️ 🦋 Huntrixx - AKA the fake KPop band from Netflix’s KPop Demon Hunters - performed their first ever live performance of the hit song “Golden” from the movie. What makes this so special is that this song was never supposed to be performed live. It’s only due to the popularity of the film that we’re even seeing this live. The singers are not performers by trade - they are studio artists and songwriters. They also had to drop the octave of the song because the lead singer was recovering from bronchitis. BRONCHITIS. I’m sorry if I had bronchitis I would have cancelled HOW DID THEY ACHIEVE THIS VOCAL RANGE:

This week in trending TikTok, we have:

• Men who aren’t really friends - seriously how can this group of friends be missing so many details about each others lives?

• Generative AI handy men - using AI to fake a shirtless maintenance man tinkering with your house appliances and sending pics to your partner. Cue crashouts.

• The Office Style filming for dogs that need a home - that’s it.

• So TikTok is just Tinder now if you’re attractive. Post a pic of yourself and your type and wait for the DM’s to come flooding in.

Content Corner

👵🏻 Beauty Brand, Refy’s new campaign “Iconic Never Gets Old” sets a new standard for beauty norms. They’ve tapped into some older influencer baddies for the campaign, positioning them as the protagonists of their campaign. They’re not styled to look younger, nor cast as wise observers. This is a moment of culturally intelligent, emotionally resonant brand-building.

🧈 Bose released a new set of headphones in the it-girl colour of the year: Butter Yellow. Whilst jumping on a trend doesn’t work for every brand, it has for Bose - generating a lot of hype over a product you can’t even buy (RIP it was an exclusive for influencers only).

Audience Insights: Gen Z

🔒 Gen Z’s winter arc is back. But this year, we’re saying they’re getting “locked in”. For Gen-Z, the drive to self optimize is relentless, a driver shaped by both economic precarity and a digital culture that allows and rewards constant productivity. I just don’t understand why we need to do it in the most depressing, dark, time of the year.

💸💸 Gen Z will reportedly need £3.1million in their retirement accounts to retire ‘comfortably’. This is only marginally better than the £1.4million required for older generations for a ‘comfortable’ standard of living. Rebecca Williams, divisional lead of financial planning at Rathbones, said: ‘The figure is shocking and serves as a stark reminder of how inflation can quietly erode retirement savings.’ Thank you Rebecca, so essentially, we’re all fucked.

👔 In light of that joyous news, Gen Z are also facing a “job-pocolypse” (I also don’t think it’s just Gen Z, I fear many millennials are also facing this crisis) as companies are prioritising AI systems over new hires. Whilst entry-level roles are drying up, middle management is slowly eroding too.

🌈 Gen Z women are now the most liberal group in the US. Women 28 and under skew substantially more left than the rest of the country. Only 26% of Gen Z women approve of Donald Trump, compared with 47% of Gen Z men.

Tech & Social

🎨 The new friend ads are all over the NY subway, but the product is a privacy nightmare and probably illegal. the company makes a $129 wearable AI companion - a plastic disk, containing a microphone, on a necklace - your “friend”. Recently, Friend paid $1 million to plaster more than 10,000 white posters throughout the New York City subway system with messages such as I’ll binge the entire series with you. People hate these billboards. Across the city, the ads are covered in graffiti criticizing the pendant (it doesn’t have eyes, bruh; CRINGE) as well as the idea of AI altogether (AI wouldn’t care if you lived or died). Many of the ads have been ripped and torn. PSA: By using the Services, you understand that the Device is passively recording your surroundings, including video and audio content that may contain personal information that is inappropriate, illegal, or unethical to collect.

🤖 Tired of sifting through that boring “real” and “human” content to find those AI gems on social? Have no fear, Sam Altman is launching an app where you can scroll exclusively through AI content!! {Sarcasm}

📰 Meta has released an Ad-Free model, starting at £2.99 on desktop. The subscription won’t stop organic influencer content, but will stop any paid advertising across your Facebook & Instagram feeds. The subscription service is Meta’s response to regulatory warnings over crunching users’ data to serve targeted ads.

Finally no context joy from my feed,

@quipsternerdlads weekend away to paint Warhammer together Josh @OmegonEdge set up this whole thing to go away to the lake district for a while weekend just to paint. these guys were all super top level miniature painters and it was INCREDIBLE seeing them in action and learning from them I can't wait for the next one! go follow: @David Burke Miniatures #warhammercommunity #lads

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And that’s it from me,

xoxo