This week on my internet (13th June) 🍴
Blackberries are back? Using cutlery is a challenge? Gen Z women for Nigel Farage? And other weird juxtapositions and oddities from the week I can't get my head around
Happy Friday angels
I’ve been mostly stuck on New York music producer, Ari’s, TikTok; wandering around the streets of NYC finding strangers and making somehow INCREDIBLE music with them.
Anyways, strap yourselves in for this week's chaos below:
Culture Beat
🎾 The interviews after the French Open final have caused some backlash for the women’s number 1 player. 21-year-old Coco Gauff beat Aryna Sabalenka, claiming her title at Roland Garros. In the highest form of lack of sportsmanship, Arnya claimed Coco lost not because she was the better player, but because the “conditions” meant she played her worst tennis. She then went on to claim that if she hadn’t knocked Iga Swiatek out of the semi-finals, Coco would’ve lost.
📞 Are Blackberry’s… coming back? There’s been an unusual number of people (aka more than zero) on my feed with them. Is it a nostalgic revival, or are we finally watching the death of the iPhone? Younger cohorts are becoming increasingly underwhelmed with Apple updates, which seem to be cautious, and less focused on the AI native hardware updates of competitors.
🍴 An American chose to publicly humiliate herself and film herself trying “The European way” of eating, aka using cutlery. I was today years old when I discovered Americans can’t physically put food in their mouth with their left hand. It’s a painful watch, brace yourself.
💔 The Tech-Bro breakup we all saw coming (but still can’t look away from): Elon Musk and Donald Trump. The public spat kicked off a couple of weeks ago after Elon dipped from his government gig and started accusing Trump of some serious stuff (epstein files included). Trump being trump retaliated by threatening the government contracts of Tesla and SpaceX (sending Tesca stock tumbling). It’s played out like a breakup across social and whilst it may be petty in reality, it’s wildly entertaining and fun to liken to cultures best moments (The Burn Book, Dr Orna and breakup edits)
🎶 Disney quietly changed its classic intro music for an upcoming parade, and it’s horrendous. The tune hasn’t been changed in 71 years, and whilst it sounds relatively similar to the original, new instruments have been added and it sounds increasingly chaotic and ravey. Unsurprisingly, people are really unhappy about it, calling it everything from a "travesty" to a "sign of the apocalypse."
👙 Addison Rae marked her first performance in London this week after an intimate gig at The Box. She delivered a burlesque-ish type seven song setlist. Rae’s supportive bestie, Charli XCX, was there, vibing in the crowd with fiancé George. This week also saw an intimate Lorde gig in a car park, which was a surprise to many who attended the ‘Virgin’ listening party.
Things that are hard to explain to people not on TikTok
🪖 This guy double-jump scaring the public, is just a joy to watch over and over.
🔮 An AI capcut template decides “what will happen next” on your random photo, results are insane.
👮 The previous was born from “Who will be arrested” capcut template from your group photo.
🔎 A girl put out a missing shampoo sketch so TikTok could help her out, and the community delivered.
Content Corner
⚽ Call Her Daddy podcast founder, Alex Cooper, has released a two part docuseries on Hulu titled “call her Alex”. The Docuseries details the sexual abuse she suffered at Boston University college from her former soccer coach, Nancy Feldman.
🍗 Bella hadid was Amelia’s latest date on Chicken Shop, and was actually kinda cute. Amelia is being praised as an interviewer for recognising Bella’s palestinian heritage, but not pushing Bella to speak on her thoughts on the current situation. Amelia dropped in a Air Jordan’s reference, and I love her so much for it.
👟 Speaking of Chicken Shop, Converse hired Amelia Dimoldenberg for a YouTube branded content series titled “Chuckmates”. The dating show centres around picking dates based on the chucks their wearing. A cute idea, the perfect creator and a fun spin on dating; seemingly should be an immediate success, but the execution did not land. They’ve used amelia as a host (not her natural place to be), they’ve forced product in heavily (immediate drop off), even their use of titles and thumbnails are unoriginal.
🍭 Sabrina’s latest song “Manchild”, the first song on a new album “Man’s best friend”, dropped earlier this week. Whilst there’s nothing tying him to the song, Barry Keoghan has outed himself as the manchild by threatening to sue (rumoured). The Music video is a masterpiece, with about 15 different cinematic fever-dream stories going on in one. The edit itself feels like a fan edit, stitching different movies and scenes together. The video feels like no one was allowed to say no to a single idea, and it works so well.
Audience Insights: Gen Z (mostly)
🐑 1 in 4 Gen Z brits are more influenced by content creators than their own parents. Research from McCann has found that Gen Z are more than a little lonely, and heavily influenced by creators in their pursuit of community.
🇬🇧 Gen Z women for… Nigel Farage??? Reform UK has found a surprising demographic to support their cause, mostly made up of Conservative defectors. Surprising considering the party’s manifesto includes a pledge to scrap the U.K.'s Equality Act, as well as Nigel Farage openly praising rapist, Andrew Tate, and continues to dismiss gender disparities in business.
🤝 Only 1 in 4 Gen Zers are committed to their jobs, whilst 77% are job hunting or open to new opportunities. With low pay, job market instability and no desire to climb a corporate ladder (that has no transparency), it’s not surprising.
The word FLEXIBILITY came up a total of 310 times in responses — people want more control over their week.
Tech & Social
📏 Tinder just introduced a new height filter and it’s left many divided. Filtering out potential matches based on height reinforces shallow dating and disadvantages shorter people (not sure that’s new for Tinder). I do kinda agree that women who don't date shorter men deserve to be single.
🎥 Hollywood giants, (including Disney and Universal), just filed a lawsuit against Midjourney, alleging that the company’s models are a massive engine for copyright theft. This makrs the first major legal action against AI companies; this could have major ramifications for AI comanies “fair use” claims, potentially setting legal precedents that could impacy the AI industry.
And finally, some toast from my feed to leave you on,
Stay excellent,
xoxo