This week on my internet (15th Dec)🍝
THE cecile update, the downfall of Smile Direct and an overly friendly seal
Hi little ones,
Good luck to any of you navigating IRL streets for your presents this year. London has been prized with the highly coveted title “Hell on Earth” during the Christmas rush; might be the year to ditch the shops…
Tiktok failed to load.Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser
Money saving expert Martin Lewis is recommending people visit sites frequently, log in, but never add anything to your basket, and “play the waiting game” for discounts to hit your inbox. If you cba to fuck around with that Boomer approach, I HIGHLY recommend using the honey extension. Not sponsored, I just value efficiency.
Culture Beat
🍝 SO, a couple of weeks ago, a man named Marc who lives in Paris posted a video about how he lives in this cute apartment building in Paris and always plays impecable music whilst he gets ready. He then got an adorable note from a neighbour, Cecile, saying he had great taste and recommended a song, and so naturally, he wrote back with another recco & asking her over for dinner. It feels like a romcom already, but it doesn’t end there because she wrote back saying NO dinner at mine, I have that song on Vinyl, and OMG, we (all 3 million of us following this story) finally got a Cecile update this week after they had dinner. The jaded adult in me knows the likelihood of this being real is low, and yet I am more invested in this than any episode of Emily in Paris.
Tiktok failed to load.Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser
🌊 This week, a “round the world” 9 month cruise has set off. First of all, I didn’t know this existed until I saw about 5 different tiktokers on their “Come with me on my world cruise” “Watch me unpack into the room I’m spending the next 9 months in”. The cruise starts at a casual $60,000, and the ship holds up to 700 guests. I’m sorry but in the year of Orca-spree-killing and submarine-fiasco, I would NOT be kicking off 9 months at sea. RIP.
👵🏻 I specifically seem to have been uncovering things this week that make me feel really quite old. So here I am, sharing them with you so you too, can feel out of touch, Merry xmas.
Clothes from 2000s are now considered vintage.
Red Tights are back (feels like yesterday we were all judging Blair Whaldorf for it)
This TikTok:
Tiktok failed to load.Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser
💗 You may recall the PR Frenzy between Sydney Sweeney & Glen Powell from earlier this year, where the two actors were rumoured to be having an affair, but denied the allegations. Well, this week, it seems as though the two’s PR teams have intentionally kicked off those rumours again as a stunt to gain publicity for their new film “Anyone by You”. All I can say is Sydney’s fiance must be a strong strong person.
Tiktok failed to load.Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser
🦷 Smile Direct Club is having a REALLY bad couple of weeks, that appears to be unfolding in the public eye. I’ve seen rumours floating around that they filed for bankruptcy after an employee got hold of everyone’s salaries and shared it round, so there was a mass quitting. However, it’s more likely that the company just hasn’t yet turned a profit. Many customers are taking to social media, upset over the loss of their “Lifetime smile Guarantee”.
🦦 Neil the seal continues to be TikTok’s favourite terror, as he continues to get the much deserved praise on TikTok for causing havoc in local town in Tasmania. From stopping people getting to work, to causing traffic jams, to sunbathing on door stops, Neil has no boundaries when it comes to social etiquette.
Celeb News
⭐ North West debuts her first “rap verse” On Kanye’s new album Vultures, Selena Gomez announced her relationship with music producer Benny Blanco and caught heat for diving into the comments to desperately defend her man, Singer Tate McRae popped into London’s best club Heaven straight from the jingle bell ball & ATE THAT SHIT UP.
Content Corner: Brands & Ents
📸 Y’all remember Bhad Bhabie AKA “Cash me ousside” girl? Well, she’s since been building her fame through music and brand partnerships, but she’s just landed herself as the face of Marc Jacobs latest campaign. She also low key suggested a gender reveal nod to the sex of her baby in the campaign, and the brand obliged.
🧻 Chipotle uncovered the insight that customers were stealing napkins to leave in their cars. Rather than clamping down on napkin robbers, they leant into it, and have made a cute little Christmas easy access napkin dispenser specifically for eating chipotle in your car (now sold out).
👠 Fave brand TikTok of the week. An open brief to creators, we love to see it. (As do creators in light of this video circulating LinkedIn this week)
Tiktok failed to load.Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser
🚫 Zara has royally fucked up. They shot a campaign that featured mannequins in body bags, which resembled some of the horrific imagery coming from the crisis in Gaza seen across the news in the same week. I think many people understand that timings don’t always line up for brands, but there’s a way to apologise without getting defensive… and um, actually apologising? Why did they even bother posting this?
Audience Insights: Gen Z (mostly)
😰 Gen Z is bringing a whole new vibe to the workplace: Anxiety. 58% of Gen Zers report feeling anxious at work “frequently or all the time”. Soon the generation is going to make up almost a third of the workforce, so it’s not a good sign when the cohort is too stressed to effectively participate in the culture.
Tech Frontier
🌑 Google’s AI division, DeepMind, has made “800 years worth” of discoveries in material science. The tech discovered over 2.2 million new crystals, of which there are plenty that are reportedly stable enough to develop nex gen tech like better electric car batteries and conductors for computers.
Social Speed Round
☠️ X (twitter) outage broke all links this week. Side note, The Verge’s “The Year Twitter Died” is cute.
🖕 Elon Musk told advertisers to “go f*ck yourself”, but then promptly suggested the firing of Disney CEO when they pulled all ad spend
💰 TikTok is the first app that isn’t a mobile game to generate $10 billion in global consumer spending.
👀 TikTok says that users spend HALF their time watching clips longer than a minute
🎙️ Instagram has launched a podcast, Close Friends Only
And finally, I love to leave you on a random selection of my feed ;
Tiktok failed to load.Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser
Tiktok failed to load.Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser
Tiktok failed to load.Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser
Not sure if I’ll end up doing one of these before the new year, depending on how tired I am but SEE YOU SOON BEBS,
xoxo