What’s going on?

Skincare creator Natalie O’Neill gained huge traction for sharing her thoughts on “how brands are literally burning their own money with influencers” – her criticisms include:

• Everyone posting on the same day at the same time about the same thing

• Making the creator say the full name of the product

• They only let creators to talk about the positive aspects of the product

• They’re overly prescriptive when working with creators

• Unnecessary agency involvement

Her follow-up videos include takedowns of “plastic PR tat” – and folks in the comments are adding plenty more examples, think: groups of influencers working with the same script; brands like Medicube; only being able to find reviews from people who were gifted the product.

Bran Flakezz, who got a lot of heat for his Starbucks Coachella partnership earlier this year, made a similar point – and emphasizes that he actively gives his PR packages to people who reach out and ask.

What’s driving it?

There’s a huge influencer reckoning going on – and it makes sense that they’re getting the brunt of criticism as they’re visible. But brands are also part of the system, and haven’t been held accountable to the same extent. and I touched on this in our piece on the “post-influencers era”:

Who’s to blame? Social platforms built this system and brands sustained it. The reason your privacy at a store is at risk is not all influencers’ fault, it’s also the brand.

So it makes sense that creators are speaking out about how brands work with them: if they’re going to be in the firing lines, they should have control of the narrative.

Plus: our whole relationship with brands on social is messy. “Silence, brand” is still alive – but for every person telling a brand to go away, there’s someone else begging for PR or asking to be sponsored (case in point: this comment section, full of brands, their haters, and their appreciatiors).

What does it mean?

Despite what the influencer backlash might suggest, influencers are resilient because they have a useful role – both for brands and their audiences.

People will always want recommendations from other people. Brands will continue to benefit from the attention (and trust) creators have built. And audiences don’t necessarily want brands to disappear from social – but they do want them to understand their place in the social landscape (but: what role they want them to play will depend on context and audience).

Final takeaway

Amid all the influencer backlash, creators calling out brands is ultimately a way to prove their independence and authenticity.

The brands savvy enough to understand that, and incorporate it into their ways of working with influencers, have a lot to gain: as the creators themselves say, when they feel free to be honest, they’re at their most valuable.

What’s going on?

• Mitch from Modern Family runs Dinner’s On Me, where he interviews people slightly more (or at least differently) famous than him – like comedian Jake Shane (who in turn interviews other celebs like Kaia Gerber?)

• Anti-bullying advocate Monica Lewinsky features people like Miley Cyrus on Reclaiming with Monica.

• Charlotte from Sex and the City asks her guests (including Sarah Jessica Parker) Are You a Charlotte? (AND she was featured on Jesse Tyler Ferguson’s podcast)

• Hasan Minhaj has guests like – Ta-Nehisi Coates? (And with his Daily Show background, he’s probably closest to an actual journalist from anyone on this list.)

Basically: if you’re a B/C-list celebrity and you’re NOT interviewing other famous people on your little online micro talkshow – what are you even doing? (And that’s not even getting into the celebrities who basically became famous FOR interviewing people.)

What’s driving it?

“We don’t create anything new!” “Nostalgia!” “They can’t get jobs!” “They need more revenue streams!”

Maybe (except for nostalgia, because nostalgia is never the real answer), but that’s just part of it. In a sense, it’s the 2026 version of an established format: the celebrity-hosted chat show. Basically: famous host x famous guest x personal stories = success, and video podcasting (which has pretty much no barrier to entry) lets anyone try their hand at being Kelly Clarkson and / or Drew Barrymore.

PLUS it’s an economies of scale thing: one conversation yields steady content to feed the beast of the social algorithm – full episodes for YouTube and Spotify; weeks of clips for TikTok and Instagram.

And not to get too WE’RE IN THE AGE OF INFLUENCER BACKLASH (more on that here though), but inviting established guests automatically gives the content more credibility and worth than another Get Ready With Me. (YOU only have the resources film a Get Ready With Me – KRISTIN can interview her good friend Kyle MacLachlan. )

What does it mean?

Despite all the ongoing conversations about recognizing the value of friction, the celebrity-on-celebrity interview tends to be a frictionless space. It’s basically an ecosystem of tiny talk shows built around comfort: famous people interviewing famous people who like them and want the conversation to go well.

So yes, the celebrities bring access to other celebrities – but it’s access without scrutiny. The conversations might be it’s relaxed – but they’re also superficial, without awkward question that might make that access meaningful. They excoriate others, but rarely introspect.

Final takeaway

Maybe it isn’t that deep: celebrity-on-celebrity podcasts tend to offer light entertainment without spreading misinformation or causing other harm. But it’s unfortunate that they’re becoming more popular at a time when real journalism is in a state of flux.

What’s going on?

Just a week after I wrote about the rise in “how to help your kid fit in at school” content, there’s a new development: a mom is gaining traction for teaching her daughter (an adorably little gap-toothed moppet) to respond to hypothetical insults with tailored comebacks. Think:

• “You don’t have front teeth.” // “That’s how growing-up works!”

• “You’re fat!” // “You don’t get to decide how I feel about myself.”

• “You smell funny!” // “I’ll add that to my list of things that I’m not worried about.”

<Deliberately not linking to the original content since it prominently features a child on public socials.>

Critics argue that, however well-intentioned, this creator is “not effectively teaching your kids how to deal with bullies” because “bullying is so much more manipulative.”

And, perhaps inevitably, the parody creators have found it, gleefully eviscerating the premise and impact of the original content.

What’s driving it?

As with the temptation to embrace armchair diagnoses for conditions like OCD, it comes down to uncertainty reduction.

The promise is appealing: if we practice the right words in advance, even the messiest human interaction can become manageable. Hence the abundance of interview tips or advice on how to deal with narcissists through gray rocking (and that’s without going into how one in five US ChatGPT users uses the LLM to help with conversations), and now the idea that there’s a magical formula for neutralizing bullies. (Because even if parents can’t physically follow their kids into school to protect them, at least they can arm them with the right spell.)

What does it mean?

Bullying is significantly more complicated than these scripts would suggest.

AND YET: even if the exact comeback doesn’t work, the act of practicing it isn’t pointless. Because teaching a child to not fall apart when they encounter unkindness is a key life skill in itself. (Which again relates to the great unshamening conversation.)

Basically: it’s about undoing the social dynamic that gives an insult its power.

Final takeaway

Trying to teach our kids spells that make them immune to cruelty sounds absurd – but despite what the haters say, there’s real value in teaching children that an insult only has power if they accept its premise.

What’s going on?

• “Don’t be an embarrassment to your child at school.”

• “My number one lesson for helping your child fit in socially.”

• “How to help your son fit in socially at school.”

• “Do not let your child be weird.”

Fit Mom Carlyn has built an audience of nearly 80k followers largely by giving advice around how parents can avoid their kids coming across as easy targets for bullies.

Some of her advice is basic care: teach your child about deodorant, check them for head lice, and don’t send them to school without the right materials. Other videos help parents understand which behaviors could make a child stand out in a negative way.

What’s clear is that her advice gets people talking: Carlyn’s comments are divided between “I wish my parents had taught me this” and “This woman is defending bullies.”

What’s driving it?

Carlyn’s content speaks to a clear tension: Most parents want their children to be true to themselves. But they also know that children can be cruel – and that when they find a spot of weakness and shame, some have a preternatural insinct of honing in on it.

Carlyn helps parents manage that contradiction. Her message isn’t that being cruel is acceptable (she’s very much NOT part of the “bring back bullying” movement) – it’s that parents should give their children the best possible chance of navigating a world that isn’t always kind.

Her popularity also fits into what I wrote about the rise of etiquette advice last year: social rules can feel confusing, and most of us genuinely want to do right by other people – but we don’t always know what that looks like.

What does it mean?

People are getting emotional about Carlyn’s advice because many of us carry the choice between individuality and fitting in as children far into adulthood.

Ultimately, it’s about the different ways in which we can prepare children for judgment. Carlyn and ilk teach parents how to preempt it. But that can also teach children that they have parts to them that need to be hidden to be acceptable.

BUT on the other side we have creators like Tahmina, who model the opposite: refusing to feel ashamed of immigrant parents with accents or being hairy – which calls back to the bigger reappraisal of shame (unshamening) which was a big development last year.

Final takeaway

Children need both the social awareness to understand what they can change, and the confidence to recognize what they shouldn’t have to. But navigating this balance is tricky, especially if parents themselves haven’t done the same work.

What’s going on?

Looking at the online landscape, there’s a lot of evidence that many of us are trying hard to do our best in an imperfect world:

• Looking for ethically made clothes (while struggling to find them at stores like Anthro and Zara)

• Educating others, for example about the global implications of the heatwave in India (with a plea to care)

• Taking action against things that don’t align with our values (like data centers or just general corporate sabotage)

• Meanwhile not losing faith (#hopecore): go from “the planet is dying” to “start doing something” – and staying positive because “doom is not a personality”

• Choosing morning matchas over nightlife

• Trying to educate ourselves about social cues like “What is and isn’t oversharing”

• Taking small actions, like unfollowing creators where they don’t align with our values – and making deliberate efforts to follow more marginalized creators

• Using our platforms to fight injustices – like Ian, who has turned his series “famous male abusers who still haven’t been canceled as much as a woman who doesn’t smile enough“ into a civic journalism project.

But when it’s taken to its extremes, trying to do one’s best quickly flips into social policing

• Imperfect effort is still “criticized over inaction.”

• “Gen Z Karens“ publicly villainize people online

• On the judginess of online comment sections

• Celebrity blind items and snark content as “alt right pipeline content for women.”

• Dr. Shawna raises awareness of the concept of "moral enterpreneurs" – people who "see the ability to profit off of their opinions of marginalized people and controversial issues."

• Related: Keera talks people turning into Javert (of Les Mis) in terms of their online policing of strangers.

What’s driving it?

Trying to be good (and to do good) should be straightforward. But, in practice, it’s a balancing act: How can I be honest while staying kind? How – and when – do we hold people accountable but also give them the chance to do better? How can we do our best to impove things but not beat ourselves up when we fall short?

What does it mean?

There isn’t an impartial arbiter for questions like these – because ultimately, they’re about values rather than facts. The topics we debate the most are the ones that show who we are and where our priorities lie – hence so many of these conversations become so emotionally charged.

(Also: when when questions don’t have perfect answers, we should probably be wary of anyone claiming they’ve found one.)

Final takeaway

The fact that so many of us genuinely want to do better should be harnessed as a positive – but we also need to recognize that people won’t always draw the same conclusions from the evidence before them, and think about how we respond when we disagree with someone on a fundamental issue.

What’s going on?

So far in 2026, more people have talked extensively about taking children more seriously, treating them as people in their own right.

• Safeguarding their autonomy: “Stop tickling children.”

• Putting in the work to keep them away from digital devices by entertaining kids screenlessly.

• Taking a stand against AI slop in kids’ books.

• A recognition that good parenting is a form of privilege

• Meta and Google have been found negligent vis a vis safeguarding kids’ mental health.

• More influencers are taking their kids offline even if their parasocial fans are weird about it.

• Tennessee passed a law preventing influencers from monetizing their children without setting aside money for them.

• Pushback against mystery dumpling boxes and blind bags teaching kids gambling behaviors.

• Why it’s important even for the childfree to be invested in helping the next generation thrive.

But the countnersignals are also strong:

• More in “kids can’t read.“

• More in kids are no longer learning how to jump.

• Is Gen Alpha kindergarten-ready? Creators like Ms Sinnamom (a kindy teacher) explain what kids should / shouldn’t be expected to be able to do, and parents are TRIGGERED.

• Grok is “flooding” X with images of undressed women and children.

• “Why are Americans feeling poorer even if they’re not” asked the FT – as creator Tiffany explains, “we can buy more stuff, but we can’t afford childcare or healthcare.”

• Parent influencers are getting increasingly unhinged in monetizing access to their children.

• People are talking about bringing back bullying (especially for children).

So: some kids are taken more seriously while others are more neglected – and for some, it might be both. (A recent example which I’m deliberately not linking: a parent proudly supports their child’s autonomy by letting her shave her head – while documenting every step of that journey online.)

What’s driving it?

Whether it’s a growing awareness of the impact of declining birth rates or more adults reflecting on their own childhoods, the outcome is the same: a growing recognition that we owe it to kids to provide them with good childhoods. (Because even the countersignals, the conversation comes down to the fact that these children all deserve better.) But ut’s also clear that many of us don’t agree on what a good childhood looks like.

What does it mean?

The underlying challenge is that taking children more seriously respecting someone who’s also dependent on you – and doesn’t often have the experience to make the best decisions. As a result adults are constantly balancing competing priorities: children’s autonomy and their safety; resilience and protection; freedom and guidance; today’s happiness and tomorrow’s wellbeing.

Final takeaway

As we’re renogiating how we think about children, the big question is this: Can we agree on what a good childhood actually looks like – and are we willing to build a world around it?

What’s going on?

This year, people have talked about (and I’ve written about):

• The concept of collective timeline shifting to explain why we remember things differently

• Animal communicators and pet psychics promising in all seriousness to tell us what our little companions are thinking

• The idea that physical features like can reveal personality traits (think: bad eyebrows = bad people)

• Or that the first TikTok search result will reveal something deep about who you are

• Seeing everything as recession indicators

• Conspiracy theories like the idea that celebrities are being replaced

• OCD as the latest diagnosis people are seeking out to explain why they are the way they are

Plus, of course, AI increasingly being asked questions once reserved for friends, therapists, or fortune tellers.

They’re all about the same thing: people looking for answers to questions – often unanswerable ones. (And feel free to call me a hater, but I’m generally a skeptic for all of these.)

What’s driving it?

There’s a lot of chaos in the world – so it makes sense that we seek out those who promise to make it more understandable. BUT this also opens up scope for those peddling easy answers and misinformation.

What does it mean?

The antidote to all of this retaining curiosity but combining it with discernment – while also becoming more comfortable with ambiguity. Because: not every question has an answer, especially not a straightforward one.

The countermovement

Alongside the search for certainty, there’s also growing appetite for nuance – think the conversations about media literacy.

So while I don’t think we’ll ever truly stop searching for certainty, at least we can be pickier about which sources to trust.

What’s going on?

Think you might have OCD? You’re not alone. Socials are awash with OCD content, from awareness explainers to management tips to symptom finders, think:

Why do people have OCD?

10 things I wish people knew more about OCD coming from an OCD therapist.

To people with OCD: how did you figure out you had OCD?

The 12 most common OCD subtypes

10 celebrity men who have spoken out about living with OCD

Here’s a list of behaviors I thought were normal but which were actually my OCD in disguise

And the comment sections are BUSY, with hundreds (if not more) TikTokers sharing their own experiences – “I should get diagnosed” is a common sentiment, as is “wait, this isn’t normal?”

And it’s not just on socials:

What’s driving it?

At its best, social media is one of our most powerful awareness tools.

As with ADHD and ASD, OCD is severely underdiagnosed: though the condition affects around 1 in 30, people often wait years before receiving a diagnosis. Which means that people who spent years feeling confused and misunderstood can now recognize symptoms, seek professional help, and find a community.

But while greater awareness is generally the first step in reducing stigma, it also creates its own market. As more people search for answers and information around OCD, others happily step forward to provide them – real experts and armchair ones alike. Which also means that complex psychiatric conditions get reduced into quick symptom lists – and audiences become increasingly comfortable diagnosing both themselves and complete strangers.

What does it mean?

Diagnoses – including armchair ones – are appealing because they promise to turn confusing experiences into coherent stories.

It’s tempting to think that there’s a moment where everything suddenly clicks. But while that does sometimes happen, real self-awareness (and self-acceptance) tends to be more gradual and messy.

Final takeaway

The internet has made awareness – including about mental health conditions – more accessible than ever. The challenge is not letting the appeal of simple explanations replace the slower (and harder) work of genuine self-understanding.

What’s going on?

A US-American woman rose to rapid TikTok fame by documenting her planned move to Afghanistan, where she says she’s going to live with her Afghan husband – and the internet has opinions. (And no, I’m not going to name her or share her original handle, but it’s easy enough to find.)

Some viewers are urgently trying to warn her, emphasizing the state of women’s rights under Taliban rule (which, predictably, at times deteriorates into Islamophobia with plenty of references to Not Without My Daughter). Others are convinced the entire thing is ragebait; YET others say it’s an example of “bird behavior” – women who will do anything for a man (← and this TikToker says she’s been getting negative comments from Afghan men saying to not to talk about a country she knows nothing about). But, most importantly: everyone has a point of view.

What’s driving it?

The most exciting stories are the ones that are out of the ordinary – but with a soupcon of believability.

That’s why Reesa Teesa’s Who TF Did I Marry has its own Wikipedia entry, and Boy Throb’s Throbchella sold out in May. (Because IS it an act? We might never know.)

And the Moving-to-Afghanistan story has layers: they met on Snapchat; she has Jordanian heritage and / or family in the area so shouldn’t be completely naive to the realities of life outside the US; she’s bringing coloring books and water balloons for his young female relatives (“they’re not allowed them!” yelp internetters); they’ve only seen each other once in person (when they got married); he can’t enter the US.

And the Afghanistan of it all adds yet another dimension: with severe restrictions on information exchange since August 2021, it’s a country that’s a complete unknown to most of us. (Separately but related: there’s a white American woman who says she traveled to Afghanistan and basically had a positive exprience, whose content people with connections to Afghanistan also criticize as a miasma of misinformation and engagement bait.)

What does it mean?

Whether the woman planning to move to Afghanistan is ACTUALLY naïve, courageous, propagandized, trolling, or just making a personal decision becomes secondary – it’s the ambiguity around it that fuels engagement and gives us scope to create our own narratives and speculations.

And it makes sense because we’re increasingly treating everything we see – including other people’s lives – as collaborative mysteries to solve. Because we don’t want to be naive and fall for propaganda (except ironically) in the age of misinformation.

But that also means we’re suspectible to other forms of propaganda and we don’t know what to trust.

Final takeaway

The conversation about the American woman moving to Afghanistan is ultimately about what happens when an extraordinary personal story meets with an audience that’s become extremely skeptical of extraordinary stories. And while we’re becoming more adept at recognizing misinformation, would we still be able to recognize sincerety?

What’s going on?

“People with thin lips are not good people.”

“People with bad eyebrows are not good people.”

“I had no idea they were racist!” “I did – by their brows.”

If you want a format that gets people talking, pick a facial feature – especially one that’s not considered conventionally attractive, and that can’t be changed without surgery (if at all) – and assign it bad vibes.

Even when the videos themselves are ironic, the people weighing in with the comments often are not. Yes, some push back – but many enthusiastically add to the evidence, recounting anecdotes of people who had these traits and naming celebrities who “prove” the rule (and, of course, debating what counts as “good” or “bad” eyebrows, and “thin” vs “normal” lips – the creator hating on thin lips ended up being called thin-lipped herself).

What’s driving it?

As a 2006 Princeton study reconfirmed, humans are evolutionarily hardwired to make snap judgments of other people based on their faces. However: the findings also reinforced that these snap judgments aren’t necessarily accurate: “The link between facial features and character may be tenuous at best, but that doesn’t stop our minds from sizing other people up at a glance.” Similarly, an NYU study from 2018 established: “We make snap judgments of others based not only on their facial appearance, but also on our pre-existing beliefs about how others’ personalities work.”

And confirmation bias does the rest: once a feature becomes associated with “bad people,” every future example seems to reinforce the rule.

What does it mean?

It’s comforting to think that villainy is visible from first sight. The alternative is much messier: that conventionally attractive people can do terrible things, while awkward-looking people can be deeply decent.

Final takeaway

Phrenology went away because we realized that judging character from appearance had no scientific basis – but the desire to do it clearly remains.

What’s going on?

“Explain this: thousands of people remembering the exact same details that never existed in this timeline.”

“We’ve jumped timelines again.”

The reality shifting / timeline jumping conversation is taking off again. And while “how to quantum jump” tutorials still abound, this wave has a group project feel to it – because the idea is that many of us jumped timelines collectively. (Their “evidence” includes Michelangelo’s David “suddenly” having heart-shaped pupils and The Fruit of the Loom cornucopia – and some people are blaming CERN for the switch.)

What’s driving it?

Reality shifting and timeline jumping are relatively recent manifestations of a longer tradition of manifestation and affirmation culture – think The Secret. (And yes, subliminals also sit here – but that’s another topic for another day.)

While “traditional” manifestation is ultimately about building towards a more successful future, timeline jumping removes the lag – you can immediately inhabit your more successful self. (About which I have all the questions, like what happens to the version of you that previously lived in this reality? And did the people using these terms just find a new way of saying “I changed my attitude and suddenly, everything looked different”?)

But when it comes to collective timeline jumping, the process is different. People treat it as something done to them rather than something they chose, and they turn it into a group project of hunting for evidence that reality itself has changed.

What does it mean?

I’ll leave it to the philosophers (and quantum physicists) to decide if any of these folks have actually jumped timelines.

What interests me more is what timeline shifting says about how we experience reality.

We don’t experience the world directly – our interpretations are filtered through our own limitations and biases. In that sense, we all live in our own realities– which means that discovering that thousands of other people share a strange memory or unexplained feeling can be deeply reassuring.

Final takeaway

Ultimately, the concept of collective timeline shifting shows how much of reality we take on trust – and that being reminded of it can be deeply unsettling. Perhaps that's why finding other people who remember the same impossible thing is so reassuring – because “reality shifted for all of us” sounds a lot less alone than “I jumped timelines by myself.”

What’s going on?

Pet Psychics (increasingly rebranded as Pet or Animal Communicators) are on the rise again, and they have things to tell us:

“Oslo the tuxedo cat is gay and told me he wants a life partner.”

“My own dog tells me why he can’t stop eating poop.”

And not one, but two cats with theories on how the pyramids were built.

And while I initially thought at least some of them were doing a bit, they seem to take it very seriously – as do the audiences who are watching and asking for appointments.

What’s driving it?

How could we NOT want to understand those little creatures who live with us but don’t even know our names? As pet ownership rises (while birth rates are falling in many countries) – “pet parent” has shifted from slightly dismissive joke to proud identity label. So of course the people who structure their lives around these animals want reassurance they’re doing right by them (and, potentially, ).

It’s the same emotion behind The Telepathy Tapes, where some parents of non-speaking autistic children have convinced themselves of their psychic abilities. There’s also a link to how humans have always tried to communicate with the dead, from ouija boards to full-blown seances.

In terms of ethics: some pet psychics seem deeply aware of their theatrics; others appear completely sincere. Giving them the benefit of the doubt, I’d say they’re less deliberate scammers than people who’ve convinced themselves of their gifts.

What does it mean?

Humans are hardwired to close loops – hence the Zeigarnik effect. And yet – perhaps part of the appeal of Pet Psychics is that we know, on some level, that the story might not be true. Like fiction, it’s an invitation to suspend our disbelief – if only for a bit.

It’s potentially the closest we can get to magic: hearing a story and knowing it may not be true – but feeling its effects nonetheless.

Final takeaway

When the ones we love (including pets) can’t fully explain themselves back to us, many will happily let a little magic fill the gap.

What’s going on?

Looking to generate social engagement at speed? Just tell people what to search for to discover a new facet about themselves:

Search “me core” to see how TikTok perceives you. (Probably one of the most popular ones – variants include searching for “literally me.”

Look up “Porsche 911” and replace “11” with your age to find out which one is meant for you.
Look up the word “gym“ and the first physique that pops up is your goal.

And so many more.

Obviously a lot of people treat it as a joke – but others (like this comment section shows) are impressed: “This app has my psychological profile figured out. It's actually creepy how accurate it is.”

What’s driving it?

In part, it’s the latest evolution of the Buzzfeed personality quiz, which go back to the personality tests of the early 1900s. But it also contains a heavy dose of divination rituals, from the simple (apple divination) to the complex (like astrological charts).

To add another layer of complication: social algorithms HAVE, in some cases, helped people understand themselves better, from expanding their fashion and music tastes to discovering truly deep parts about themselves – think “The TikTok algorithm knew I was gay before I did” kind of stories (plus a slew of medical conditions, neurodivergencies, and mental health concerns). But at the same time: few people know how social algorithms actually work – so they see them as all-knowing. (The algorithm as digital fortune teller.)

What does it mean?

Most of us know we’re biased when it comes to perceiving ourselves as we truly are. The appeal of personality quizes is that they promise to bypass conscious self-perception and reveal something “deeper” underneath. And in an internet culture where identity is often conflated with hyper-specific archetypes, being instantly categorized as anything from “clean girl” to “frazzled Englishwoman” can provide some measure of comfort.

And the format thrives because it delivers the right kind of ambiguity. If it resonates, it feels meaningful. If it doesn’t – it was only a joke anyway.

Final takeaway

There are a lot of people online who want to be told who they are and what that means – they’re seeking relief from ambiguity and choice overwhelm. And yet: they’re seeking that relief from systems that can’t actually know them on a deeper level – just what’s most likely to keep them engaged.

What’s going on?

“Bimbo stoicism” is an internet philosophy / aesthetic hybrid that (as far as I can see) started circulating last year after creator Babushka.en began talking about it on TikTok.

She has a few videos outlining what it’s all about – the first introduces its tenets (“You are a daughter of a great mother; Live with your eyes open; Don’t conform”). In others, she explains why she’s reclaiming the term “bimbo” and what it means to “heal your femininity.”

And the part that’s gaining the most traction: the concept of finding your spirit animal and styling yourself accordingly. (Not a new concept, of course, but packaged for fresh appeal.)

People are clearly finding this liberating:

“I know I don’t need to be beautiful in the same way as the slim and ethereal deer – my face beauty is soft and gentle, like the timid red panda.”

“I used to think my small eyes and large teeth were cosmetic imperfections. But now I know I’m a marmoset.”

(Tangentially: a side conversation emerged around how the idea of the spirit animal resembles the furry community’s idea of “fursonas” – animal avatars that reflect inner truths about the self.)

What’s driving it?

First of all: the internet loves a catchy label, which Bimbo Stoicism (with its inherent juxtaposition of philosophy and flightiness) definitely is.

As to why it’s catching on: it’s both an evolution of optimization culture and a reaction to it. After years of being exposed to Instagram face and looksmaxxing perfection, “Give me your most unhinged glow up tips (and don’t tell me to drink more water),” and (of course) GLP-1s, more people are clearly looking for solutions that feel less punishing and more individualistic. In that sense, Bimbo Stoicism sits in the same category as Kibbe body types and finding your colors – coming into your own as the best version of yourself, not someone else.

At the same time, finding your spirit animal (which people are offering to do for you now) is about trying to achieve self-understanding at speed. Buzzfeed gave us thousands of variations of “which donut are you” – on socials, it’s now “if you search up ‘me core,’ it will show how TikTok perceives you.”

What does it mean?

Like other self-optimization methods, Bimbo Stoicism promises that there’s a hidden logic to you – and if you identify it correctly, your life will make more sense.

And who wouldn’t want the comfort of understanding themselves and becoming their best selves without going through the slow and messy work of actual introspection? (Which Babushka says she did.)

Final takeaway

“Bimbo Stoicism” – specifically the idea of finding (and accepting) your spirit animal – is gaining traction because it promises a gentler and faster way to becoming your best self – because the actual process of it is (and will always be) hard.

Bonus: first attempt at mappng out the different was to optimize.

What’s going on?

“Gen Z artists have cracked the code for consistent pay, thanks to their generation’s love for snail mail.”

“As many of us yearn for more ‘analogue’ ways of living, slower, more intentional modes of communication are coming back into fashion.”

Publications like Business Insider and Dazed are full of acclaim for Snail Mail Clubs: basically a service where artists send physical mail – prints, letters, postcards, stickers – to their community once a month (for a set subscription free).

But, predictably, the reality isn’t quite so simple.

What’s driving it?

The term “Snail Mail Club” wasn’t actually a thing until last September.

But its ancestors definitely include mail-order clubs for books or records and fan clubs, with remnants of pen pal culture mixed in (and magazine subscriptions).

As to why it started taking off in later 2025: with the creative industries being uniquely unstable, artists are joining online hustle culture by building subscription model.

And the demand side also makes sense: snail mail club subscriptions feel more meaningful than digital ones like Spotify or Netflix – because you actually get to keep the output.

And yet: artists are starting to talk about why they’re discontinuing. Shikani explains the challenges and Martina talked about how her own snail mail club proved inherently sustainable:

“A mail club is 20% design and creativity, 80% physical labour. People joined without knowledge of me… They bought a product, a service – not the community that came with it.”

What does it mean?

In theory, Snail Mail Clubs speak exactly to what people say they want: slower communication leading to more meaningful connection. But rather than taking on labor themselves and, for example, creating a card for someone they love, they consume this faux inticmacy at scale – some recipients subscribe to a whole range of snail mail clubs.

But scale is also the problem: to make it work commercially, the work has to be repeatable (and automated where possible).

Final takeaway

Snail Mail Clubs are appealing because they feel like a more human alternative to digital feeds. But, as often, if something seems too good to be true, it likely is: Snail Mail Clubs sound great on paper (heh), but they actually that turning desire for intimacy into a product available for subscription isn’t feasible for the long run.

What’s going on?

TikTok is calling is the “F1 AI garage trend” – essentially, we have people portraying (often glambotted) versions of themselves in photos or short video clips where they’re at specific events (yes, also beyond the world of motorsports). Plus, of course, a whole cottage industry around tutorials for how to create the look yourself.

What’s driving it?

In large part? Because the technology got good enough – and humans are clearly hard-wired to create self-insert fan fiction. If Dante had to settle for writing himself into the Divine Comedy in the 1300s, in the 2020s, you don’t need budget and / or artistic skill – just the right prompt.

And like the “AI turn me into an action figure” and “AI turn me into a Barbie“ trends, it’s a way to show your interests.

Plus: at a moment when many people feel constrained – financially, socially, geographically, professionally – AI offers frictionless escapism.

What does it mean?

Of course photos too have always been susceptive for manipulation (as Stalin’s propaganda machine can attest) but they still came with an implicit promise: this happened. It might not have looked exactly like this, but it happened.

The point of the “F1 AI garage trend“ isn’t to trick anyone (though that can be a consequence) – everyone knows the images are fake. It’s more about taking our digital avatars on more adventures.

And because everyone understands it’s fiction, they often feel socially acceptable in a way other forms of fakery didn’t – because it’s about collectively participating in a shared imaginative game.

Final takeaway

When we send our AI-generated selves on adventures, we externalize our imagination – but does this inspire us to go on real adventures, or replace that urge?

What’s going on?

There’s a small but impactful wave of TikToks calling out “corporate hysteria”:

“Everyone at my company has this illness. They all are so stressed and so anxious about nothing.” (Potentially the one that started it all, with almost 1 million views.)

“Literally everyone at my work is freaking out about absolutely nothing.”

“What do you mean, everyone’s freaking out because we put a self-inflicted timeline on everything?”

The creators – and those leaving comments – generally share these observations from the vantage point of being above it all, with a combination of pity and scorn for the corporate hysterics.

What’s driving it?

I’m actually on the team that thinks the people “falling for” the corporate hysteria are NOT crazy.

As Emily the Recruiter says in reaction to the videos:

“There’s a sense of heightened panic at work because we are all terrified of being laid off… And aren’t paid enough to be working as much as we are. But the cost of working less is putting our jobs on the line.”

Basically:

• Fewer than one in four workers feel their job is safe – driven in part by unregulated unregulated AI

• Economic mobility has become harder – you can’t just “get another job”

• Roles and expectations are blurrier

And there’s no clarity on a feasible alternative. Hence: panic.

What does it mean?

Corporate hysteria shows that when established norms stop being clear, people start manufacturing their own meaning. And how much (or little) people care becomes a key metric – because urgency and effort are visible and emotion-driven, not rational.

Final takeaway

When systems shift, those who depend on them can’t afford to misjudge what is or isn’t important – so everything becomes critical to them. But the alternative isn’t to drop out with practiced nonchalance – it’s to do the work that brings about real change.

What’s going on?

“Why do I sound like ChatGPT?”

“In the age of A.I. paranoia, people are cutting em dashes, skipping metaphors, and leaving in typos to prove their [sic] human.”

“How I respond when people say ‘Don’t use em dashes because it makes you sound like ChatGPT.’”

Basically, people are changing the way they write because they worry it sounds AI-generated – at times to make it less easily understood.

What’s driving it?

I wrote about the hunt for AI shibboleths last summer – since then, AI-generated writing has only gained more traction: 35% of all new websites are AI-generated or AI-assisted – so says a hot-off-the-press joint study by Imperial College London x Stanford x the Internet Archive. And just a few months before that, fresh research showed that more than 50% of articles on the web are AI-generated.

Meanwhile, every attempt to define or regulate AI writing (think: editors continuing to expand Wikipedia’s list of signs of AI writing, especially off of Wikipedia banning AI-generated writing) is met with tools and techniques to evade it (think: a plugin that uses that same list to make it easier to have AI-generated writing sound more human).

And yet: a lot of the so-called “AI writing tells” are ultimately hallmarks of clear and effective writing.

What does it mean?

Many of the “telltale” rhetorical devices and structures of LLMs are about helping people communicate and understand complex ideas better – which ultimately means they’re about reducing friction.

This ties back to the frictionmaxxing conversations from last year – notably, Kyla Scanlon wrote: “When systems that were designed for resilience are optimized instead for efficiency, they break.”

Applied to the system of writing and communicating ideas, it comes down to this: if resilience means testing and pushing ideas to see if they hold, optimizing them is more about rephrasing what’s already been said.

Final takeaway

Writing for clarity distills ideas – identifying and teasing out frictions pushes them further.

What’s going on?

“Recession indicator: Coachella weekend and influencers are DRY BEGGING for spare rooms.”

“Recession indicator: I’ve been getting a tattoo every year since I turned 18; this year, I can’t afford one.”

“The AI bubble is about to burst.”

Basically: both on socials and mainstream media, we’re inundated with predictions that things are about to break.

What’s driving it?

These predictions are grounded in real developments – the uneven rise of AI and ensuring layoffs; a war which the IMF warned that the Iran War could trigger a global recession.

And yet:

The AI bubble was already “about to burst” about half a year ago.

Commentators were similarly pointing out the recession indicators around Coachella 2025.

Because there are always signals and symptoms.

What does it mean?

These predictions resonate (and travel) because they turn complex situations into a clear story: what you’re seeing here means something is about to break, with profound implications on people including you.

And the people who sound most convincing aren’t necessarily the ones who weighed the evidence most carefully – just the ones fastest at turning it into a narrative.

Final takeaway

When every signal can be turned into a prediction, the real challenge is to avoid jumping to conclusions too quickly – and do the (sometimes harder) work of sitting with ambiguity.

What’s going on?

“Sharpay [from High School Musical]: Victim or Villain?”

“[Movie] villains that had a point.”

And, more recently: “Shrek is a cautionary tale: a woman cannot turn an ogre into a man, but he can make an ogre out of you.”

There’s a recurrent (and deeply online) theme in internet media commentary: the idea that the obvious hero isn’t actually the hero, and the villain isn’t actually the villain.

But people are increasingly tired of it.

“I have spoken at length about my hatred of contrarian media literacy.”

“[The contrariam analysts] ignore basic plot points in said media, which throws off the premise of their argument. […] Contrarianism ≠ intellectualism.”

“You’ve just misunderstood a film for eight-year-olds.”

What’s driving it?

There’s a long history of contrarian takes on pop culture – like this Buzzfeed poll from 2018 about “22 movie villains who might have been misunderstood.” (Yes, including Sharpay.)

There’s a reason they do well: “You’ve been wrong this whole time” is a safe, reliable form of engagement bait which challenges your worldview – but only just.

And at their best, these takes did expose how formulaic a lot of storytelling and character development can be.

What does it mean?

The backlash definitely isn’t from the “it’s not that deep” crowd – and neither does it ignore that many villains (especially in kids’ media) have historically been coded in problematic ways (think: effeminate men = untrustworthy; queerness = shorthand for evil).

But it IS about a difference between:

• Noticing something genuinely overlooked (which adds depth and fresh understanding)

And

• Insisting something MUST be overlooked – which basically just turns into projection. Because, as Evelyn / My Internet Cousin says, “Who you think is the loser – and thusly who you think is the winner – is just shorthand for communicating your value system.”

So overall, it’s a shift in what counts as “smart”: moving away from constant inversion and back toward judgment: where to question a narrative, and when to respect it on its own turns.

Final takeaway

At their best, contrarian media readings taught us to question formulaic stories – but they’ve deteriorated into a formula for sounding smart without saying much.