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[SIC] Day is a daily selection of 20x signals from my media landscape, grouped to illustrate potential patterns in the zeitgeist, and offered exclusively to paying subscribers of [SIC]. Thank you for your paid support!
[SIC] Day 462
Headliners
What a headline: Anthony Scaramucci’s son bought a $17M Pokemon Card from Logan Paul and got a diamond chain as a GWP / Hypbeast
Subscriptions are rising at big news publishers – even as traffic shrinks / Digiday
More ‘good news’: Cheaper Tequila and canned cocktails were bright spots for the spirits biz in 2025 / CNBC
Speaking of fluid: Researchers develop solar “liquid battery” / Ars Technica
Metaphoricals
Also ‘liquid’: LEGO and The Met Recreate Monet’s “The Water Lily Pond” / Hypbeast
On the topic of polyeurethane: The real reason there’s plastic in your clothes / Blackbird Spyplane
Corollary: New York Fashion Wrestles With Reality / Vogue Business
More wrestling: We’re doing Wrestling Speed Dating in Brooklyn Now / NYT
In contrast?! How ‘Dump Him’ Became a Marketing Strategy / BoF
Related somehow: The Great Resignation has been replaced by “job hugging” / Quartz
Also hanging on: The Sticky Politics of Wall Texts / Hyperallergic
More texts: The Best Red Packets for Year of the Horse Lunar New Year 2026 / Hypebeast
Olympolitics
One Olympic sport doesn’t allow women. These Games could determine its future / NPR
In sharp contrast: Meet Team USA’s Punch-throwing, trash-talking hockey Unicorn / IG
Also here’s The man who runs the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics / Monocle Pod
And also in Milan: from Alibaba’s immersive experience - What Does the Future of AI in Fashion Really Look Like? /Hypebeast
AIAIAI
Apropos: A 15-second video of Brad Pitt fighting Tom Cruise created with A.I. has Hollywood spooked / NYT
Also spooked: Software isn’t dead, but its cozy business model might be / FT
Ads work! Anthropic reports 11% boost in daily active users following Super Bowl commercial / CBNC
Corollary: The Small English Town Swept Up in the Global AI Arms Race / Wired
[SIC] Day 462
"Patterns in the zeitgeist" is one of those phrases that men like you use to seem cool, but we both know that media coverage is a lagging indicator of any trend, if a trend at all. Culture writers and internet publications make ok work for whiling away the hours, but they're not legitimate trend reports.
We've been over why you sucked 20 years ago (you volunteered to make money for jerks, legitimizing the low road of discourse for the manosphere generation). But let's cover why you sucked 10 years ago!
Ten years ago guys like you would roll up to a client with a strategy deck of like five cultural headlines from the Atlantic and NYT and point at it and confidently say "trend!!!" And even though everyone smart knew you were full of it because collecting internet headlines (get this) is not a valid form of trend research by any industry or academic standards. Clients certainly aren't going to buy media based on what's already in the discourse.
And those of us who did real analysis would sit quietly during your presentations and clock how off about digital audience behaviors you were, and our clients knew that you were full of it too. But the older ad guys would keep at it, pointing at the headlines instead of listening to the behavioral data or the bespoke, expensive strategic research that told them otherwise.
Also, around that time, we were making a lot of money for our clients while you were running a company toward bankruptcy. Beep beep! Watch out for Ben's zeitgeist!!!