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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.
Special shout out to [SIC] Talks alum Danny Giacopelliâs newish pub For Starters, source of several stories today. An increasingly indispensable Friday delivery. Sub up.
[SIC] Day 464
New Paradigms
From Geoff Renaud: âAnxious Agents?â [The First Social Network for AI Agents Heralds Their Messy Future] / Spectrum
Also future coded: Is This the Most Radical School Ever Built? / Reasons To Be Cheerful
And also messy: Inside voice: Michael Pollan investigates what can our thoughts reveal about the nature of consciousness/ The Guardian
Corollary: Gorillaz: Face the Void, Kill Your Ego, End the âCelebrity Virusâ /032C
Viralistics
Speaking of viral: Clavicular and the Nihilism of Looksmaxxing. Young men arenât looking for meaning. Theyâre looking to mog / Many Such Cases
Related: Dour (if indispensable) roundup from Troy and co: If Everything Is So Good, Why Does Everything Feel So Bad? Maybe the data is capturing the wrong things / People vs. Algorithms
Apropos: âHide competitive statsâ / Seth Godin
Not competing, per se, but: Thriving on 4 hours of sleep / The New Yorker
FMCGeezers
Not thriving: new chief at âfat and happyâ Diageo is set to replace members of top team as part of plans to reinvigorate growth at the struggling drinks giant / FT
While in aisle 10, NestlĂ© is in âadvanced negotiationsâ to sell off its ice cream brands to focus on coffee, petcare, food, and snacks/ CNN
CPG corollary: Bill Simmons does ridiculous back-to-back ad reads for Pepsi and Coke in latest pod / Awful Announcing
Also ridiculous: Boneless wings donât have to be wings, per law / WSJ
Wearables
This is cool: Beit Kotn (âHouse of Kotnâ) is a residence and workspace above the brandâs Shoreditch shop, thatâs 100% free to use for artists, designers and creative/cultural types from the Middle East and North Africa / IG
Separately: The Parisian Man is âbranded contentâ done well / The Cut
Also cool: Frieze Partners with Stone Island on Exclusive Tee. The ltd-ed. piece, with art by Jamal Cyrus, is available exclusively at Frieze LA / Frieze
Also buzzy: Fashion monthâs hottest ticket? A watch party with Lyas / HTSI
Apropos of watching: Why the Fashion Worldâs Taking Anime Seriously. From Sailor Moon to SSENSE / Article of Interest
Also serious: Why Wonât Brands Tell Us How Many Clothes They Make? / Vogue Business
Terminologies
Corollary new term alert: âFunction-washingâ: upcharging for functional benefits that products not really delivering / Express Checkout
More positively: MEHKOs: Microenterprise Home Kitchen Operations: small, legal food businesses run straight out of someoneâs home kitchen / Public Health LA
[SIC] Day 464
What kinds of assholes are claiming "everything is so good" when the federal government is literally buying up warehouses to jail families by the tens of thousands? Who are these assholes in economics insisting that everything is good? Ben, I'd give up my material success if it meant that my city wouldn't be attacked by the government again.
the thing about ad and culture guys like you-- who dislike the metrics and facts that easily prove your half-assed ideas wrong -- is that you only ever glean cultural trends from secondary and tertiary sources. You don't explain to your audience how critiquing the finished product doesn't change the culture. The process of making the culture is what changes the world, not the underpaid interpreters in cultural journalism, and certainly not the advertisers and media execs.
You read magazines and make a collage instead of doing the work to make sense of complex human behavior. For party boys and ad hacks like you, this method of "skim the surface of the surface" engagement brought a lot of personal benefits but, people who are qualified and know how to conduct and read research look at your link roundup and say, "oh yeah, that guy has never had anything original or qualified to say."
You're basically the hacky newsletter version of the ad I get for a business book summary app: "become an interesting person" the ad says. (Is this one of your campaigns? Tracks if so.)
At least the business book summary app built their own software for the copy-of-a-copy content strategy. You just shill alongside the right wing on someone else's platform because you don't have any other skills besides "desk research."