Nope, it was just an April Fools’ Day post from 2025. But the age-old tradition of the fake product social post didn’t hit quite the same this year. Because now every scroll, whether it’s April 1 or any other day, requires a PhD in AI slop detection. Counting how many fingers that person has. Looking for weird shadows. Which means what we really want from brands is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. And when brands don’t get that, it’s… tone deaf AF. [Keep reading]

- Charlotte Ellis, Editor ♡

According to The Verge, the only way to fight deepfakes, is to make deepfakes. Reality Defender, Pindrop, and GetReal are part of a rapidly growing deepfake detection cottage industry valued at an estimated $5.5 billion as of 2023.

And these startups use, guess what… machine learning to identify "manipulated media," like fake voices used for fraud and scams. Usually scammers clone someone’s voice, call their families, and have the voice tell them they’re being held for ransom. But it goes deeper than that.

During the 2024 election, a political strategist and a magician (???)  teamed up to create a deepfake of former President Joe Biden, which they used to discourage registered Democrats in New Hampshire from voting, which is f*cking insane to think about. Also, the Head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee took a Zoom call from someone using AI pretending to be a Ukrainian official.

Deepfake fraud is now “industrial,” says The Verge. So, to defeat the enemy, you must become the enemy. Reality Defender, for example, is training AI to combat AI, using an inference-based model, which is called a student/teacher paradigm. “This means taking a bunch of real things and saying, ‘These are real,’ and then a bunch of fake things and saying, ‘This is fake.’”

Interesting.

Anyway, more AI news, professors are apparently disturbed at a new tool rolled out by Arizona State University called Atomic that cuts up videos of their lectures, and creates AI-generated modules. Which, I would be too, if AI came along and destroyed my hard work, took it way out of context and smushed it into extremely short clips.

Even more so if I weren’t notified about the launch and found out via word of mouth. Which was the case for many of these professors. 404Media tested Atomic and have reported it to be “academically weak and inaccurate.” So not only did ASU not communicate to its academic community that their lectures would be dissected and fed to an AI platform, but the results are also just plain bad. Yikes.

Finally, Will Knight from Wired tested Eka’s new robotic claw. He says it feels like we’re approaching a ChatGPT moment for the physical world.

“In more than a decade of writing about robots, I have never seen one move so naturally.” Knight explains the moment the robot interacted with a lightbulb on a table. “I wince, waiting for the crunch. But suddenly the claw decelerates. It starts gingerly pawing around the table, as if searching for its glasses on the nightstand. It gently positions the bulb between its two pincers.”

“The bulb rolls away. The claw goes chasing it across the table. After a few nips, the bulb is back in its grasp. The robot swiftly screws the bulb into a nearby socket, illuminating its work area.”

-Sophie Randell, Writer

If you’re unfamiliar and perhaps don’t live on earth, some context: for decades, April 1st was the one-day brands were allowed, even encouraged, to lie to us. But like, in a fun way.

We’d get fake announcements for some bs like "stuffless Oreos" or "pickle flavoured smoothies" (not that the latter is hard to imagine these days). We’d all share a brief, collective laugh, and move on. It was a harmless bit of "humanising" theatre.

But Zahra and I both agreed that in 2026, the tradition has… soured. It’s almost even become a liability. As our social feeds become an ouroboros of misinformation, the brand prank has shifted from a light-hearted gag to another exhausting exercise in what experts call epistemological dread.

In an era where generative AI can create photorealistic videos of CEOs saying things they never said, or deepfake product drops that look indistinguishable from reality, every day on the internet feels like a test of our (my) sanity.

Consumers in 2026 are already spending a massive portion of their digital lives performing reality checks, checking sources, squinting at finger counts in photos, and looking for the uncanny valley in video clips.

When a brand steps in on April 1st to intentionally add to that noise, it’s no longer a prank. It’s a contribution to the very mental fatigue that makes people want to log the f*ck off. We are tired of being lied to, even when the lie is supposedly "all in good fun."

According to recent sentiment analysis from 2026, engagement with April Fools' content has seen a steady decline, with negative sentiment rising as users call out brands for being out of touch.

The misinformation pivot began years ago, but it reached a breaking point this spring. Many major corporations that stepped back during the global crises of the early 2020s realised that their absence was actually preferred. Brands have discovered that authenticity drives more long-term ROI than a viral trick.

A 2025 study highlighted that brand authenticity scores are significantly lower for campaigns that use deceptive AI hooks, as Gen Z and Alpha consumers increasingly value radical transparency over clever marketing.

(Hate to break it to ya’ll already planning next year's prank posts.)

They did it instead by leaning into the absurdity of the day while offering something tangible. We are seeing a move away from the “hehe, gotcha!" and toward "The Ploy."

Take Dunkin’, for example. Their 2026 strategy had no fake donut made of pickles in sight. Instead, they leaned into the collective scepticism of the internet by offering real rewards using the code "STILLNOTAJOKE." By acknowledging the audience's guard was up and rewarding them for it, they turned a day of distrust into a day of loyalty.

Similarly, brands like iFixit have pivoted toward high-end corporate satire. Rather than trying to fool people into buying a fake tool, they used the day to mock the very tech industry trends (like planned obsolescence or AI-everything) that frustrate their customers. This resonates because it positions the brand on the side of the consumer, rather than treating the consumer as the punchline.

It results in a PR crisis. In a high-speed information environment, a fake announcement can be screengrabbed, stripped of its context, and circulated as fake news within minutes.

Once that happens, the brand loses control of the narrative. If a consumer feels genuinely tricked into excitement for a product that doesn't exist, the resulting disappointment isn't funny; it’s a reason to hit unfollow.

As marketing analysts have noted throughout this year, trust has become the most fragile and valuable currency in the digital economy. In our current landscape, the most successful brands don’t need to pull pranks out their asses. They need to actually provide a moment of clarity in a sea of synthetic confusion.

The April Fools' prank as we once knew it, the low-effort Photoshop and the cheeky press release, is effectively dead. What remains is a high-stakes test of a brand's emotional intelligence.

We don't want to be fooled anymore; we just want to know what’s real.

-Sophie Randell, Writer

Take a season 3 episode of Euphoria for example, where Laurie confronts Rue about a high-interest drug debt from a few years earlier:

"You owe me money." "Yeah I-I know, yeah, I was gonna pay you back." "You don't owe me 10 grand…you actually owe me $43,887,000…”

It's a big moment in the series and a shocking number for Rue to get slapped over her head. But the nasally, monotone delivery by Laurie - played by Martha Kelly - makes the scene as funny as it is cruel.

The audio of their conversation's kickstarted a new trend on TikTok, where users describe times where they confronted someone about what they were owed - or they were confronted themselves. Because whether you're telling your roommates about the utilities bill or your parents are demanding payback for your childhood years, there's always some kind of debt to be paid - no matter how lame or ludicrous.

Take this sound, put the camera on yourself and lip-sync with Laurie's lines (her monotonous voice makes it pretty easy to figure out which ones are hers). Then, add on-screen text describing a time someone owed you big time, or you were forced to finally get your financials in order.

A few ideas to get you started:

-Devin Pike, Copywriter

😲WTF: Pumpkin grape?
✨Daily inspo: Keep going...
😊Soooo satisfying: This makes my brain happy 
🍝What you should make for dinner tonight: Easy Garlic Prawn Linguine 

Hey Zarah!

If you don't already have one, create a sign-up flow that gets new subscribers excited to get your emails. This should include a Thank You page they see after signing up, which tells them what kind of content they're going to get. You should also create a Welcome Email that reiterates the value they'll get from your newsletters. This email should also tell them how to move your newsletter to their primary inbox.

Next, I’d suggest you A/B test your subject lines for every email you send. In my experience, this is a really good way to increase your open rates. Finally, ask your subscribers what problems they are having as it relates to your services. Then, create newsletter content that addresses those. The only way to keep your subscribers around is to provide content they find valuable!

- Charlotte Ellis, Editor ♡

We get it. Creating content that does numbers is harder than it looks. But doing those big numbers is the fastest way to grow your brand. So if you’re tired of throwing sh*t at the wall and seeing what sticks, you’re in luck. Because making our clients go viral is kinda what we do every single day.