The internet was a place that existed in its own world. If you’re a younger millennial, you fed your Neopet, scrolled on Tumblr. And if you’re a true 90s kid, you poured your heart out on Xanga and asked Jeeves who had a crush on you (like he knew!). But then you logged off and stepped back into the real world to live your life. Now, the internet isn’t a place—it’s just… everywhere, a part of everything. But is the fact that it feels more harmful now because it actually is? Or are we all just getting older and seeing it for what it always was?

- Charlotte Ellis, Editor ♡

At this workshop, join Stanley Henry and the the Attention Seeker team for a 2-hour session to plan out your content strategy for the whole year.

You’ll learn:

✅ What’s actually working on social right now
✅ How to build a viral content strategy for your brand
✅ The exact approach we use to get millions of views for our clients (and build our own audience of 3.3 million)

PLUS we will have plenty of time for Q&A with you.

Wednesday, 28 Jan | 8:30-10:30am NZT | $49

Stop wasting time making content that doesn’t perform. This is your chance to walk into 2026 with a content plan you know will work 👇

At CES 2026, Lego revealed the new Smart Brick, which is a compact computer built inside a classic 2×4 piece that adds lights, sounds, sensors and interactive reactions to your builds. Ok, so it’s totally epic, in other words. Smart Bricks communicate with tags and other blocks to trigger sound effects, motion responses and dynamic play. So, imagine Star Wars ships roaring to life without screens or separate devices.

Lego says it’s the biggest evolution since the minifigure’s debut in 1978. The first Smart Play sets land 1 March with Star Wars themes, with more expansions expected. Usually, when a brand comes through with an evolution, it’s a “don’t fix what ain’t broken” disappointment. Not this time.

Ooooo, this is a risk I didn’t see it taking. Uber is turning its navigation map, arguably one of the app’s most viewed screens, into premium ad real estate called Journey Takeovers. Now, they're letting advertisers create contextually relevant, ride-centred experiences across the trip.

The format debuted with Coca-Cola campaigns that popped up as riders headed to grocery stores, restaurants and events. This involved using Coke-branded map icons and animation. It’s part of Uber’s larger shift to monetise captive attention during rides by connecting brand messaging to real trip destinations. Will it prove annoying or useful? TBC.

Apple just announced Creator Studio, a subscription bundle that includes Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, Pixelmator Pro, and more for $12.99/month. That's way cheaper than Adobe's Creative Cloud Pro, which costs a hefty $69.99/month. And unlike Adobe, Apple isn't forcing you into a subscription. You can still buy one-time licenses in the Mac App Store.

For purists looking for maximum features, Adobe's still the clear winner. But according to Apple's VP of Worldwide Product Marketing, Bob Borchers, Creator Studio's designed for creatives who do a bit of everything. For marketers and creators stuck paying Adobe's prices but don't need all the bells and whistles, this is huge.

-Sophie Randell, Writer & Charlotte Ellis, Editor

And a lot of discourse (mine included) lately seems to be about the old internet, the golden days, a time we look at with a mourning for the good thing we once had.

But you know what they say about rose-tinted glasses? When you’ve got them on, red flags just look like, well, flags.

When I think about it honestly: was the internet really a better place back in my early teens? Tumblr 1000% gave me years of disordered eating and food anxiety. AskFM taught me that the veil separating real life harm and online harm was incredibly non-existent.

Douglas Adams once observed that "anything invented before you're born is normal, anything invented between 15 and 35 is revolutionary, and anything invented after 35 is against the natural order of things."

This speaks to how our perception shifts as we age, suggesting that our willingness to adapt to new innovations diminishes over time. Is that what's happening here? Or is the internet genuinely a much more terrible place to be right now?

I think both things might be true, and that's what makes this question so philosophically interesting.

It’s no secret that the architecture of the internet has fundamentally transformed.

Early internet spaces were more like libraries or town squares you actively chose to enter. Now the internet is ambient. It's always-on, algorithmically curated to maximise engagement, which often means outrage, anxiety, and envy. We're no longer customers; we're the product. There’s no escaping that at this point.

This shift has profound implications about agency and consent. What are we actually participating in when we're "online" anymore?

The harms I experienced on Tumblr and AskFM were brutal but localised; contained within specific communities or platforms. Now we're dealing with damage that operates globally and permanently. 

A rumour that once would have spread through a school goes worldwide in hours. A photo that would have lived in someone's drawer now exists forever, searchable, remixable. The harm has transformed into something qualitatively different.

We've moved from peer-to-peer cruelty to the professionalisation of harm: state-level disinformation, organised extremist recruitment, AI-generated content at industrial scale. It gives me the shivers just thinking about the scale of it all.

Early internet had boundaries because you were in a forum, a chat room, a specific space with its own norms. Now everything bleeds together.

Your employer, your grandmother, your high school bully, and strangers on the other side of the world all exist in the same undifferentiated feed. This is psychologically fragmenting in ways we're still trying to understand. Personally, I can’t even wrap my head around it.

But here's where the Douglas Adams observation matters: every generation experiences technological vertigo.

Our parents had genuine concerns about what the internet was doing to us as teens, just as we have concerns now. That doesn't invalidate all worries. But it does mean we should hold our judgments with some humility. The question becomes: how do we distinguish between "this is new and scary to me" versus "this is genuinely harmful"?

First, by creating intentional friction. By actively building in the pauses and boundaries that used to exist naturally. Not as nostalgia, but as self-preservation.

Second, by developing real literacy. Understanding the incentive structures, the design choices, the ways platforms shape behaviour beneath our awareness.

Third, by asking hard questions about community accountability. How do we rebuild the kinds of norms and social consequences that existed in smaller online spaces without recreating their insularity or toxicity?

Is the answer to leave these spaces entirely? To stay but differently? What do we lose either way, and who gets left behind when those with resources and awareness simply opt out?

The internet probably has gotten worse in specific, measurable ways, yeah.

But recognising that doesn't mean surrendering to despair or retreating into generational finger-wagging. It means acknowledging that we're all navigating genuinely new problems while also being aware of our own limitations in perceiving change.

That double consciousness—critical but not paralysed, concerned but not nostalgic, might be the most honest position we can take. Idk, food for thought x

-Sophie Randell, Writer

This level of terror is captured well in Charli XCX and John Cale's 2025 song "House", in which she sings "I think I'm gonna die in this house" before by an ominous, noisy and straight-up terrifying swell of strings overwhelms the senses.

It's inspired a slew of TikToks documenting times when it all went to sh*t, like when your cat bites your ass or your dive into a tent ruins everyone's day. Because while bad things happen to everyone, sometimes they're so exceptionally bad they'll haunt you forever.

To be honest, this isn't an easy trend to stage - you're better off waiting for the perfect moment to capture something going wrong. Once that moment arrives, film it and put this sound over it. Make sure the music swell is in sync with the bad thing happening - this is crucial to making your travesty impactful (and honestly, hilarious).

A few ideas to get you started:

-Devin Pike, Copywriter

😂Yap’s funniest home videos Way too realistic jump-scare
✨Daily inspo Gift guide for the funky cool friend in your life
🎧Soooo tingly Waxing nothing
🍝What you should make for dinner tonight One-pan creamy pasta

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.