Especially toward the end of last year, social media was overrun with vulnerable posts. Not your usual crying-for-the-camera-to-get-views content. No, this was people genuinely talking about how hard 2025 had been. Financially. Socially. Mentally and emotionally. And for many, their rationale for why the year had been so difficult was simple: it was the year of the snake. [Read more]

- 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 👇

OpenAI just launched ChatGPT Health in the US. What's that, you ask? Well, it's a feature that lets you connect your medical records (!!) and apps (like Apple Health and MyFitnessPal) to your chat so it can give you personalised health advice. OpenAI claims they're literally giving the people what they're asking for. Because apparently, over 230 million people already ask ChatGPT health questions every week (ok fine, I'm one of them). So now, the tech giant simply wants to make those answers more relevant by analysing your actual health data.

OpenAI says conversations in ChatGPT Health are stored separately and won't be used to train AI models. But some privacy advocates aren't convinced. One expert from the Center for Democracy and Technology warned that safeguards need to be "airtight." Especially as OpenAI begins using personalisation to serve you ads in your chats. Y'all go ahead on this one. I'm going to sit back and see how it goes before diving in headfirst.

Pinterest just announced it's launching a CTV show called "Bring My Pinterest to Life," debuting on Roku in March. The show features creators helping real Pinterest users turn their boards into actual projects (sooo every Pinterest girly's dream?!). The show's going to be shoppable, with integrated brand partners like Wayfair and Michaels woven into the storytelling.

This comes after Pinterest acquired CTV ad platform TvScientific in December. But it's also part of a bigger trend, where brands and platforms are becoming content creators themselves. Media analyst Evan Shapiro predicts more brands will launch their own TV content in 2026 to compete for attention in the creator economy. Will be interesting to see who’s next.

And honestly, I believe it. I spent the holidays in the States, and while watching cable tv at my parents' house, this smacked me in the face. You had Ellie Kemper as the Kohl's mom, Ben Affleck in Dunkin' ads, Brad Pitt sipping De'Longhi coffee. Nearly every big brand had someone from Hollywood fronting their campaign. So the fact that brands spent over $1 billion on celebrity talent in ads last year explains a lot. The interesting thing is that, even as the total number of ad productions is shrinking, brands are doubling down on celebs. Time will tell whether the trend continues in 2026 or if brands shift focus this year.

- Charlotte Ellis, Editor ♡

I watched post after post roll through, with people being fully, almost startlingly vulnerable about their hardships. Financial stress, identity crises, loneliness, burnout, you name it. Many noted the exhaustion of navigating these trying times while pretending everything was fine.

And I must say, it really surprised me. Because these weren't the usual flavours of online vulnerability, which usually looks like trauma dumping for engagement or performative breakdown content.

This was something else. People were pointing to the zodiac: "it was a snake year, what did we expect?”, and suddenly having permission to be honest about how hard things had been.

And then, almost in the same breath, sharing genuine hope for 2026, the year of the horse. A collective exhale and a decision to try again.

There's something about the Chinese zodiac framing that makes vulnerability feel less isolated, less like you're the only one failing. It creates like a gentle scaffolding for honesty. When you say "the snake year broke me," you're participating in a shared narrative as opposed to admitting to personal failures.

You're saying "yeah, me too" to thousands of other people who also felt like 2025 chewed them up (and it DID.)

But naming it this way helps process it collectively. It transforms "I'm drowning" into "we went through something together." And that collectiveness matters. Because what I've noticed in the comments on these posts is real community care happening.

People showing up for each other, sharing their own struggles, offering not solutions but solidarity. "The snake year got me too." "We made it through." "Here's to the year of the horse being kinder to us." It's the internet doing what it's actually capable of when we let it: connecting people who feel alone and reminding them they're not.

We don't gather the same way, don't have the same collective ceremonies to process what we've been through. But we're building new ones in these digital spaces, like the year of the snake. Because from what I can see, it wasn’t even a trend. Just a way of creating structure for shared experience, a way to say "time passed, it was hard, let's acknowledge that together."

What makes the snake year posts feel different from other online vulnerability is the sincerity of them.

The zodiac thing offers a way back to genuine vulnerability because it's framed as reflection rather than content. It’s less about trying to create a viral moment and instead just processing your year alongside thousands of others doing the same.

And then there's the hope piece.

The "year of the horse" optimism that follows may seem like forced silver-lining thinking. But there’s a tiny glimmer in me that hopes it’s people deciding together that they're ready to try again.

That maybe this turn of the calendar will be gentler, and we can hold both the hardship and the hope without one cancelling out the other.

Not individual manifestation or personal optimisation, but collective decision that we're not done yet.

I don't know if this shift will stick. The internet sure has a way of taking tender things and weaponising them and turning genuine moments into content strategies and brand opportunities. I'm sure someone's already figuring out how to monetise zodiac vulnerability.

Because THIS is what the internet can still be good for. Not just the discourse and the arguments and the performance, but these quieter moments of collective processing. These small rituals we're building to help each other through. The permission to struggle and the decision to hope, done together instead of alone.

I really hope we see more of this. I hope we protect it. I hope the year of the horse is kinder to all of us.

-Sophie Randell, Writer

You know, when you laugh at someone's joke once, and suddenly they're staring at you like a desperate comedian every time the conversation dies. Today's trend is for the people with firm boundaries, the ones ready to say, "pump the brakes, we just met". 

The audio originally came from a Baddies Caribbean episode, where one of the co-stars Natalie Nunn was voted the winner. The star gloats "hold on, let me fix my crown", only to be immediately hit with a reality check from her co-star, "girl... don't get comfortable." 

People are now using this viral sound to call out those moments when someone's gotten a bit too comfortable in a space they were never actually invited into. Like when the new hire at work tries to correct you or when someone starts petting your dog and says "aww, she loves me."

Using this audio, film yourself doing the motion of "fixing your crown", then lip-sync to the line "girl... don't get comfortable". Feel free to include dramatic gestures or facial expressions of yourself looking offended, annoyed, surprised. The sassier, the better.

A few ideas to get you started:

-Raewyn Zhao, Intern

😲WTF Throwback to when my cat tried to end it
❤How wholesome Top 10 dogs and their grandparents
😊Soooo satisfying Dessert ASMR
🍝What you should make for dinner tonight Heaven in a single pan

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.