Your ATTN Please || Monday, 20 October

October 20, 2025

Is that a soap opera in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?

What am I even saying. Of course you’re happy to see me. You are subscribed after all x

Anyway. Today, I’m writing about a phenomenon that’s absolutely blowing my mind – it’s like if Love Island had a baby with Euphoria and gave it an iPhone tripod. The era of the vertical soap opera is upon us, and I can’t say I ever expected it. But now that it’s here, I couldn’t have seen it going any other way.

NEW YAP WORKSHOP

Storytelling that makes your brand un-ignorable

You’re posting “great” content, but it’s getting ignored. No comments. No likes. And definitely no new business coming in.

The problem? You don't know how to tell a good story. You know, one your audience cares about. Because when they buy into your story, they buy into your brand.

In this 90-minute workshop, we’ll show you how to use storytelling to make your brand un-ignorable.

What you’ll learn:

✅ How to create content that builds trust, gets engagement & creates loyal followers
✅ How to build an emotional connection with your audience
✅ The 3 crucial elements every story NEEDS

You'll leave with practical frameworks you can apply right away. Space is limited so we can get into the nitty gritty with you during the Q&A time.

30 Oct | 8:30-10am NZT | $49 (recording included!)

WHAT’S HAPPENING IN MARKETING TODAY?

Sites let users search Tinder by face, Gen Z women are most liberal demo & Everyone double-screens

Spooky. Viral "cheater buster" sites use facial recognition to let anyone reveal peoples’ Tinder profiles.

This is wild, creepy, and totally hellish for privacy. A string of “cheater buster” websites are using facial recognition to hunt down specific Tinder profiles from a photo. And they can even surface approximate location data and track profile changes over time. Say what now.

These sites pitch themselves as relationship sleuth tools. But 404 Media has verified they 100% work and found the viral demo videos blowing up on TikTok were produced by paid creators. So this is loud, profitable, and engineered to spread.

Practically speaking, anything that makes Tinder searchable by face instead of proximity wrecks the app’s basic safety model and hands powerful stalking tools to people who absolutely should not have them. In short, this is not romance tech, it is surveillance tech. And the social-media hype train is helping it spread faster than any sensible privacy policy can keep up.

Gen Z women are the most liberal group in the US, poll finds.

If this surprises you, move out from under that rock sweetheart. Gen Z women aren’t just shaping culture, they’re rewriting the entire political algorithm. According to new data from The 19th and SurveyMonkey, women under 28 are now the most liberal demographic in the U.S., far outpacing both their male peers and the national average.

They overwhelmingly support abortion rights (76%) and access to gender-affirming care for both adults and minors. This signals a deep alignment between social progressivism and personal identity politics.

For marketers, that’s a flashing neon sign: Gen Z women don’t just buy values-driven brands--they literally expect them. This cohort’s worldview isn’t performative activism; it’s baked into their purchasing logic. Meanwhile, Gen Z men trend more centrist, creating a widening cultural split within one generation. Long story short, if your messaging still treats “Gen Z” as one monolith, you’re missing the nuance, and the loyalty, of the most politically powerful audience on the internet.

Most of Gen Z watch TV with the subtitles on.

Being hard of hearing, I can’t really watch anything without subtitles. So finding out Gen Z do it mostly because they’re socially conditioned is crazy. The U survey revealed that 80% of Gen Z and millennials “double-screen” when they watch. In other words, their living room screen is sharing the attention with the micro screen in their pocket.

With subtitles on, you can quickly gather what a character has said, look down at your phone, react to a message, and then look up before the character has even finished their line.

Yes. Gen Z uses subtitles because it allows them to go on their phones and still absorb the content and gist of whatever they're watching.

DEEP DIVE

Why vertical soap operas are all over your feed right now

Recently, my explore page kept feeding me the same couple arguing in soft lighting.

And, for just a MILLISECOND (I swear), it had me invested in the innerworkings of their tangled relationship, even though I had no idea who tf they were.

This is content engineering at its finest.

30 second melodramas built for your thumbs. Filmed in portrait mode, written with the emotional pacing of a car crash, and starring people who are either actors, influencers, or both (idk it’s hard to tell).

Act I: How did we get here?

Gone are the days of Days of Our Lives, where you’d tune in at 7pm, someone would slap someone else, the credits would roll. Cliffhanger achieved. Now you have to wait a week to see what happens.

Then reality TV came along and said, what if we just skip the acting? Just throw real people into a villa and watch their emotional lives crumble in 4K.

Now, social media has said: “ok but what if we condense all that into ONE MINUTE.”

No sets, no script, no emotional recovery period. Just a perpetual cycle of drama, apology videos, and eye contact so intense it could melt steel (the kind that makes you second handedly awkward.)

Act II: The love language of the algorithm.

Of course, the algorithm loves this stuff. This is like algorithmic crack.

Conflict = watch time. Tears = engagement. Ambiguity = follow for more.

The perfect viral formula. Whoever’s cooking these up is like the short form Heisenberg.

Then there’s Dana and the Wolf, which is a whole other kettle of fish. This is a real life couple-slash-band who turned their polyamorous relationship into an ongoing miniseries. One clip they’re performing, the next they’re fighting, the next they’re kissing, then they’re kissing other people, and you’re like… wait, is this promo or propaganda? Lol.

Act III: Emotional microdosing 101

Dana and the Wolf is the one series that continues to plague my explore page and is the emotional equivalent of microdosing. Every 10 seconds somehow delivers a hit - lust, betrayal, reconciliation, before you can even decide how you feel about it.

But I will NOT be seduced by it. If I can actively avoid every season of Love Island despite the obnoxious hype train, I WILL avoid… whatever you want to call this.

The most interesting part about this for me is that social media has trained us to crave the feeling of story without the burden of plot. We don’t really need backstory or world-building. We just need the instant gratification of emotional proximity and the ability to jump in and out as we please.

And like… that’s kind of genius.

These clips hijack the same part of the brain that once got hooked on soap operas, reality TV, and messy Facebook relationship updates circa 2011. Except now, it’s portable, optimised, and never freaking ending. Which keeps the audience trapped in the hamster wheel of plotless drama.

Act IV: The parasocial trap.

It would appear that this very hamster wheel also has audiences participating. One look at the comments section tells you all you need to know. Chiming in like close friends, analysing like therapists, arguing over moral compasses.

This is, of course, all manufactured. Chaos is the whole point. Dana and the Wolf even describe their content as “art imitating life imitating content,” which is either genius, or the end of civilisation. Possibly both.

Because this isn’t just about them… it’s about all of us, and how we’ve come to prefer our emotions in short, consumable bursts. We want intensity without investment and drama without duration (thank you dating apps).

Act VI: The grand finale (for now)

It’s kind of crazy that this works. And it’s only getting better, really.

The acting, the cinematography, even the dialogue sounds real, because it is, or at least, it used to be. We’re witnessing the birth of a new format of entertainment, one where attention is the currency, intimacy is the product, and authenticity is the bait.

Soon, you probably won’t be able to tell what’s scripted. Or worse: you won’t care.

I’m not sure anymore.

But if you catch me watching Dana and the Wolf “Season 3 finale” like it's Succession, please throw my phone into the sea. 

TREND PLUG

Say you’re a big changed man? I doubt it.

You know that one coworker (or manager… or boss? 👀) who’s all talk and zero follow-through?

This trend is the perfect way to politely (not politely) call them out. Okay, maybe this trend can go beyond the office... feel free to use this one however your heart desires.

The sound comes from Sabrina Carpenter’s “Sugar Talking” (shoutout to the Sabrina stans <3) where she calls out the kind of person who behaves like “love bombing” is their actual love language. Empty words, zero action (modern dating pool type vibe).

The lines go: “Say you’re a big changed man, I doubt it. Yeah, your paragraphs mean sh*t to me. Get your sorry ass to mine.” In true Sabrina fashion, it’s sharp, catchy, and just the right mix of petty, sassy, and poetic! 

Some personal fav examples:

How you can jump on this trend:

Lip-sync to the audio while serving your most sarcastic, doubtful expression on your face. Really put on the "yeah nah I'm not buying your sh*t" mask... that probably isn't a mask, let's be real. Add on-screen text describing the person or situation you’re just done with taking bs from. Have some situations in store that really hit the mark in terms of frustration AND relatability.

A few ideas to get you started:

  • The client says they’ll "trust the creative vision" this time. I doubt it.

  • When your manager says, "We’ll actually stick to the new content strategy." I doubt it.

  • I want to relate, but unfortunately I’m the one who’s always late to client shoots I swore I’d be on time for.

- Nico Mendoza, Intern

FOR THE GROUP CHAT

😲WTF: Insane migraine
✨Daily inspo: Live for yourself
🎧Soooo tingly: Pencil ASMR???
🍝What you should make for dinner tonight: Easy pork katsudon!

ASK THE EDITOR

When trying to build up my following, what's more important, posting a lot of content or posting high-quality content? -Ross

Hey Ross!

If you're starting out, think of this as your information gathering phase. You don't know what your audience wants to see from you, so there's no point spending days or weeks trying to create the perfect piece of content. Instead, you should go for quantity at this stage. Try stuff and figure out what content style resonates. Then pay attention to your engagement.

What kind of reach are you getting? Are those people turning into followers? Where do they drop off in watching your content? Use this data to refine what you're doing. Eventually, you'll want to make incremental changes to improve the overall quality of your content. But for now, you are trying to figure out what content style will work for your brand, so go for volume.

- Charlotte Ellis, Editor ♡

Not going viral yet?

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.

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