Pick a lane. Stick to it. Optimise for the algorithm. It sounds like practical advice until you realise everyone else got the same memo, and now the whole feed looks identical. The idea that compressing yourself into a single category is the path to standing out is starting to feel less like strategy and more like creative surrender. Today we're looking at why the niche is dead, and what actually builds a presence that can't be copied.

- Devin Pike, Copywriter

404 Media reports that LinkedIn has added a "Seems like AI slop" button to its post reporting options, letting users flag content they suspect was churned out by an LLM. When clicked, LinkedIn says "Thanks for letting us know" and hides the post. The feature follows 404 Media's own reporting that an AI detection service estimated 41% of long-form posts and 30% of short-form posts on the platform are likely AI generated.

The irony is hard to miss here. LinkedIn has its own built-in AI writing assistant that helps users craft their posts. The platform is essentially offering users a button to report the very content its own tools are helping to produce.

Meanwhile, Degree deodorant has pulled off one of the summer's most satisfying pieces of outdoor advertising. Marketing Dive reports that Degree partnered with the MTA to temporarily rename some of New York's most notorious summer subway stations. West 4th Street became "Sweat Central," Union Square the "Boiler Room," and Herald Square South "Molten Core." Signage on turnstiles reads: "The Official Deodorant of the Hottest Commutes."

The idea came directly from Reddit threads where New Yorkers were already venting about the heat. Degree didn't start a conversation - it just showed up to the one already happening. In a summer of extreme heat domes over the five boroughs, the timing could not be better.

And finally, the AI industry's relationship with the power grid is getting increasingly complicated. TechCrunch reports that PJM Interconnection - the largest grid operator in the US, covering 67 million customers from Virginia to Illinois - has announced it will cut power to data centres of 50 megawatts or larger during peak shortages from June 2027. Wholesale electricity prices on the grid have nearly doubled in the past year. And PJM's own market monitor point at data centres as the primary cause.

Data centers will be compensated during cuts. But they will likely need to set up on-site diesel generators as backup - which carry their own environmental and health concerns. The AI industry has spent two years telling the world it will change everything. It turns out it will also change the electricity bill.

- Devin Pike, Copywriter

And it makes me want to throw laptop directly through a window. Because it’s old, tired advice.

For some reason, it became the undisputed, unthinking gospel of the creator economy. Advice chanted by every self-appointed social media strategist on the timeline.

They look young, multi-faceted creatives in the eye and tell them they must pick a single, flat, one-dimensional topic category, whether it’s crypto, skincare, or personal finance, and compress their existence into that box to appease an algorithm.

Yeah. And it completely misunderstands how real human authority is built online.

The reality is that picking a pre-defined niche is a guaranteed way to become entirely invisible. When you subscribe to a single category box, you immediately inherit all its standard tropes, its visual cliches, and its crowded market competition.

You stop looking like an original voice and start sounding like a carbon copy of the top three creators in that vertical. Booooo.

The true creative vanguard instead, will break the box entirely. Instead of picking a niche, you need to become the niche by constructing an unmistakable world around your own perspective.

This isn't a complex or software-driven optimisation task. It’s an intuitive architecture that can be executed in three fundamental movements.

You have to choose the exact topics, feelings, and aesthetic frequencies that bring you actual joy. Then, prioritise what feels completely natural and intuitive to your brain.

Before you can demand that a public audience pays attention to your channel, you need to develop a clear and uncompromising sense of who you are and what direction you want to move in when the cameras are turned off.

It means establishing a definitive creative point of view. One that refuses to be watered down by trending search volumes or algorithmic panic.

I mean a real, physical, or creative pursuit that you genuinely love. One you're building genuine skill in. Something that completely fulfils you without any immediate commercial expectation. I know, unheard of in this godforsaken day and age. But I insist this is the way.

If your entire life is just consuming content to create more content about content, you have nothing original to offer the world. You are but a hollow echo chamber.

A real hobby, whether it’s restoring vintage furniture, deep-diving into classical military history, or learning the complex mechanics of high-contrast photography, gives your mind raw texture, unpredictable friction, and structural weight. It pulls you out of the screen, forcing you to develop localised and experiential wisdom out in the open air.

You take your foundational intuition, your voice, and you cross-pollinate them directly with your distinct hobby and technical interests. BOOM.

By combining your raw personality with your specific obsessions, you instantly construct a creative identity that is uniquely, un-copyably you (idk if that’s a word but it is now.)

You don't have to subscribe to a niche because you have just become your own category.

If you are a financial strategist who uses the raw visual language of underground skateboarding subculture, or a cooking creator who tracks recipes using the analytical frameworks of software engineering, you create a pattern-interrupter that demands conscious attention.

In a way that gives you the creative audacity to treat your life, their quirks, and unfiltered human interests as the ultimate competitive advantage.

Stop squeezing your brain into an industrial box. Stop asking the algorithm for permission to create. Put down the templates, and build a world that is too authentic to be copied.

Be the little freak that you are. It’s the greatest strategy of them all.

-Sophie Randell, Writer

The sound is a woman whispering an ever-expanding list of goals and skills to learn, set against Mozart's "Lacrimosa" from his Requiem in D minor - one of the most dramatic pieces of classical music ever written - which makes the whole thing feel both deeply unhinged and oddly motivating:

"Start a business. Start a business but also work full time at the same time. Learn how to speak Japanese. Become a famous actor. Learn how to sew..."

Creators are filming themselves candidly and adding whatever their brain - or someone around them - decided to pile on the moment they dared to sit still for five seconds.

Some of my favourite examples:

Film yourself doing something that should be relaxing. Add the sound, then put whatever your brain or someone else is currently demanding of you as your on-screen text.

A few ideas to get you started:

- Devin Pike, Copywriter

Hey Priya,

You don't have to be the face of it at all. Plenty of brands have built massive audiences without a single founder on camera, and if it's genuinely not for you, you can put someone else in front of the lens. Another option is to have your team feature in your content. You can even use a character (just look at Duolingo).

That said, if the hesitation is more about nerves or insecurity than a genuine strategic reason, it might be worth pushing through. Founder-led content tends to build trust faster because people connect with people. But there's no rule that says it has to be you. It can be anyone, as long as the person showing up does so consistently and brings some kind of personality to your brand.

- 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.