For over a decade now, our digital overlords have repeatedly drilled into our heads that attention was the only currency that mattered. But with the rise of generative AI and booming interest in producing “perfectly optimised” content, a new divide is forming between the most “correct” creators and the most authentic. In the not-too-distant future, victory in the war over eyes won’t be won by the best hooks, slick edits and flowing wordplay, but by believability.

- Devin Pike, Guest Editor 💜

Well, potential good news. If Alexander Lerchner is correct. 404Media reports that the senior staff scientist at Google’s artificial intelligence lab, DeepMind Has written a new paper arguing that no AI, or other computational system for that matter, will ever become conscious. YIPEEEEE.

The conclusion, however, conflicts with that of AI company CEOs, including DeepMind’s own Demis Hassabis – who constantly claims that will be the case, recently saying that AGI is “going to be something like 10 times the impact of the Industrial Revolution, but happening at 10 times the speed”. 404 say this perfectly showcases the divergence between the “self-serving narratives AI companies promote in the media” and how they collapse when examined.

The paper, titled “The Abstraction Fallacy: Why AI Can Simulate But Not Instantiate Consciousness,” is apparently a strong argument according to other philosophers and researchers of consciousness, and they're “glad to see the argument come from one of the big AI companies”. Again, YIPEEEEE.

Ok next! A new study finds that a third of new websites are AI generated. Which, tbh, I don’t feel like you need a whole ass study to tell you. We’re living in slopville.

A team of researchers from Stanford, the Imperial College London, and the Internet Archive have discovered that this has been the case since 2022, publishing their findings online in a paper titled “The Impact of AI-Generated Text on the Internet”.

They were inspired, according to 404Media, by the Dead Internet Theory. One of my personal favourite theories, which seems to be becoming less of an idea and more just reality every single day. 

“The proliferation of AI-generated and AI-assisted text on the internet is feared to contribute to a degradation in semantic and stylistic diversity, factual accuracy, and other negative developments,” the researchers write in the paper. Could have told ya that for free.

Last! Clavicular is being sued for alleged battery. Which I feel like we’re all disappointed about, but not at all surprised. It was that or jail for drug possession or something.

Braden Peters is all the rage on the internet at the moment, albeit controversial as hell. Young men, particularly of the right-wing persuasion, seemed to be wildly influenced by him and his ideologies. And when it comes to women, those are like, really bad.

Now, 18-year-old Aleksandra Mendoza, the self-proclaimed "#1 female looksmaxxer” is suing Peters for fraud, battery, and alleged sexual assault. Details over at Wired - warning, they’re awful.

Now can we please stop platforming problematic and dangerous men for the LOVE OF GOD. 

-Sophie Randell, Writer

Don’t quote me on that. But I know y’all know it resonates.

For a decade, the digital overlords told us that attention was the only currency that mattered. Because it’s true. They’d point and yell "Get the eyeballs! Hook them in the first 0.3 seconds or you’re irrelevant! Dance for the algorithm, you beautiful little content monkey!"

And we did. We do. We watch people eat 10-pound bowls of spicy noodles and "Day in the Life" vlogs that are clearly 90% staged lighting and 10% clinical depression, because why the actual f*ck are you doing that? You are going to give yourself a stomach ulcer and potentially gout.

Anyway. I feel like a funny thing happened on the way to the 15th skip-ad button. And that was: we stopped caring. Dare I say, we've reached peak attention?

There’s been an important shift: these days, we’re looking for outsourced decision-making. The internet has given us infinite choice, which sounds like a dream, but we all know it’s a hellscape. Like a panic attack in the toothpaste aisle of a CVS, which also happens to be The Backrooms. Content is no longer a performance - it’s a proxy.

When I watch a creator review a $280 blender, I’m not exactly "watching a video” per se. I’m trying to avoid the soul-crushing regret of spending big on a machine that smells like burning rubber the first time it meets a frozen strawberry. I am buying their trust so I don't have to spend my own time or sanity. Both of which are extremely limited these days.

This is where it gets unhinged for the spreadsheet people in marketing. You can’t track trust in a neat little HubSpot dashboard. Trust is a vibe, a parasocial one at that. It’s the "friendship standard".

If a creator tells me a product is life-changing, and I buy it, and it sucks? It’s not like they’ve only lost a view. They’ve defaulted on a loan. They’ve burned the only bridge that matters in 2026. In the old world, a bad ad was just "noise". In the new world, a bad recommendation is a betrayal.

We need to wake up to the fact that 10,000 "true believers" (shoutout to Kevin Kelly) are worth infinitely more than 1.4 million passive scrollers. Reach is cheap, while resonance is expensive, a luxury, even.

Of course, I’m going to mention the big giant unavoidable elephant in the room. The one that seems to overshadow every god damn room, in 2026: AI is about to flood the zone with "perfectly optimised" garbage. We’re going to be swimming in AI-generated "trustworthy" reviews that were hallucinated by a server in Ohio.

And do you know what that does, dear friends? It drives the price of actual human bullsh*t through the roof. We will pay a premium for the creator who is messy, who is honest, and who occasionally tells us not to buy things (a huge freaking green flag in my book).

Marketing no longer belongs to the creator who is merely screaming nonsense into the void, it belongs to the one being the person people actually believe when the world is screaming.

Attention, while still important, is a flash in the pan. Trust is the house - and the house always wins.

-Sophie Randell, Writer

Today's viral trend comes from the 2025 PDC World Darts Championship, when English darts player Luke Litter was booed after his win because the crowd supported the underdogs. In response, Litter told an interviewer "[I'm] not bothered, really I'm not bothered", but when the crowd continued to boo, he snapped back: "You guys pay for tickets and pay for my prize money. So thank you, thank you for my money". Is that aura or what? 

Creators on TikTok are using this audio clip to highlight situations where they pretend not to care after a loss, embarrassment, or setback, even though they obviously do. The captions creators use frame relatable moments like losing games, getting humbled, or dealing with stressful situations, with the humour coming from the contrast between acting unbothered and the reality of being slightly rattled.

Using the audio, turn the camera on yourself whilst mouthing the words. Insert an on-screen text describing your "unbothered" moment. 

A few ideas to get you started

- Fiona Badiana, Intern

😂Yap’s funniest home videos: What's he even mad about??
❤How wholesome: She's so rich in life.
🎧Soooo tingly: $1 vs $1,000 keyboard
🍝What you should make for dinner tonight: Garlic Parmesan chicken skewers

Hey Sara!

The best thing you can do is get on TikTok and play around. Every platform has its own culture, so it's a good idea to do some research to see how people behave on TikTok. Spend some time scrolling and pay attention to what kind of content is performing well. Follow a bunch of people in your industry so you can see what they're doing. Pay attention to which of their posts get a lot of engagement and which ones flop.

Then, once you've done a little homework, just start posting! It might take some time for your audience to find you, and that's ok. If you keep tweaking what you're doing based on the feedback you get, you'll eventually figure out what will work for you.

- 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.