The AI supergiant still holds 68% of market share, so I’m being hyperbolic - but that’s down 19% from a year ago. Its daily active user share on mobile is even worse off - a 69% to 45% drop - so what’s actually happening? There’s a variety of factors at play, but ultimately it comes down to cultural rejection. ChatGPT’s become the marker of intellectual laziness; now, to say you use ChatGPT is less cool than it is confessional.

- Devin Pike, Guest Editor 💜

Meanwhile other brands are going viral every week. Their secret? They're not working harder. They're using a system (and you need one, too).

At this workshop, Stanley Henry (1.4M followers, 1B+ views/year) teaches you that exact system live in just 90 minutes.

You'll learn:

✅The 1 thing you need to never run out of content ideas
✅How the biggest brands go viral on IG (plus what NOT to do)
✅How to create a repeatable content system (that doesn't take hours every day OR a creative team)

26 March | 11am NZDT | 9am AEDT | $79 NZD

Find out exactly how the biggest accounts are blowing up on IG (and how your brand can become one of them) 👇

I just read on The Atlantic that if Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was a “devoted Polymarket user,” he may still be alive. Get this, hours before his compound was reduced to rubble, an account bet about $20,000 that the supreme leader would no longer be in power by the end of March. Polymarket placed the odds at just 14%, netting user “magamyman” a profit of more than $120,000.

This wasn’t the only warning sign of an attack on the Supreme Leader's life, in fact there were plenty on Polymarket. Weeks ago, 150 users correctly bet at least $1,000 that the United States would strike Iran within the following 24 hours, according to a New York Times analysis.

Polymarket is now facing serious scrutiny, arguing that it creates a perverse incentive structure where someone might not just predict violence, they might have a financial stake in it occurring. The betting platform insists they monitor for suspicious activity, but the platform operates in a legal gray zone with minimal oversight. It's the logical endpoint of financialising everything: when you can bet on whether someone lives or dies, the market stops being neutral and starts being complicit.

In less serious news that people are spiralling about nonetheless, Meta is pulling the plug on its VR metaverse. After years of Zuckerberg insisting the metaverse was the future and dumping billions into VR development, Meta is shutting down the social VR experiences that were supposed to be the next evolution of the internet. Womp womp.

Horizon Worlds, the flagship metaverse app, is being scaled back dramatically, and support for legacy VR features is being phased out. Idk what kind of people care enough to be upset. But alas, they do exist.

Moving on! A massive shift in how major sporting events are distributed: FIFA just signed a deal giving YouTube exclusive streaming rights in several markets, bypassing traditional broadcasters entirely. For younger audiences, this makes perfect sense. They're already on YouTube, they don't have cable, and they expect to be able to watch everything on-demand with no restrictions.

For FIFA, it's obviously reaching a global audience without geographic limitations and tapping into YouTube's infrastructure for live streaming at scale. I can imagine traditional broadcasters are fooking sweating, but the old media model is collapsing, and the future of sports broadcasting is going to look a lot more like YouTube and a lot less like ESPN.

-Sophie Randell, Writer

Over 1.5 million paid subscribers cancelled in March 2026 alone. The product got measurably worse - creative writing scores dropped from 97% to 36% - but it was the cultural rejection happened faster than the technical decline.

ChatGPT became something people confess, rather than celebrate. “I used ChatGPT” turned into an admission of inauthenticity. The tool that was supposed to democratise knowledge? It's become a marker of intellectual laziness.

Idk about you, but I remember when ChatGPT launched and everyone wanted to show you all the cool sh*t it could do. The hype was real, as was everyone’s excitement about it. People were sharing screenshots of impressive conversations all over social. The tool felt democratising, maybe even empowering.

Compare that to now. Using ChatGPT has become something people disclaimer. "I know I shouldn't have but I used ChatGPT for this." Teachers can "tell" when students use it, even when they can't. Hiring managers judge resumes, creative work gets dismissed if it "feels AI".

People get called out for ChatGPT's writing style even when they wrote it themselves. The guilty-by-association factor is massive. Admitting you use ChatGPT now signals capability. That you're not smart, creative or authentic enough to do it yourself.

It's become like a confession of inadequacy rather than a productivity tool.

When anyone can generate perfect copy and flawless content at zero cost, the people who don't need AI assistance become more valuable. Having taste matters more than execution speed.

ChatGPT promised to democratise knowledge creation. Instead, it created a new class divide. People who can produce quality work without AI signal they have skills, taste, and discernment. Aaaand people who rely on ChatGPT signal they're faking competence they don't actually possess. All the gear, no idea.

In 2023, not using AI made you seem slow. In 2026, using ChatGPT makes you seem lazy.

Saying "I don't use ChatGPT" has become a flex. Like how "I don't own a TV" used to signal intellectual superiority. Declaring your independence from AI assistance now signals you're smart and creative enough not to need it.

This creates fascinating dynamics. Everyone privately uses AI tools but publicly distances themselves from them. Writers add disclaimers that they wrote something themselves. Designers emphasise their work is human-created. Students sweeeear they didn't use ChatGPT (even when they likely did).

The stigma is real enough that people seek anonymous AI support to avoid judgment. Research shows people use ChatGPT for mental health conversations. Mainly because they fear being judged by humans, but this reveals a paradox. ChatGPT reduces stigma for seeking help while simultaneously creating stigma for using ChatGPT.

The company positioned ChatGPT as a "helpful assistant". Culture decided it was a cheating tool. Educational institutions treated ChatGPT use as academic dishonesty. Employers questioned whether candidates actually possessed the skills their AI-assisted work demonstrated.

The message was clear as day from every direction: if you're using ChatGPT, you're doing something wrong. OpenAI never effectively countered this framing. They focused on capability improvements while the cultural perception soured. CEO Sam Altman issued internal code red memos, but the public messaging stayed defensive.

Meanwhile, serious problems emerged. People experienced AI delusions after extended conversations. Multiple lawsuits allege ChatGPT contributed to mental health crises and suicides. Studies found ChatGPT routinely breaks core ethical standards of mental health care. Therapists responded appropriately 93% of the time, AI therapy bots less than 60% of the time.

Each harmful incident reinforced the narrative that ChatGPT couldn't be trusted. Each lawsuit confirmed what critics had been saying: this technology isn't ready for how people are actually using it. And don’t even get me started on the environmental damage that everyone seems to be ignoring.

ChatGPT democratised execution. But it couldn't democratise taste. The people winning now are the ones with strong editorial judgment about what AI generates. Not the ones blindly trusting its output (like, are you crazy?)

The Staples Baddie hits because she has genuine enthusiasm and expertise. She builds trust through human quirks and real knowledge. ChatGPT is an antonym to all that. Polish without substance, execution without judgment and output without expertise.

But the numbers don't capture the full story. The real fall was cultural. From revolutionary tool to guilty confession.

In an era where authenticity and taste are premium, ChatGPT became associated with everything people are rejecting. Polish over substance, speed over craft, optimization over human connection. Nobody wants to admit they use it. And that stigma is harder to reverse than any technical problem OpenAI could likely solve. Yeowch. 

-Sophie Randell, Writer

This trend comes from Scrubs, a comedic and heartfelt TV show about experiences of young doctors. One episode featured Dave Franco, in which he panics about going to med school in the Caribbean as he doesn't "speak caribbeashian". which taps into those moments where you’re expected to just get on with it… even though you have absolutely no idea what’s going on or what to do.

Creators are using the audio to talk about situations where they act out or react to the chaos of winging it, usually with exaggerated expressions, frantic energy, or internal panic. The humor lands in that painfully relatable feeling of bluffing your way through life.

Most videos layer in a hyper-specific example (often academic, work-related, or social), like doing an assignment you didn’t read, having to learn certain things in your degree for the job you want that doesn't even make sense to learn, or nodding along in conversations you definitely don’t follow.

Use the audio and film a reaction-style clip of you “in the moment” - confused, overwhelmed, but pretending you’ve got it handled. Add on-screen text describing the situation you don’t understand.

A few ideas to get you started

-Georgia Russell, Intern

😂Yap’s funniest home videos: Guilty pleasure - When someone falls over
✨Daily inspo: Stressed about life? this ones for you
😊Soooo satisfying: Attention all clean freaks
🍝What you should make for dinner tonight: 20 minute healthy high protein nachos

Hey Georgia,

If you've put time into developing a solid strategy based on a human truth your audience can relate to, the idea is probably right. What's more likely failing is the execution. So before you scrap the whole concept, look for small signals that people are resonating with your content first. This might look like comments asking for more, saves, shares, people arguing in the replies. Those all mean something is landing even if the numbers aren't huge yet.

If you've at least got that, start iterating on your concept rather than throwing the whole thing out. Try changing one small thing at a time, a word in your on-screen text, your audio, your framing. Don't change four things at once or you'll never know what worked. And give it more time than feels comfortable. It can take a good 15-20 videos before a new content series takes off.

- 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.