There’s something gritty and grounded, yet satisfying about the art you create through the simultaneous click of the volume down and power buttons (yes, I use a Samsung. Fight me.) Don’t know about you, but I always get a kick out of people’s screenshots leaking into my feed, most often in the forms of notes app snippets, text message threads and run-of-the-mill sh*tposts. This “Screenshot Aesthetic” is a countermovement of sorts - and one that’s surprisingly exceptional at building trust.

-Devin Pike, Guest Editor 💜

First up, the era of uninhibited, free-flowing AI spending is dying a painful and public death. Welcome to the "Tokenpocalypse". According to a phenomenal leak obtained by 404 Media, consulting giant Accenture is scrambling to contain a massive surge in AI costs. And it’s not superpowered engineers generating millions of lines of code driving the budget crisis… it’s non-technical workers blowing through token caps doing incredibly basic tasks like using advanced AI models to convert PDFs into presentation slides, or… documents into pitch decks.

Companies like Uber have already been forced to hard-cap employee usage after blowing their entire four-month AI budget. Corporate efficiency is getting incredibly expensive in here babes!

And to put a cherry right on top of that “we told you this would be bad” sundae, all these new AI coding assistants are kind of… breaking the brains of the people who build our software.

A new industry report reveals that software engineers are experiencing "workplace paralysis" due to the sheer volume of AI-generated code. Instead of making programmers faster, devs are spending their entire days debugging, reviewing, and trying to fix buggy, context-blind code spat out by algorithms, creating an ungodly bottleneck where humans are too paralyzed by automated errors to actually write anything new. Sick!

But hey, don’t worry! If your computer is stressed out, Zuck wants to slap that AI directly onto your face like a Xenomorph baby. Meta has just fired back at Snap by launching three new models of AI-powered "Meta Glasses," including a special oval-frame collaboration with Kylie Jenner. Which, I will admit, look better, and are more affordable. Starting at US$299, these glasses feature an always-on AI assistant that listens to your environment and looks at the world from your perspective.

Zuckerberg explicitly stated he expects smart glasses to eventually completely replace our smartphones. Seems that’s we’re headed that way, captain!

-Sophie Randell, Writer

The corporate carousels with matching pastel backgrounds, flawless grid layouts, and meticulously edited glossy graphics designed to mimic a high-end magazine.

It’s simply always been the standard of posting. The chefs kiss of curation.

And while that approach still has its place for high-end editorial branding, it is increasingly operating under a law of diminishing returns.

It used to signal professionalism, now it kinda signals corporate friction, over-thinking, and a desperate lack of urgency.

Instead, a fascinating subculture has emerged that some are calling “The Screenshot Aesthetic”.

Audiences are actively scrolling past highly produced graphic design to look at raw, unedited snippets from a Notes app, cropped text message threads, and raw voice note waveforms.

It is a powerful countermovement where unvarnished text message captures and rough notes command a unique kind of trust on the feed.

The rapid rise of this trend is deeply tied to how consumers filter out marketing noise. When a brand funnels an idea through a rigid pipeline of copywriters, graphic designers, and multiple layers of corporate approval, the final asset can easily emerge as a sanitized advertisement that consumers instinctively tune out.

A raw screenshot acts as an immediate pattern-interrupter. By moving directly from a raw thought to a simple note capture, a creator delivers a sense of immediate human truth. Not a samba line of execs and approvals.

A crop of an email thread or a quick thought typed out on a phone carries an inherent sense of urgency. It almost feels like a realization that was too important or too time-sensitive to wait for a design department to touch it, bypassing the traditional corporate filter and giving the audience a direct line to a real human brain.

In a digital landscape increasingly flooded with highly automated, generic content, these unedited moments serve as a refreshing proof of life.

We don't want to buy from a flawless, robotic entity that lives inside a curated colour palette. We want to buy from people who are moving fast, thinking deeply, and engaging with reality in real-time.

If you’re like me, the type to find yourself spending three hours tweaking the font size or adjusting the border radius on a social media graphic, step awayyyyy from the keyboard.

Try it out. Open your notes app, write the thought down in plain text, take a screenshot, and hit publish.

You’re a human first, business second. Act like it once and a while and you may just resonate a little deeper.

-Sophie Randell, Writer

The sound comes from Family Guy Season 24, Episode 1, the show's 450th episode, in which Stewie accidentally eats Brian's edibles and slips some into Lois's wine. What follows is the first real conversation Stewie and Lois have ever had in the show's entire history, and in classic Family Guy fashion it happens while they're both completely high. In their lowered inhibitions state, Stweie turns to Lois and goes "can I say something? Bonnie's not pretty enough to be as mean as she is." Lois' response: "Yes. That. That." Two animated characters, one edible, zero chill, and somehow the most relatable exchange on television.

People are using it for any opinion that someone voices and you immediately, fully, spiritually co-sign:

How you can jump on this trend

Put the opinion on screen and lipsync the audio as your co-sign. The "yes. that. that" is the whole energy.

A few ideas to get you started

-abdel khalil, brand & marketing exec

😂Yap’s funniest home videos - Vlogging with Cow mascots
❤How wholesome - Sister returns from the army to see her sister win a race
😊Soooo satisfying - you work a hotdog stand
🍝What you should make for dinner tonight - Orange Chicken Bowls

Hey Kwame!

It's tough working with clients that have a hard time letting go and trusting you to do your thing! Honestly, this is one of those tensions that will never truly go away. But my advice is to focus on building a relationship first. Entrusting their brand to you is obviously scary for them. And before they are willing to trust you as the expert that you are, they need to feel that you know what you’re doing.

So really listen to what's important to them and show that you “get” them. As you build that trust, begin to make more suggestions about how you can bring your expertise to their project. If they truly feel you care about their success, they will (hopefully) be more willing to accept that you know what you're doing!

Some clients will never get there. Unfortunately, they usually don't get the results they're looking for because they aren't willing to let the experts work their magic. But do everything in your power to win them over by listening, understanding them, and showing that you care about getting a good outcome for them.

- 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.