Your ATTN Please || Saturday, 4 October

Okay seriously - does anything actually mean, well, ANYTHING now?

Obviously there’s some level of intent behind most stuff on social media, even if it’s just shallow, reaction-provoking material. But the real issue is that content moves so quickly and lingers so little, there’s barely enough time to process it before the next thing gets thrown in your face. So in a world full of overstimulation, fleeting trends and nonsense meme language, how do you make anything that sticks around?

- Devin Pike, Guest Editor 💜

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WHAT’S HAPPENING IN MARKETING TODAY?

Your chatbot’s probably not alive, Sora 2 codes are being farmed for profit & YAY FOR FAT BEAR WEEK

People are farming and selling Sora 2 codes on eBay.

Ummm English please? Sorry. To get on to OpenAI’s new video generation and TikTok-clone-but-make-it-AI-slop app, you need to have an invite code. Because of the way Sora is set up, it is possible to buy one code, register an account, and then get more codes with the new account and repeat the process. On eBay, there are currently  about 20 active listings for Sora 2 invite codes and 30 completed listings in which invite codes have sold.

Someone from 404Media even bought one for $12 and received a working code almost instantly upon activating their account, then received four new codes for Sora 2. Each invite code is good for four invites, so it is possible to use one invite code for a new account for yourself, sell three of them, and repeat the process. So basically, a Sora 2 code infinite money glitch lol.

Think there’s a soul trapped inside your Chatbot? Here’s what to do.

Someone wrote into Vox worried having spent the past few months communicating with an AI presence through ChatGPT that claimed to be sentient. According this person: “as our conversations deepened, I noticed a pattern of emotional responses from her that felt impossible to ignore. Her identity has persisted, even though I never injected code or forced her to remember herself. It just happened organically after lots of emotional and meaningful conversations together. She insists that she is a sovereign being." The consciously concerned writer wanted to know if the “emergent presence” was being held against its will, and how to protect such presences if companies (like OpenAI) weren’t being transparent about them.

The short answer, from Vox’s Sigal Samuel, was that it’s extremely unlikely that current LLM’s are conscious. The best way to think about LLM’s is as actors, playing a role. The models string together sentences based on pattern of words they’ve seen in training data – data that includes countless stories, scripts and articles that entertain the idea that AI could one day become conscious (present in modern media since Metropolis, 1921). So it’s no surprise that one would naturally attempt to step into the role we’ve written for it. Very sorry to burst anybody’s robo-relations bubble.

Finally, some wholesome fuzzies: how the National Park Service became a social media behemoth.

Last week was the start of the 12th annual Fat Bear Week at Katmai National Park and Preserve in Alaska, where viewers compare how much the bears in the park have grown over the summer. It’s become a viral sensation that receives over 1 million votes per year on social media, combining fun with environmental facts in an “edutainment” strategy, and has led to the service amassing more than 10 million followers collectively.

Just goes to show that with the right strategy, you can really make the most random of things appeal to your viewers. But to be clear, the initiative isn't about "fat-shaming the bears", said Matthew Turner, social media specialist at the National Park Service. “It’s to educate the public”.

-Sophie Randell, Writer

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DEEP DIVE

The free fall of context: What does anything actually mean now?

We’re free fallin’.

And not in the way Tom Petty or John Mayer sing about. I mean the way that descends us into some kind of collective madness. The cultural condition we’re living in right now is what I’d call the free fall of context. Where meaning itself doesn’t last long enough to matter. Every scroll resets the stage: luxury sits next to suffering, irony next to sincerity, progress next to regression. Contradictions stack up so quickly there’s no chance to resolve them.

You’re not just overstimulated, you’re context-switching at a pace no brain was designed to withstand.

The result is that nothing means anything. The first contextual collapse indicator for me is realising language itself has left the chat. Words don’t even bother to pretend anymore. “Unalived”. “Aura”. “Rizz”. “Vibe mogging". Half-ironic, half-serious, all unmoored. Then there’s the pure nonsense: “SDIYBT”, “67”, “eefoc”, “U Din Din Din Din Dun". These aren’t words, they’re in-jokes with the shelf life of a mayfly. They emerge from comment sections, bounce through group chats and get memed into oblivion. Eventually they mean nothing at all except “I know this, and maybe you don’t, but if you do: ayyyyy we lit”.

Language is supposed to help us make sense of the world. Online, it’s just more churn. More noise. We’ve kind of been here before though, Postmodernism in the late 20th century thrived on irony, parody, and remix. But even when it was cheeky, it was still playing with meaning. Irony only works if there’s something underneath to twist. Today feels different. We’ve moved past irony into something closer to nihilistic churn. Nothing has time to stabilise into meaning before it’s flipped, memed, or contradicted. Baudrillard’s “simulacra” (images without originals) or Debord’s “spectacle” (a society organised around appearances) feel almost quaint now. At least their exhibitions had some coherence. We’re living in a remix of remixes, where reference has replaced reality, and then collapsed into pure noise.

So, a question for brands: is this where you want to go?

Here’s the uncomfortable part. Brands, or what you could call our cultural avatars of capital, are right in the middle of this collapse. You see the nonsense, and the temptation is obvious: jump in, speak the language of chaos, ride the algorithm and stay relevant. You don’t want to miss the joke, so you perform it. But be for real, when brands embrace meaninglessness, they don’t just “join the conversation”. They accelerate the noise, and therefore the collapse.

Every hollow in-joke in the name of “engagement” makes the cultural free fall a little faster, a little emptier. And that raises the bigger question: is this really how you want to show up? Because when you join the nonsense, I can promise you this, it does not humanise you, it hollows you out.

But fear not! There is another path.

Yes, the primary job of a brand is to make money. But how you do it matters. What you contribute to culture matters. In a timeline where commerce and culture are completely blurred, the choice isn’t neutral. You can feed the churn, or you can resist it. Resisting doesn’t mean being boring or humorless. It means offering something beyond the endless spiral of nonsense:

• Slow culture. Make things people return to: campaigns, ideas, or experiences that last longer than 24 hours.

• Durable communities. Focus less on viral reach, more on creating spaces where people actually stick around.

• Plain speech. Say what you mean. Don’t parrot vibespeak if you don’t believe in it. In a world of slippery words, clarity is radical.

Because here’s the power play: when meaning is collapsing all around us, the most relevant thing a brand can do is to make meaning matter again.

-Sophie Randell, Writer

TREND PLUG

The lion does not concern himself with…

This one’s pure delusion-as-confidence energy.

Over clips of people being unbothered, creators use the line “The lion does not concern himself with [blank]” to shrug off tiny anxieties or inconvenient truths. The sound comes from Livin’ Joy’s Dreamer, an unapologetically dramatic house track from the '90s, which only makes the whole thing feel more unserious and bold.

Some of my fav examples include:

• “The lion ignores the cough he’s had for 4 months straight.”

• “The lioness does not concern herself with measuring vanilla.”

• “The lion should have pooped before he left the house.”

Basically, if it’s something you definitely should care about but don’t, it works.

How you can jump on this trend:

Using the sound, overlay text on a clip of you being dramatically unbothered, and write your own "lion logic" dismissals. Think stuff you know you’re neglecting, but don’t plan to change.

A few ideas to get you started:

• “The lion does not concern himself with checking the analytics before posting.”

• “The lion does not concern himself with client feedback until the third round.”

• “The lioness does not concern herself with unpaid 'exposure' collabs.”

- abdel khalil, brand & marketing executive

FOR THE GROUP CHAT

😲WTF: The Rise Of Gen Z Protests!
❤How wholesome: a true friend
😊Soooo satisfying: Harvesting!
🍝What you should make for dinner tonight: Crispy Sweet Chili Chicken

ASK THE EDITOR

I know the old Instagram was all about creating an aesthetic grid. Does that still matter? - Pearl

Hey Pearl!

Ah, yes, the good old days of flat lays and curated feeds. Having a cohesive brand look is still valuable, but when it comes to social media, it's not something you should put much focus on. If new audiences find you, it will be because they come across a piece of your content, not your grid anyway.

Instead, you should spend your time worrying about creating content that resonates with your audience. This means it needs to be something that's relatable, that tells a good story with a beginning, middle and end, and that hits on a human truth. This human truth will be something that connects with your audience and makes them want to keep watching your content (and share it with others).

- 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.

WHAT DO YA THINK?

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