Your ATTN Please | Saturday, 6 September

I’m tired, guys. Wasn’t AI supposed to make things easier?

Seriously, it wasn’t all that long ago that AI was this amazing, life-changing technology that would revolutionise the world. But now, there’s bottomless pressure to have every AI tool, assistant and half-baked app in your pocket for the sake of “efficiency”. Now, the hype cycle’s sputtering, the fatigue is real, and we’re all feeling a touch hungrier for some humanness.

- Devin Pike, Guest Editor 💜

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WHAT’S HAPPENING IN MARKETING TODAY?

Automation meets sextortion, Trump loses podcast bros & Will Smith’s crowd looks AI-generated

Automated Sextortion is now a thing.

It just keeps getting more and more insane out here. This new specimen of “infostealer” malware literally monitors a target's browser for NSFW content, and then takes simultaneous screenshots and webcam photos of the victim… that’s crazy stuff. 

And look, sextortion-based hacking is nothing new. But open-source infostealer malware that monitors the victim's browser for web addresses with certain NSFW keywords, screenshots browser tabs that include those words, photographs the victim via their webcam while on those porn pages, and sends all the images to a hacker, who can then blackmail the victim with the threat of releasing them? Yeah... that’s a disturbing development.

Trump has officially lost the podcast bros.

Last year, the president recruited every single podcaster in the manosphere to help elect him. Which, evidently, worked quite well in his favor. Except now, a large portion of these creators seem to be, how do you say, less than enthused about the administration’s actions and focus. 

“Everything he campaigned on I believe he wanted to do, and now he’s doing the exact opposite thing of every single fucking thing,” comedian and podcaster Andrew Schulz said in July. And that wasn’t the first time he’s expressed regret for his vote: “if I wanted to vote for somebody that was going to keep the Epstein files under wrap, that was going to extend the foreign wars and was going to increase the budget, I would have voted for Kamala”. On top of that, the Nelk Boys, Logan Paul, and Theo Von have also all made similar comments and pivoted back to their previous, Trumpless and non-political styles of content. Sucks to suck, I guess.

Did Will Smith create AI fans to make himself look more popular? ☹ 

Ouch. Bro is really in his cringe arc. Smith recently posted a video on “tour” on his Instagram, thanking the “crowd” for their support. But the internet has done what the internet does best, and pulled it apart, pointing out that while some of the video seems real, other parts descend into uncanny, Sims-like AI mush.

Take a look for yourself and see what you think: real or fake?

-Sophie Randell, Writer

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DEEP DIVE

AI fatigue is real (and I’ve got it bad)

I don’t know about you, but I’m tired. Not “I need a nap” tired, but “please stop asking me to download yet another AI tool” tired.

Somewhere between the hype cycle and the endless barrage of “game-changing” apps, I developed full-blown AI fatigue. I don’t even want to write this freaking article. That’s how fatigued I am. But also because I know here’s 500 other headlines from today ALONE talking about AI. And is there any point in adding to them? Is anybody even reading them anymore? Yawn.

Remember when AI was supposed to save us? Automate the grunt work, collapse timelines, free up our brains for the big, juicy creative stuff? Instead, it feels like we’ve accidentally signed up to be unpaid QA testers for a thousand different startups. The promise was efficiency. The reality is toggling between 12 browser tabs of “AI-powered assistants”, each one claiming to streamline the thing the last one just complicated. That’s not productivity, that’s a pyramid scheme for my attention span.

Then there’s the trust issues (no, not the ones my ex gave me).

But have you noticed a switch in your psyche? That every interaction online now comes with a tiny flicker of doubt. Was that photo real? Is this email from my boss or his chatbot? Did someone actually write this thought piece? Do I even exist? What's the meaning of all this?

And down the rabbit hole we go. Living in constant suspicion is exhausting, like playing two truths and a lie, but with your entire inbox. It’s giving deep-fried 2016 Instagram filter energy, that same sense of “why does everything look fake and overproduced at once?”

And let’s be honest: the hype didn’t help.

But then again, does it ever? For a hot minute, AI was the Future. Every investor deck, every keynote, every panel discussion became a shrine to artificial intelligence. It was like the gluten-free boom of the mid-2010s: suddenly everything was AI-infused, from enterprise software to cereal box campaigns. But if everyone’s “AI-first” and everything is “powered by AI,” then nothing actually feels that special anymore. The novelty wore off. The hype curve hit its peak, and now we’re all nursing the hangover.

Here’s the twist, though: AI fatigue isn’t just burnout, it’s also breeding a hunger for the human.

I’ve spoken about this before, but it appears to be more relevant than ever. We’re already seeing it in micro-trends, the zines, the messy newsletters, the badly lit TikToks that scream “I swear a person made this”. Just like when every brand on Twitter suddenly decided to copy Wendy’s snark and the charm wore off overnight, the saturation makes us crave the opposite.

Authenticity is suddenly precious, maybe even luxurious. Like vinyl records when music got too digital, human fingerprints are becoming a status symbol in a sea of machine polish. AI isn’t going anywhere, and no I’m not an old-head nor am I anti-tech, but I am an observer in the vast universe of digital culture. And I’m observing some freaking fatigue, okay?

Fatigue forces us to recalibrate. It’s not about using every tool or chasing every shortcut. It’s about remembering that friction, imperfection, and actual human perspective are still what make things worth paying attention to. Maybe the real future isn’t “more AI”. Maybe it’s less. Maybe the train's left the station and it’s too late to get off anyway.

Who knows, we sure as hell will find out though.

-Sophie Randell, Writer

TREND PLUG

"Yeah, I texted Melissa"

Here's your perfect audio for those fake FOMO moments.

This trend originates from a snippet of the viral reality show Dance Moms, where Abby Lee Miller is confronted by one of the mums.

In the scene, Jill, Kendal Vertes' mum, tells Abby Lee “Yeah, I texted Melissa”, who then fires back with “You didn't text me, and I'm the only one who really counts, Jill!”

The sass makes this audio perfect for showing situations you weren’t told, invited, or included, and your a little salty about it.

TikTok has flipped this sound into a funny way to express mock outrage over feeling overlooked, forgotten or excluded, even if you realistically couldn’t have been there anyway. It works for both petty situations like being left out of group plans even if you live 5 hours away, or more exaggerated, dramatic ones like “finding out my family did something fun without me”. It’s all about leaning into the petty energy of feeling left out when deep down, you know you wouldn’t have been included in the first place.

How you can hop on this trend:

Use the original Dance Moms audio and film a scenario where someone mentions not including you. Then, deliver the dramatic comeback line to show your “salty” reaction. The humour works best when the situation is exaggerated or obviously ironic.

A few ideas to get you started:

• “When your coworkers went to get food without you (i was in a meeting)”

• “When the meeting started 5 minutes early and forgot to tell you”

• “When my friends made weekend plans without me ( i was home sick)”

- Bella Vlasich, Intern

FOR THE GROUP CHAT

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ASK THE EDITOR

I just started a weekly email newsletter. How do I get my open rates up? - Zane

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- Charlotte Ellis, Editor ♡

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