The fact that Millennials in their 30s are obsessed with Disney World and Harry Potter. Online conversations about “I’m a teen mom in my 30s.”. The rise of “girl dinner,” “boy kibble,” and every other cultural trend that reduces grown ass adults to children. None of this is unconnected. But dang, no wonder we feel like we can’t “adult”—we’ve been told how helpless we are our entire lives. [Ok, so what’s going on here?]

- Charlotte Ellis, Editor ♡

The pipeline from proteinmaxxing to fertilitymaxxing to looksmaxxing is a short one. They’re dipping their balls in ice water, eating raw garlic cloves, taking supplements like ashwagandha, shilajit and black maca. A lot of these creators are part of the gym bro and biohacking world.

But this certain corner of TikTok is littered with people sharing their at-home sperm mobility tests, with captions like, “Not all swimmers are Michael Phelps”. There was even a 2026 freaking Sperm Racing World Cup with "athletes" from 128 countries and a $100,000 prize… Look I know it sounds like I’m having a dig, because it feels… extreme. But there’s mounting evidence that male infertility is a growing problem. So, it’s probably a good thing they’re actually doing something about it.

While the TikTok boys are spermaxxing, Starbucks is proteinmaxxing. And it’s become a key part of their turnaround, driving customer traffic with new products like protein cold foam, or the Vanilla Protein Latte. Customisation, like protein cold foam, is a roughly $1 billion business for Starbucks. And the company has said protein has been a "great incremental driver." I feel like I just maxxed out on saying the word protein so let’s move on.

OpenAI has put a pin in its kinky chatbot “indefinitely.” Because there’s literally no use less appropriate for a technology that’s already caught up in a whirlwind of sexual harm and criminal activity. The $730bn AI lab said it wanted to have long-term research on the effects of sexually explicit chats and emotional attachments as part of product development. For now, they acknowledge there is no “empirical evidence” on the topic.

It seems Sam Altman hasn’t been particularly fazed about real-world effects until now. But I’m sure the PR mess that comes with a sexualised chatbot would also be quite the nightmare to deal with.

-Sophie Randell, Writer

Which feels like some f*cked up anti-feminist parallel reality where grown women market dependence as aspirational lifestyle. Except it’s real.

And then Kareem Rahma pointed out something this week that clicked everything into place for me: infantilisation and nostalgia aren't just aesthetic choices or individual worldviews.

They're institutional strategies. Like a sealant spread across generations to contain and keep people marking time instead of allowing evolution, unless such evolution profits the old. This is our cultural recession, and it's not accidental.

Rahma aimed this analysis at Millennials specifically: brands and corporations treat us like children, and we buy into it.

I know that life is hard, particularly adult life. But it's no excuse to regress into children. Because as a result, we feel increasingly incapable of doing "adult things" like buying houses, getting married, having kids, even starting businesses. His question: should we maybe be revolting?

They don't prevent us from hurting ourselves or each other - they prevent us from dismantling institutions for the better.

If you keep people in a permanent state of childhood, they won't demand structural change, which in turn won't threaten existing power.

MSCHF gives us oversized boots that look like they’re straight out of Astro Boy’s closet. Entertainment delivers Harry Potter's uncanny valley comeback. Despite that entire generation having aged out of the target demographic decades ago.

This holding pattern has been in place for twenty years. It's what Kyle Fitzpatrick calls a closed loop of the past covering the whole of Millennial adulthood, and most of Gen Z's too. We're trapped in cultural stagnation disguised as comfort.

The credit card wand where grown women cosplay as princesses being rewarded for tolerating hardware stores. The thirty-year-old teen trends where adults dress and act like teenagers. Boy kibble and girl dinner. Reductive gender stereotypes presented as cute relationship content about incompetence.

None of these are individual moral failures. This is not our fault, but it is a real pattern. When entire cultural movements reward helplessness, dependence, and regression to childhood, something institutional is happening.

Children beg for things. Adults with purchasing power who've been conditioned to think like children make impulse purchases based on emotional triggers rather than rational needs. They're easier to market to because their desires are less complex.

Infantilised workers are compliant workers. People who feel incapable of adult responsibilities like buying houses or starting businesses don't threaten existing economic structures. They stay in jobs they hate because they don't believe they could do anything else.

They certainly don't organise for better conditions. Because they've internalised that they're not competent enough to demand more.

People stuck in nostalgia loops aren't building new futures the same way people conditioned to learned helplessness don't dismantle oppressive systems. They retreat into comfort media, aesthetic trends, and consumption as coping mechanisms.

Quiet luxury, traditional gender roles, modest fashion, the bleached brows dropping 71% while everyone returns to natural conservative aesthetics.

All of it points the same direction - regression instead of progress.

Infantilisation and conservatism work together. Keep people nostalgic for the past so they don't imagine different futures. Keep them feeling helpless so they don't demand structural change. Keep them consuming comfort content so they don't organise for change.

Awareness is the first step.

Recognising that your "good at blue store" content or your credit card wand birthday or your boy kibble dinner is participation in a larger pattern that keeps you passive and compliant.

Reject learned helplessness actively.

Every time you encounter messaging that you're incapable of adult responsibilities, question it. Are you actually incapable of understanding how retirement accounts work? Or has society just decided it's cuter if you pretend not to know? Are you genuinely bad at hardware stores? Or have you been conditioned to perform incompetence?

Build competence deliberately.

Learn the things you've been told are too hard. Start the business, buy the house (if you can), develop actual skills instead of leaning into cutesy helplessness. Financial independence at this point is political resistance.

Create new culture instead of just consuming nostalgia.

Make art about the present and future. Build communities around forward momentum instead of backward glancing. Demand entertainment that challenges you instead of comforting you with familiar IP.

Infantilisation and nostalgia are institutional tools keeping entire generations trapped in cultural stagnation.

Rahma asked if maybe we should be revolting. The answer is yes. But first we have to recognise we've been deliberately kept in a state that makes revolt feel impossible. 

-Sophie Randell, Writer

The original video is of two girls on a video call, with one going, “Can you hear me? Can you see me? Can you see and hear me?” And the audio is perfect for times you’ve struggled to get someone’s attention.

People are using the trend to call out those low-key painful but very universal moments where you feel ignored. Think: being the only one with a dead phone, or getting stuck in the back seat when you’re out as a trio. Or even trying to talk while someone’s clearly more interested in their screen than you. It’s all about that feeling of being overlooked, but making it funny.

Film yourself reacting or lip-syncing while adding your scenario as on-screen text. Keep it relatable, slightly dramatic, and very specific to your world.

A few ideas to get you started:

-Georgia Russell, Intern

😲WTF: Chat, is Japan cooked? 
✨Daily inspo: Stay humble 
😊Soooo satisfying: Can I come over? 
🍝What you should make for dinner tonight: 10 min Lahmacun 

Hey Summer,

One of the best things you can do is build your personal brand. As someone just starting off in your career, you're actually in a great position to do this. Depending on where you're wanting to "stand out," you might decide to create content on LinkedIn, Substack, or on another platform. Whatever the medium, you can share your learnings and experiences as a new marketing grad entering the industry. You can also use your own channels to experiment and practice everything you learned studying marketing.

There are a few reasons I'm suggesting this. First, it's something most people won't do. So just being a consistent presence online is already going to set you apart. Second, reflecting on what you're doing will help you solidify those early learnings you'll have entering the industry. Third, if you do it right, you'll start building an audience of people who see themselves in 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.