It used to be the musician, the actor, the director - the person who built something from raw talent and put it into the world. Lately, the person standing next to them on the paparazzi page is wearing a different kind of uniform. A suit. A venture capital firm attached to their name. An AI portfolio. Today we're looking at what it means when the finance bro becomes the celebrity - and what it says about whose version of success we've decided to romanticise.

- Devin Pike, Copywriter

TechCrunch reports that in a new court filing, Apple has revealed its investigation has uncovered 11 additional former employees who may have been witnesses or involved in the theft - beyond the two originally named. New allegations include employees taking screenshots of confidential Apple documents about unannounced products before OpenAI interviews. Multiple former staff reached out after the lawsuit was filed to return Apple work devices they'd kept when they left.

Apple is now seeking a preliminary injunction to stop OpenAI developing any products based on its technology. OpenAI fired back publicly, calling the request "based on false information and completely unnecessary." Two companies that announced a major partnership two years ago are now in a very messy courtroom.

Meanwhile, Coca-Cola is making a bold ask of its core demographic. Marketing Dive reports that Coke's new global campaign "The World Will Wait" is asking Gen Z and millennials to put their phones down and be present at mealtimes. The hero ad shows a father so buried in work that his son draws him with his face hidden behind a laptop. The OOH ads carry lines like "Laundry can wait. Fried Chicken & Coca-Cola can't" and "No one ever said 'this meal could have been an email.'"

The campaign is running globally but not in the US. And it comes with an influencer component asking creators to nudge followers to go AFK. A soft drink brand asking people to log off while using social media influencers to do it is a tension nobody in the press release seemed to notice.

And finally, OpenAI is projecting US$14 billion in losses this year - and spent some of it on a luxury farm retreat. TechCrunch reports that OpenAI flew a group of influencers to an upstate New York retreat called "Summer Club" for farm-to-table dinners, beekeeping sessions, painting workshops and product tutorials. The internet was not charmed. Commenters asked creators to do a "get-ready-with-me touring a data centre," pointed to OpenAI's US$500 billion Ohio data centre deal. At least one creator quietly deleted her video.

OpenAI is not the only AI lab to host influencer trips - Anthropic and Microsoft Copilot have both done similar. None struck quite this nerve.

- Devin Pike, Copywriter

Recent paparazzi pics floating around the pop culture sphere look a little different to the usual pop icons paired with other artists, actors, or creative visionaries.

Instead, the ultimate contemporary status accessory for the cultural IT-girl seems to be a suit. Not the one she’s wearing though.

We recently saw Olivia Rodrigo publicly holding hands with an AI private equity executive, and it’s blown up to be this like, big cultural moment.

Fitzpatrick also notes Lady Gaga is also dating a tech entrepreneur, Este Haim has her cryptocurrency husband, and Karlie Kloss is deeply embedded in her Kushner love affair.

Even Nicole Kidman has found herself tangled in a similar high-finance fling.

The immediate temptation is to swipe past these headlines as harmless tabloid noise. But if you look closer, it reveals a shift in who holds absolute power in modern society.

As Fitzpatrick brilliantly analysed, this phenomenon is an arrow pointing directly at the new architects of our reality.

The visible death of traditional Hollywood and the creative power vacuum happening inside the entertainment industry means that proximity to raw capital is the new baseline for celebrity.

They have stepped straight into the frame to become the stars of the show.

This represents the realisation of what Fitzpatrick calls an everything-is-television future. We have built a world of total cultural workslop, where ordinary workers and job hunters are forced to audition like desperate extras just to enter corporate America. Meanwhile, the people holding the economic puppet strings are treated like red-carpet royalty.

By elevating an AI private equity bro to the exact same cultural level as a generational musical talent like Olivia Rodrigo, the machine is pulling off an invisible sleight of hand.

It is the “Kardashian-ization of corporate finance”. Fawning over a generic man-in-finance archetype, turning corporate extraction into entertainment fodder for the masses.

When the public begins to romanticise the very venture capitalists who are actively funding the automation of our creative industries, the system has successfully automated our compliance.

We’re no longer demanding that our cultural icons rebel against the establishment; we are watching them date it. And screaming internally. Because what the fk.

It flattens the definition of human worth. Because it suggests that the ultimate peak of human achievement isn't creating beauty, innovation, or art. It's simply possessing the transactional power to buy it.

We’re allowing the sterile, unfeeling metrics of the balance sheet to colonise our dreams.

If our artists, musicians, and creative vanguards look are no longer looking for alignment with peer-to-peer artistic collaboration, and instead looking for economic shelter inside the corporate fortress, it signals a bleak, hyper-commercialised reality where capital doesn't just fund the culture; capital is the culture.

The boardroom has now consumed the studio.

We have to refuse to validate the corporate actors trying to buy their way into our cultural memory.

Money in the bank account can buy the catalogue, the distribution, and the whole damn PR campaign. But it will never possess a single drop of the soul required to create the art.

Is it time to gatekeep from the tech bros? Idk. Food for thought.

-Sophie Randell, Writer

The sound comes from TikToker BiggMamaa, whose original video was reposted by icekream___. In it, BiggMamaa throws insults at her daughter to demonstrate her quick, witty comebacks for bullies:

"Your dreads are ugly."

"They're my style."

"Your sister is a crybaby."

"At least she's mine."

"Your shoes come from Wal-Mart."

"I like 'em."

Creators are lip-syncing with the daughter's responses and adding whatever situation had them eating the insult and smiling through it - because the circumstances left absolutely no other option.

Some of my favourite examples:

Film yourself lipsyncing the daughter's comebacks to the sound and add whatever situation had you absorbing hits and keeping the peace as your on-screen text.

A few ideas to get you started:

- Devin Pike, Copywriter

Hey Declan!

Ok, this is almost two questions in one! So first, the way you set yourself apart is by telling a good story that taps into a universal human truth. You're lucky because the transition between school and work is something almost everyone has experienced (or will soon). If your content tells that story in a way your audience can relate to, they will learn to love your brand. And that is the reason they will engage with you and your services.

When it comes to capturing the right audience, this is actually a myth. Sure, you can target the people who are most likely to be interested, but there is no guarantee your content will only reach them. Instead, you should create content that is broadly relatable, because the more people who see your brand, the more the right people will see it.

- 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.