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- Your ATTN Please | Thursday, 7 August
Your ATTN Please | Thursday, 7 August
Being “with it” has never been so… lame.
Quietly but surely, a new genre of posting has taken root across social media: the anti-flex. You’ve definitely seen these kinds of posts, where people pridefully posture for having never done the latest fad, from eating Dubai chocolate to latching a Labubu onto their bag. Welcome, one and all, to The Great I Haven’t Economy™: where neglecting cultural movements is the biggest cultural movement of all.
- Devin Pike, Guest Editor 💜
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WHAT’S HAPPENING IN MARKETING TODAY?
Substack accidentally boosts Nazi blog, Harry Styles sells sex toys & TikTok’s getting fact-checked.
What do you MEAN Substack sent a push alert promoting a Nazi blog?
Yeah, this is a real headline. NatSocToday describes itself as “a weekly newsletter featuring opinions and news important to the National Socialist and White Nationalist Community,” and literally has a swastika as its logo, which subsequently showed up on users’ phones who received the notification. Understandably, this caused some concern.
“I had [a swastika] pop up as a notification and I’m like, wtf is this? Why am I getting this?” one user said. “I was quite alarmed and blocked it.” So, was this to generate engagement? Or something to do with the fact that Substack is primarily funded by Andreessen Horowitz – a firm with deep ties to the far-right? Hmm. Much to think about.
I know I’m late to the party, but Harry Styles entering the sex toy category – and selling out in minutes - is so 2025.
Harry Styles wants you to please yourself. No really, that’s the name ethos of his gender-inclusive beauty label Pleasing. Because, why not? The debut. Which launched on 26 July, literally sold out in minutes online. “Well that didn’t last long…” wrote the company. “Consider us overwhelmed”.
Honestly, 2025 has been… weird. But this is probably one of the least weird things to come out of it. Styles has always been known for his eccentric, androgynous and ensual expressiveness. He’s also, might I add, hot as hell. His decision to enter the sexual wellness category while simultaneously making it a more inclusive space just makes sense. And if you’re clutching your pearls right now, well… maybe you could use some Pleasing too? x
Your TikToks are about to be fact-checked.
Following suit from X’s Community Notes, TikTok has officially launched “Footnotes”, rolling out the feature to 80,000 users who will be able to “write and rate”. The purpose, much like X’s Community Notes, is to crowdsource context and fact checking, aiming to help deal with some of the misinformation that currently plagues our platforms.
Think things like links to real articles and sources, clarification of what’s going on in videos, and flagging misinfo. Big yes from me, dawg.
-Sophie Randell, Writer
DEEP DIVE
Why I'm not eating the Dubai-chocolate-Labubu-Moonbeam slop
There’s a new genre of post that’s been quietly dominating the internet.
It's not the flex, but rather the anti-flex. It’s not “here’s what I’ve bought,” but “here’s what I’ve proudly never done.” You’ve probably seen it, and it probably sounds like this: I have never bought a Stanley. I have never eaten a Crumbl cookie. I do not know what Labubu is, and I do not care to find out.
Welcome to what Kyle Raymond Fitzpatrick calls The Great I Haven’t Economy™, where the latest status symbol is not being part of the cultural moment at all.
Instead of flaunting what you do have, the clout now lies in what you’ve managed to resist.
You are not a consumer; you are an un-influence-able god. You are above consumption. You are algorithm-proof. A digital monk. You have never tasted a strawberry matcha, and you never will. Except, you probably have. Or at least, you’ve posted about not tasting it, which, and hear me out, is basically the same thing.
This is the mood going around the internet right now. And it's… a little tired. A little smug. It’s a bit “I’m not like other girls” repackaged for the TikTok economy. Pick me, choose me, love me. It’s the vibe shift from dopamine dressing to digital detox, from #dupe to #decline.
We’ve spent the last few years drowning in slop.
Trends that last six minutes. Products that feel AI-generated. Every week, a new crumbly, sparkly, pastel-coloured obsession that suddenly takes over your feed like a sponsored fungal bloom. The Crumbl cookie. The Labubu doll. The Poppi soda. The Stanley Cup. The [insert beige aesthetic brand here]. So sweet it’ll make your teeth rot.
At some point, the cycle broke us, and we got bored. THEN we got resentful. So now we perform restraint like we’re all in a f*cking barre class and the teacher has a whip. We wear our refusal like a badge of taste. The less you’ve engaged, the more culturally pure you must be.
But excuse me while I burst your superiority bubble.
Your rebellion isn’t exactly anti-capitalist. It’s just a new kind of performance. A way to position yourself as someone the algorithm can’t touch. “You can’t sell this to me. I’m built different.”
It’s the aesthetic of unreachability. Curated indifference, if you will. The vibe is “above it all,” but in a very visible, content-ready way. So like, even if you’re not consuming the product, you’re still producing the take, sweet pea.
And the irony, of course, is that in not participating, you’re still participating. Still performing. Still feeding the machine, just with smug commentary instead of affiliate links. Much of this has to do with the fact that, and I say this with love (and a little heartache), we are in a culture recession.
Not because there’s no creativity in the world, but because most of what gets traction is product-shaped.
Culture has been flattened into content and identity has been outsourced to aesthetics.
Trends have become commodities with two-week lifespans and my head's SPINNING. I know I’m not discovering something new here. This phenomenon has been here.
But it is getting harder to ignore. It’s become clearer than ever that so much of what we call “culture” is just a series of micro-purchases and micro-performances. You don’t just like something. You have to build a starter pack for it. You don’t just try a product. You have to position yourself morally in relation to it.
And while it’s easy to make fun of, while the memes are, frankly, f*cking hilarious, there’s also something quietly devastating about the whole thing. About how deeply we now define ourselves in relation to products. Even the refusal of consumption has been made into a commodity. It’s all a branding exercise. It’s all a bit... empty.
So, what's the answer?
Well we all know we can just log off, right? We can actually opt out. Build a house in the forest. Sink into a creek. Become a pretty rock covered in moss. But we won’t. We don’t. Because culture is still happening here, even if it’s soulless. Even if it feels like chewing on a Polly Pocket shoe.
We keep performing because that’s how we signal belonging now. That’s how we connect. We post through the brain rot because posting is the only language we have left. And even when we’re calling out the performance, we’re doing it on platforms that turn our critique into content, our content into data, and our data into ad revenue.
I’ll be real with y’all: I’ve posted roasting Labubu owners. I’ve shared the memes. But I’ve also had one sitting on my dresser for eight months. We all live in the slop, even when we pretend not to.
So, where to from here?
Honestly, I don’t have a tidy conclusion. There’s not necessarily a fix for this. I just think it’s worth noticing and talking about - the ways we’ve tried to outsmart the system, and how the system always finds a way to monetise the outsmarting.
How we keep trying to fight capitalism from inside the content machine. How even “logging off” becomes a genre of content in itself.
Maybe the real flex isn’t not trying the thing. Maybe it’s knowing that trying the thing doesn’t define you. Maybe the real cultural resistance is accepting that you are, in fact, a little bit cringe and that’s so okay.
In the meantime, I’ll be over here, posting this take online, from inside the house that’s burning. Labubu and all.
-Sophie Randell, Writer
TREND PLUG
I don’t care
Some arguments go back and forth, others go back and stop. That’s what this trending audio is about.
The sound comes from Love Island USA, where Leah Kateb interrupts Rob mid-apology with a cold, final:
And just like that, it’s done.
This one’s all about the mid-argument switch-off. You start out trying to explain yourself… defend a decision… salvage the convo… but then you realise: they don’t actually want to understand. So you mentally check out and mouth the line. It’s a clapback in slow motion.
Some examples of the trend in action that stood out to me (and are currently pickling in my favourites folder) include:
How you can jump on this trend:
Use the audio to dramatise a moment where you were explaining something and just gave up halfway through because the other person clearly didn’t get it - or worse, didn’t care.
A few ideas to get you started:
When the client asks why our “rebrand” doesn’t include a new logo
Trying to explain why engagement dropped after they stopped posting for 6 months
When someone says “why can’t we just go viral like that brand?”
Trying to explain why TikTok isn’t just for teenagers to a CEO who still prints emails
- abdel khalil, brand & marketing executive
FOR THE GROUP CHAT
😲WTF: Zoo Asking Public For Their Pets!
❤How wholesome: Grandma’s last words 💔
😊Soooo satisfying: Chocolate gelato filling
🍝What you should make for dinner tonight: Easy Olive Garden Baked Ziti
ASK THE EDITOR
I’m starting a podcast and I want to market it the best way possible so I connect with the right people and build an authentic and organic community. Any tips? - Aaron
Hey Aaron,
Congrats on your new podcast! Exciting times ahead. Starting a new social account from scratch can be daunting! It's good to keep in mind that it usually takes some time for your content to find the right audience. But if you are putting out high quality content, it will eventually find them.
It's also good to keep in mind that an engaged, niche audience is often far more valuable than a large but unengaged one. All that to say, I'd focus on interacting with the followers you get as much as you can.
Nurture your new audience, ask for their feedback, and give them plenty of opportunities to interact with you. This will give you the best insight into the kind of content your target audience is interested in.
Lastly, for some really practical tips, check out How to build your social accounts from zero. Good luck!
- Charlotte Ellis, Editor ♡
Not going viral yet?
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