It's got a smiling professional in it pulling a neat tray from a minimally-branded cardboard box. The promise of nutrition, all without the friction of actually cooking it. And look, you're busy. You're going through a lot. The pitch you're being served makes all the sense in the world. But today, let's look at who actually benefits when the economy runs us into the ground and sells us a subscription box as the solution - and what we're really giving up every time we say yes to the convenience.

- Devin Pike, Copywriter

TechCrunch reports that the essay imagines a utopian future where everyone has a personal superintelligence, a PhD-level tutor for every subject, and a lawyer available at all times. The problem isn't so much the vision, but the essay's lack of acknowledgement for real-world AI failures - plus the fact it was written by someone 64% of Americans already believe has contributed to eroding democracy. TechCrunch's AI editor notes that Sam Altman and Dario Amodei both do something Zuckerberg resists entirely: acknowledging the dangers, emphasising precautions, and trying to earn trust.

Without that, a 6,500-word essay about how great everything is sounds more divorced from reality than dreaming big.

Meanwhile, Instagram updated its wordmark for the first time in a decade and the internet's given it some swift pushback. Variety reports that the new typeface is bolder and more compact, but the "r" sits so close to the "g" that to many people, it reads as "Instagzam". The logo has remained the same. Instagram head Adam Mosseri boasted the new wordmark as: "sharper and more modern."

But a trip to Mosseri's comment section suggests users are more concerned about bots, AI content and the algorithm suppressing their posts than the new font. So... much bigger fish to fry, for now.

And finally, Disney had a very big weekend in Anaheim. Deadline reports that D23 2026 delivered an enormous slate of announcements across two days. This included but wasn't limited to: Avengers: Doomsday's full cast assembled on stage, a new X-Men film starring Adam Driver, Kit Connor and Sadie Sink, Incredibles 3 confirmed for mid-2028, the Bluey Movie arriving next August, a new Pixar original called Ghost Market, and a Kingdom Hearts Disney+ series. Ryan Gosling appeared on stage for Ghost Rider, and Dwayne Johnson received a Disney Legend award from Emily Blunt, who celebrated The Rock as a "nonconforming, rule-breaking rebel."

Big things ahead in the Disney sphere - though when you own that many IPs, s'pose it's impossible to not have something coming out every few minutes!

- Devin Pike, Copywriter

And the mental rabbit hole I found myself in made me shudder.

It’s always been an option I’ve considered. I’m currently studying, working, making content, doing 10k + steps a day and trying to make it to the gym without passing away. Sometimes the last thing I want to do is cook. But I also don’t want to DoorDash myself into oblivion. I have protein goals to hit.

I always get ads on my timeline and think “oh, they don’t look so bad” with their minimalist branding, vibrant colour palettes, and smiling, busy professionals pulling a neat plastic tray from a cardboard box after a long day at the office.

And I can see why. The narrative is an easy sell; it’s peak modern problem-solving. And these subscription services are an “act of liberation” designed to save us precious time, eliminate the stress of grocery shopping, and streamline our nutritional intake for peak metabolic efficiency.

But let’s look behind the glossy cardboard wrapping and at the underlying sociology of this massive boom… the illusion of convenience is actually a deeply dystopian reality.

The system has successfully commodified how f*cking tired we are.

We are expected to give our undivided cognitive attention, our nights, and our weekends to corporate dashboards, endless slack threads, and freelance pipelines. By the time we finally close our laptops or log out of our project management systems at the end of the day, our basic cognitive and physical reserves have been absolutely depleted.

We are left in a state of structural paralysis. And we’re too profoundly tired to even perform the basic human act of cooking an actual meal from scratch.

This is where the predatory genius of the pre-made meal market takes root. Because it takes the epidemic of burnout and turns it into a multi-billion-dollar monetisation opportunity.

Instead of restructuring the labour market or returning our time, they sell us a subscription box. One filled with hyper-processed, vacuum-sealed gloop that we are forced to heat up in a microwave for three minutes. We are trading the ancient, grounding ritual of preparing nourishment for a transactional convenience utility designed to get us fed as fast as possible. So we can get right back to working for the machine.

The true cultural tragedy of this shift is the slow erasure of the kitchen as a sanctuary of human agency.

It was a space where we were forced to slow down, engage with the physical world, work with our hands, and share a collective ritual with the people we cared about. It’s a natural pattern-interrupter that forces us out of our heads and back into our bodies.

By converting this sacred process into a standardised, plastic-wrapped subscription unit, we are allowing the optimisation doctrine of the corporate boardroom to colonise our very nutrition. To treat our bodies like machines that just need a quick injection of fuel, rather than complex biological entities that require connection, texture, and care.

We cannot standardise and optimise ourselves out of basic human ritual. For the love of god, reject the corporate gloop.

-Sophie Randell, Writer

The sound comes from Jake Shane's Therapuss podcast, where during an interview with Niall Horan he tries to explain his relationship with New York, which is... complicated:

"Like, when I'm in New York I miss LA, when I'm in LA I miss New York, right now I miss London. Because I was just back from New York, so I don't miss New York, but I don't want to be in LA..."

Creators are lipsyncing to the audio to describe any situation where they desperately want the opposite of whatever they currently have, or are at the very least feeling torn.

Some of my favourite examples:

Film yourself lipsyncing to the sound and add whatever conflicting feeling or impossible situation you're stuck in as your on-screen text.

A few ideas to get you started:

- Devin Pike, Copywriter

Hey Dmitri!

When you move from a one-man band to leading a team, the temptation is to stay across everything; because, up until now, you've had to! But the best leaders don't try to be everywhere, all the time. Instead, they trust their team to own the work in their areas of expertise. You become the person who sets the vision and keeps everyone focused on the brand story you're telling.

Support your team when they need it, but you'll have to be okay giving up the control you're used to! The other big piece is setting the culture — celebrate small wins, encourage reflection and learning when things go wrong, and role-model good communication. Good luck!

- 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.