Your ATTN Please || Tuesday, 19 August

August 19, 2025

Together with

“What can I help with?” ← Such friendly, helpful words, aren’t they?

When you open ChatGPT, you’re invited into a conversation with someone who always has a suggestion. An offer to help you with just 1 more thing. It’s the cure for blank page syndrome—and that’s a relief, right? Well, yeah, except the best ideas generally come after you’re forced to just sit with a problem and actually think. So, is it possible to use AI not to dull our creative senses, but to sharpen them? Yes. But it takes going against the tide.

- Charlotte Ellis, Editor ♡

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WHAT’S HAPPENING IN MARKETING TODAY?

Edits app boosts IG reach, Camp Snap releases 1960s-esque camera & YT uses AI to restrict users under 18

Using the Edits app will help boost your reach: Instagram chief Adam Mosser shares.

That’s par for the course whenever Meta introduces new products. Instagram wants more people aware of the new Edits app, and promoting videos created with Edits helps with that. So, take advantage while you can, as “it’s not going to be something that’s going to be around forever,” according to Mosser.

He also recently debunked some insta myths, like the fact that you have to interact with content similar to the content you create to maximise your reach. “That is definitely not the case. It’s great to interact with people in your comments, and with your followers in general, but what you decide to consume is not going to affect who you reach with your content.”

The Edits app seems to be consistently rolling out new features. So if ever there was a time to jump in and nosey around, it’s now.

This new Camp Snap digital camera is modelled after a 1960s video camera, flying in the face of modern videography.

I’m not a videographer, but I have enough friends who are to know that the world of such can be a little… elitist. But the Camp Snap doesn’t give a flying fk about your credentials, your specs, or your rig set up. The Camp Snap demands a simpler motive: to shoot video just because. There’s no screen. No playback. No delete. What you shoot is what you get, which means you actually get to live in the moment for once.

It’s retro in both appearance and function. And the best part? It’s not $5,000. It’s $199 – made to be thrown in the back seat of a road trip, around the kitchen at a party, handed to your children while camping; to capture those authentic moments without a second thought. The brand made a similar point-and-shoot product in 2023, based on the notion that cameras should be a tool, not a distraction. It is just chef's kiss.

YouTube will identify and restrict minors’ accounts using AI.

Sh*t's getting serious. As of August 13th, YouTube has begun detecting underaged users in the US based on 1) The age of their account, and 2) Their activity on said account. The platform will now use that information to automatically apply restrictions to users under 18 years old.

These include a block on age-restricted videos, non-personalised ads, “take a break” notifications, and a limit on repeated video recommendations about sensitive topics, such as body image. The platform will also automatically turn on reminders about privacy when users upload a video or leave a comment.

DEEP DIVE

AI means there's no more "blank page." So, what does that mean for our creativity?

Hear me out: sometimes I just loooove a good doomscroll.

And before you judge me: I’m not perfect and I’ve never claimed to be. I am just a monkey with all the information and entertainment that ever existed in the entire world contained in the tiny device wielded in my hand, after all. 

Anyway, who are you, Judy?

There are times when a numbing, hypnotic descent through an endless feed is not only pleasurable, but necessary. Because, you know… the horrors.

It’s sometimes also completely unavoidable – by design, of course. The very act itself thrives on infinite supply. There’s always one more post, one more hot take, one more breaking headline.

But lately, another quieter thief has slipped into our attention economy.

It doesn’t live in a feed, but in a box. A blinking cursor. A polite little interface that asks nothing more than: What would you like me to do?

This thief is so quiet, it even slipped past me: chronically online, constantly researching consumer trends, online behaviour, our relationship with digital culture. That was until I saw Anu, of Working Theorys write about a new phenomenon:

Welcome to the stage, Doomprompting.

At first glance, it feels empowering. Here’s an LLM that can help you think, draft, brainstorm, polish. However, there is a major problem here: it never fkn runs out.

Its polite offers (“Would you like me to expand?” “Shall I go on?” “Have you considered…?”) keep the dialogue alive long past the point you would have stopped, reflected, or wrestled with the silence on your own.

And unlike doomscrolling, where the loop is fuelled by outside noise, doomprompting is recursive. You’re not only consuming what’s offered. You’re training yourself to consume suggestion itself.

Traditionally, the blank page has been both enemy and friend.

It’s a void that intimidates, but also a crucible that forces you to wrestle with raw thought. Blankness demands something of you. Out of that friction, insight often emerges.

With LLMs, the box is never truly blank. The cursor is only a breath away from a cascade of generated text. And so the hardest part—the stillness, the confrontation with your own uncertainty—simply slips away.

The result is subtle. You don’t stop creating altogether. You just start creating half-attentively. Your role shifts from thinker to negotiator. You let the model generate, and you edit. You let it suggest, and you approve. You let it carry, and you react.

You’re still “working,” but the depth is gone - lights are on but no one’s home type beat.

That’s what I like to call sharpening the tool, dulling the hand. Every time we lean on suggestion, the tool sharpens. It gets better at anticipating what we want, faster at offering the next thread, more fluent in the rhythms of our voice. But paradoxically, every time the tool sharpens, we dull a little.

It’s like outsourcing memory to Google Maps. You don’t forget how to drive, but you do kind of forget how to navigate. Outsourcing first-draft thinking to AI risks the same fate. You don’t lose the ability to write. But you lose the muscles of attention, reflection, and insight that make writing, you know, matter.

Before you are two paths:

On one path, AI becomes the slot machine of the attention economy. It offers up the fast food of thought. Cheap, sh*tty, but engineered to keep you consuming, all wrapped up and disguised as bite-sized bursts of validation. It’s not inherently harmful in small doses, but try building a diet on it and you’ll find yourself malnourished.

On the other path, AI evolves into a sparring partner. Not a slot machine, but a gym. It’s where friction lives. Where silence isn’t erased but respected. Where the point isn’t to have the machine fill the page for you, but to have it challenge, redirect, or stretch you.

That second path is harder, because it requires design that resists the easy loop of suggestion. It demands constraints, intentional breaks, and the courage to sit in the awkward stillness before pressing continue.

Because ultimately, creative work is not about efficiency.

It’s about communion. Before the world, before the audience, even before the tool, it begins with communion with oneself. And that communion doesn’t survive if we outsource every pause, every silence, every hard-earned thought to the next machine-generated continuation.

So here’s the choice we face: collaboration or automation. Slot machine or sparring partner. Nourishment or candy.

If doomprompting is the thief, then stillness is the lock. And craft is the key.

Good luck, soldier.

TREND PLUG

STFU

The Weeknd may have 4 Grammys, but after this scene we can safely say… acting won’t be his fifth.

The now-viral line comes from Hurry Up Tomorrow (2025), where Abel Tesfaye repeatedly screams: “Shut the f*ck up! Shut the f*ck up! Shut up. What are you doing?… I have to go right now…” It’s chaotic, over-the-top, and unintentionally hilarious; which is usually a perfect match for TikTok.

How you can jump on this trend:

To the sound, talk about a time where someone said something that would make you have that reaction; something completely ridiculous.

A few ideas to get you started:

  • When Teams hits you with 37 pings at once

  • When the client says, “Just make it like the Barbie movie but… different.”

  • When they ask, “Do we really need captions on the video? People will just know what it’s about.”

- abdel khalil, brand & marketing executive

FOR THE GROUP CHAT

😂Yap’s funniest home videos: The cut off scream
❤How wholesome: be the good.
😊Soooo satisfying: PERFECT bottle flip
🍝What you should make for dinner tonight: French onion meatballs

ASK THE EDITOR

I’ve just started my first marketing job and I have no idea what I’m doing, even though I have an advertising degree. Help! -Josh

Hey Josh!

It’s totally normal to feel lost when you’re trying to adjust to working after university. But the fact that you've done that study means you have a great foundational understanding of marketing. Now, it’s about learning to apply what you’ve learnt with a little flexibility, since the real world doesn’t always go by the book!

My biggest piece of advice is to be ok with not knowing. You’re going to make mistakes, so be ready to own them when that happens. Ask as many questions as you can of the people on your team. Better yet, find someone who’s willing to mentor you so you’ve got a person to go to when you need advice. As long as you have a growth mindset, you’ll be just fine.

- Charlotte, Editor ♡

PSST…PASS IT ON

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