The next, you’re that chick whose video of throwing a barstool at her daughter went viral. Yeah, it hasn’t been a great week for Taylor Frankie Paul. And it also hasn’t been a great week for the producers over at ABC, who have just cancelled an entire season of The Bachelorette just 72 hours out before the premiere. This whole debacle has been a huge reminder of just how horribly wrong things can go when you pin all your hopes and dreams on someone else’s personal brand (especially someone who has a, shall we say, checkered past) [Read more]

- Charlotte Ellis, Editor ♡

Meanwhile other brands are going viral every week. Their secret? They're not working harder. They're using a system (and you need one, too).

At this workshop, Stanley Henry (1.4M followers, 1B+ views/year) teaches you that exact system live in just 90 minutes.

You'll learn:

✅The 1 thing you need to never run out of content ideas
✅How the biggest brands go viral on IG (plus what NOT to do)
✅How to create a repeatable content system (that doesn't take hours every day OR a creative team)

26 March | 11am NZDT | 9am AEDT | $79 NZD

Find out exactly how the biggest accounts are blowing up on IG (and how your brand can become one of them) 👇

I know we’ve all noticed a bit of a… shift… towards conservative creators in the last few years, under a certain presidency. Well, the entire creator economy is now moving towards conservative and apolitical. And brand deals seem to be leading the charge. At SXSW 2026, multiple panels discussed how brands are increasingly steering creators away from political content, controversial takes, or anything that might alienate a segment of their audience – makes sense given how fkn tense everything is right now.

I suppose the logic is risk mitigation: why partner with someone who might say something that tanks your brand reputation when you could just work with creators who post about skincare and coffee?

For creators, this means either staying quiet on issues they care about or losing lucrative deals. Which is lame given the result is a sanitised creator economy where everyone is inoffensive, uncontroversial, and ultimately boring af. Guess we really are just making the internet a place to sell stuff and not express ourselves huh? Downvote from me.

Which X just added, btw. Not for you, though. To train the algorithm, duh.

Unlike Reddit, where downvotes actually affect visibility, X's downvotes are invisible to everyone except the platform itself. The feature is being used to teach the algorithm what content users don't want to see. Which sounds reasonable until you realise it's just another data collection tool.

Lastly, Pinterest just dropped their Spring 2026 search trends. The report shows that people are favouring mini upgrades over full remodels. Oh geeee, in this economy??? I wonder why. Instead of searching for "kitchen renovation" or "bathroom redesign," users are looking for "peel-and-stick backsplash," "furniture paint hacks," and "budget refresh ideas." It's the same energy as Recession Blonde. People want the aesthetic outcome without the financial commitment. And booooy do I feel that in my nucleus.

Pinterest is a leading indicator for consumer behaviour because people use it to plan purchases. And, right now, they're planning small, DIY, budget-friendly changes rather than big investments. Take notes, brands. 

-Sophie Randell, Writer

They'd filmed the entire season. She'd done the press tour; the promotional materials were ready. And then TMZ published a 2023 video showing Paul physically assaulting her ex-partner Dakota Mortensen in front of her daughter.

The network had no idea the video existed. A source told TMZ that nobody at ABC had seen the footage before it was published Thursday morning. Within hours, Disney pulled the plug on everything. An entire season of television. Gone.

Taylor Frankie Paul, if you’re unfamiliar, is one of the stars of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, a Hulu reality series. She has 6.1 million TikTok followers and 2.3 million on Instagram.

She was announced as The Bachelorette in September 2025 - a shocking choice that fans hoped would revive a dying franchise.

Paul was arrested in 2023 for domestic violence after an altercation with Mortensen. Her daughter was present. The arrest played out in the Season 1 premiere of Mormon Wives. She pleaded guilty to aggravated assault in August 2025 and the other charges were dismissed.

The footage shows Paul putting Mortensen in a headlock, kicking him, and hurling multiple metal chairs at him while her daughter Indy cries in the background. One chair allegedly hit the child.

By Thursday afternoon, Disney announced they were cancelling the season. Production on Mormon Wives has also paused.

ABC filmed an entire season. Months of production, crew salaries, location costs, post-production work, marketing materials, press tours, freaking promotional campaigns.

The show was supposed to premiere Sunday, March 22nd. That's three days notice to replace a prime time slot. Whatever they air instead won't have the same promotional push, the same audience anticipation, the same ratings potential.

And The Bachelorette franchise was already struggling. Ratings have been declining for years. Casting Paul was a calculated risk - use her existing massive social media following to bring new viewers back to the show.

That gamble just exploded spectacularly.

But influencers present specific challenges that make partnerships particularly volatile.

Their entire brand is their personal life. You're not hiring an actor to play a character - you're hiring someone's actual identity, relationships, and behaviour. When that behaviour is problematic, there's no separating the person from the product. Taylor Frankie Paul wasn't playing the Bachelorette; she was the Bachelorette.

Her personal conduct is the product.

ABC couldn't have known about the 2023 video because it was private footage only released when Mortensen's attorney presumably shared it with media as part of their current legal battle.

When you partner with an influencer, their drama hurls your brand into the spotlight. When a scandal occurs, their massive following pays attention. The story becomes news, media outlets cover it, social media discusses it.

And your brand gets dragged into every headline, every comment section, every analysis piece about what went wrong.

ABC knew about Paul's 2023 arrest. They cast her anyway.

The arrest was public record and aired on her reality show. They made a calculated decision that her existing notoriety and massive following outweighed the domestic violence charge she'd literally pleaded guilty to.

But they didn't know about the video. How could they? It was private footage from an incident in someone's home. No amount of background checking would have uncovered it. Until Thursday morning when TMZ published it, that video didn't exist in the public domain.

This is the impossible position brands face with influencer partnerships. You can check criminal records, review social media history, Google their name, interview references. And there will still be things you don't know. You can’t search for videos that haven't surfaced yet or accusations that haven't been made public.

The thinking was probably that the charges had been reduced through plea deal, other charges were dismissed, and enough time had passed that they could frame it as "learning from past mistakes" or "second chances" or whatever redemption narrative reality TV loves.

Then the video dropped.

And boom. Suddenly it wasn't an abstract criminal charge from three years ago - it was footage of violence against a partner in front of a crying child.

The visual evidence changed everything. And the ongoing 2026 investigation suggests this wasn't past behaviour but a continuing pattern.

Thorough vetting helps but won't eliminate risk. But YOU MIGHT AS WELL FREAKING TRY.

Background checks, social media audits, reference calls, criminal record searches - do all of it. But understand that even perfect due diligence won't protect you from footage that hasn't surfaced yet or accusations that haven't been made public.

Behaviour clauses in contracts matter. Build in language that allows you to terminate partnerships immediately if certain issues emerge. ABC presumably had clauses allowing them to cancel, which is why they could pull the season so quickly.

Consider the cost-benefit ruthlessly. Is the influencer's reach worth the potential downside? ABC thought Paul's 8.4 million combined followers and reality TV fame would revive The Bachelorette's declining ratings.

They bet millions of dollars on that calculation. It didn't work.

This is influencer partnership risk in its purest form. No matter how much money you have on the table, sometimes it’s just not worth it babes. 

-Sophie Randell, Writer

This includes "Where You Are" from Disney's 2016 animated smash-hit Moana, in which Gramma Tala sings to the title character:

"And if the voice starts to whisper, to follow the farthest star, Moana, that voice inside is who you are…"

This particular line has inspired a TikTok trend where people divulge the deep desires their inner voice is whispering, therefore revealing who they really are. Most TikTokers' inner voices, it seems, are telling them to do not-so-inspirational things like "rage-bait your sister" or "throw hands with that man".

Take this sound, put the camera on yourself and lip-sync with the audio. Then, use the line below as onscreen text and fill in the blank with an action your true inner self is pushing you to fullfill: "And if the voice starts to whisper, to [blank], that voice inside is who you are" 

A few ideas to get you started:

-Devin Pike, Copywriter

😂Yap’s funniest home videos  Flopped fr
✨Daily inspo Let's go crazy, go stupid
🎧Soooo tingly Free ear cleaning 
🍝What you should make for dinner tonight Easy fried rice recipe! 

Hey Sophie,

Not at all! To be honest, over-producing your content will likely make you much less likely to actually post consistently. The best performing series we've ever run were one-take videos with on-screen text. No fancy editing needed. Now I'm not saying you shouldn't pay any attention to how your content looks. You should still use decent lighting, record good quality audio, and have a consistent visual style. But if you're spending hours on every video, you haven't found a simple enough format that you're going to keep up. Ideally, you should be able to produce a piece of content in 20 minutes, so if it feels like a production, it's time to dial it back.

- 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.