Good for you! Let me just introduce you to this $237 tactical flashlight you definitely need to add to your kit. While you’re at it, you can’t be running around with a cheap bug out bag. No, that’s embarrassing. You need the $575 leather one. And don’t forget that your pantry needs a complete overhaul so you can display all your long-life food on bespoke open shelving… Ok, we get it. Urban survival brands are going off right now (and for good reason). But when we’re dropping a cool $409 on a water bottle, I think we’re kinda missing the point. [Read more]

- Charlotte Ellis, Editor ♡

It was an interesting weekend for the internet. The DOJ released 3.5 million pages of the Epstein files. This simultaneously made me physically ill and blew a hole through what hope I had left for the current State Of Things. Political tension has never been so high. And so it’s no surprise that searches for “regulating the nervous system” are too. Go figure. I know mine sure as hell needs it.

The trend clearly showed up on TikTok this weekend: searches and videos about “regulating the nervous system” spiked. From breathwork to tapping to pseudo-somatic resets, creators are packaging relaxation like it’s a product you can scroll into being. According to Dazed Digital, the trend has moved well past niche wellness corners into viral culture. These 30-second routines promise serenity – probably because the rest of the world feels so f*cking unhinged. Maybe it’s yoga breathing. Maybe it’s placebo. Maybe it’s just marketing disguised as mindfulness. But the bigger takeaway is how quickly collective anxiety becomes content once an algorithm notices it.

Throw in some more mass destruction with Amazon cutting thousands of jobs across its corporate workforce. It's part of a broader retrenchment in Big Tech that shows no real sign of slowing. The cuts come amid continued pressure to "optimise" (blegh) costs after years of pandemic-era hiring sprees and post-boom corrections across the industry. Leaders are framing this as a necessary “realignment.” But the reality on the ground is that tech workers who once felt insulated now know better. Because, even in trillion-dollar companies, no one's safe.

And yet, despite The Horrors we are subject to each and every week, Gen Z men are united by a surprising amount of optimism about becoming fathers, according to a Vox report. Apparently, many younger men are actively excited about parenthood. And not in a traditional provider, tough-it-out way, but in a deeply intentional one. They talk openly about wanting to be emotionally present, to break generational cycles, and to build families that feel safer and more nurturing than the world around them. I suppose it’s a counter-narrative to all the doom. Even as institutions wobble and futures feel uncertain, there’s something grounding about choosing care, continuity, and connection anyway.

-Sophie Randell, Writer

Imagine beautifully lit flatlays of emergency supplies, artisanal freeze-dried meals in matte packaging, stylish multi-tools that cost more than your Tiffany earrings, arranged just so on reclaimed wood.

Yes folks, we’ve officially landed somewhere between cottagecore and Black Mirror, to what I’d like to dub Apocalypse Aesthetics. And, as per usual, brands are absolutely wetting their pants in excitement.

Look, I get it, I really do.

When you glance at the news and see [gestures broadly at literally everything going on right now], the urge to prepare for some kind of nebulous collapse feels less paranoid and more pragmatic.

But it gets deliciously perverse. Because capitalism has looked at our collective anxiety about societal breakdown and thought, "how can we make this a lifestyle brand?"

Suddenly, my Instagram feed is full of $400 tactical water bottles that "wouldn't look out of place in a design museum.” Outdoor brands are pivoting to "urban preparedness."

There are literal luxury bunker companies selling you a temperature-controlled apocalypse shelter with imported cedar countertops. Because apparently when civilisation crumbles, what you'll really need is good interior design.

And now your local influencer is doing unboxing videos of their everyday carry setup like they're preparing for the fall of Rome when the only thing they’re prepping for is to tell the poor girl they're leading on they just have “a lot going on right now” (code for I just bought new Salomons and can’t afford date night.)

The absurdity reaches its apex with "prepper pantries.” It's a practice that emerged from the rise of modern survivalism and genuine fear of nuclear war in the 1950’s. Now, it looks like aesthetically curated shelving units of tinned goods that cost more than the food inside them.

That is, as long as it’s the right canned tuna, displayed with the proper amount of aesthetic to put on the bench and not even in the pantry at all.

The thing that makes this particularly insidious is that real preparedness has never even been about products at all. It's about people.

It's selling you the fantasy that you can buy your way to safety, that survival is a personal consumer choice rather than a collective undertaking. Get your bugout bag, stock your bunker, perfect your self-sufficient homestead aesthetic. It's rugged individualism cosplay for the end times.

This is the exact opposite of how humans have actually survived every historical crisis. We've done it together. Through mutual aid and community networks. Through knowing our neighbours and building resilient local systems.

The real doomsday prep happening right now? It's the unsexy stuff. It's community gardens where people are learning to grow food together, not for the aesthetic but because food security is increasingly precarious. It's tool libraries and skill shares.

It's neighbours organising supply chains for medications, building mutual aid networks that actually function when systems fail. It's people creating spaces for collective care because they've realised that institutions might not have their backs.

It requires ongoing relationship-building, which is harder than clicking "add to cart.” But these spaces are online. It just takes showing up, learning skills from people who have them, sharing resources, being part of something larger than your personal survival fantasy.

The irony is that the community-based approach actually works. When disasters hit, it's not the guy with the $3,000 EDC setup who weathers it best, but the person embedded in strong community networks… you know, the one who knows their neighbours, and the one who's part of a functional mutual aid group.

But maybe start by like, meeting your neighbours instead of buying another tactical flashlight. Follow your community garden on Instagram. Maybe contribute once in a while. Find your local mutual aid network, learn to fix things, preserve food, provide first aid. Teach others skills you have. Build relationships of care and reciprocity.

Because the beautiful, unglamorous truth is we're not going to buy our way out of this. We're going to have to build our way out, together. And that's actually the more hopeful version of the story. Well, it’s the one I like better anyway.

The apocalypse, if it comes, won't be solved by having the right products. It'll be survived by having the right people. And I hate to break it to you, but you can't purchase those on a payment plan.

-Sophie Randell, Writer

The sound comes from Despicable Me, where Gru's scheming up a plan and calmly, tragically announces: “In terms of money… we have no money.” Truer words have never been spoken.

People are using it to caption moments where the budget is cooked, the funds are gone, and the dream has officially been postponed due to insufficient coins.

My fav examples include:

Use the sound. Lip sync the line "In terms of money [pause] we have no money" and throw up onscreen text that explains why you're saying that.

A few ideas to get you started:

-abdel khalil, brand & marketing exec

😂Yap’s funniest home videos: Babies make the best audiences
❤How wholesome: be the good
🎧Soooo tingly: ASMR triggers that scratch your brain
🍝What you should make for dinner tonight: Creamy french onion chicken pasta bake

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.