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There's a creator in your feed right now telling you not to buy something.
They are very convincing. They have receipts. They have the tired, frustrated energy of someone who's seen some sh*t and come back to warn you. They want nothing from you except for you to stop wasting your money - and then, right at the end, there's the link in the bio. Today, we're looking at de-influencing - the trend that sold itself as anti-consumerism and turned out to be one of the most effective sales funnels the internet has ever produced.
- Devin Pike, Copywriter
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WHAT’S HAPPENING IN MARKETING TODAY?
Meta slapped with $942M in child safety case,"Song of the summer" was AI all along & Tesla and SpaceX are building world's largest chip factory
Meta's legal problems just got significantly more expensive.
Social Media Today reports that a New Mexico judge has ordered Meta to pay US$567 million for failing to protect teens on its platforms. That's on top of a $375 million civil damages verdict from March - bringing the total bill to $942 million. The judge called Meta "a significant contributing cause" to New Mexico's youth mental health crisis and ordered sweeping new restrictions. These include push notifications for under-18s cut off between 10pm and 7am and during school hours, a 90-hour monthly usage cap across Facebook and Instagram, like counts hidden by default for minors, and deletion of unverified accounts for under-13s within 30 days.
Meta says it will appeal. Its spokesperson said the company "remains confident in its record of protecting teens online." The $942 million total bill suggests a different story.
In music news, the summer's most debated song has finally been confirmed as exactly what everyone suspected. Wired reports that Fenix Flexin has admitted AI was used to generate "Rubberz" - the track that peaked at number 58 on the Billboard Hot 100 and had been dubbed the song of the summer. He denied the allegations for months, including after producer Medasin posted a viral breakdown showing the song file still carried the name of AI music platform Treblo's previous branding. The denials stopped holding up.
It marks the first known fully AI-generated song to chart on the Billboard Hot 100. The question nobody in the music industry wants to answer: how many others already have?
And finally, Elon Musk is building something very large in Texas. TechCrunch reports that Tesla and SpaceX have confirmed a US$16.8 billion initial investment in Terafab - a joint chip factory in Grimes County, Texas, outside Houston. Musk called it "the largest and most valuable building on Earth by far," with over 100 million square feet of manufacturing space planned. The factory will produce chips for Tesla's Optimus robots, Cybercabs and SpaceX's space-based AI data centres. SpaceX has suggested the full multi-phase build could eventually reach $119 billion.
Local residents raised concerns about tax breaks and transparency at a county meeting. Their school superintendent called it "a defining moment." Both things can be true.
- Devin Pike, Copywriter
DEEP DIVE
De-influencing? Or the ultimate sales funnel?
I find it incredibly amusing when influencers try to "de-influence" me.
Sitting there telling me what not to buy, because "luxury is a waste" or this viral skincare product is a "scam."
It seems so helpful and genuine. Until you realise it’s not. Because it’s always followed up with a solve that requires you to buy into a different product, even if completely unrelated.
The "de-influence" subculture was originally born out of audience exhaustion with the fake and polished performance of traditional corporate sponsorships. And at first, felt kind of powerful and anti-consumerist. Like an act of digital truth-telling. A breath of fresh air in a landscape completely choked by paid placement.
But once you look past the immediate gratification of the call-out, the illusion disappears. Along with your hopes and dreams for anything being real these days.
De-influencing has mutated into yet another high-converting Trojan Horse for modern product placement.
The corporate machine has done exactly what it always does with human resistance. It's absorbed the scepticism, repackaged the anger, and turned anti-consumption into a sales funnel.
The creator spends the first two minutes of the video burning down one specific brand to establish an unshakeable layer of trust with the audience. Then they pivot at the very last second to say: "Don't buy that garbage, buy this alternative instead, link in my bio” - a clever manipulation of our hunger for authenticity.
The rise of this marketing manoeuvre reveals a fascinating, and kind of predatory shift in the creator economy.
Brands and agencies know that consumers have become blind to standard, glowing product reviews. We know the script, can see the disclosure tag, and instinctively swipe away with a grimace on our faces.
But by leveraging the visual language of the critique, a seller can bypass THE defensive filters we’ve spent so long building.
They use the performance of honesty as a psychological crowbar to wedge their way into our wallets. Then, they turn our shared frustration with consumer culture into a mechanism that misleads us to consume more. Trust is the premium currency on the modern web. And right now, the cleverest salespeople on the market are those pretending they have absolutely nothing to sell.
Let’s call it authenticity catfishing.
By using a contrarian, anti-corporate hook, the creator sets a trap that makes viewers stop questioning the ethics of the endorsement or analyse the transactional nature of the link. They think they’re participating in a cultural rebellion, willingly entering the sales funnel like a bug in a Venus Fly Trap.
The commercial landscape has become so thoroughly game-ified that even our skepticism has a conversion rate. One tracked and optimised by data analysts who realise that an angry consumer is often the easiest one to sell to.
If you’re not hitting a wall of exhaustion with these bait-and-switch authenticity metrics, I’ll admit, you’re tougher than I am. Because they make me want to throw my phone into a volcano.
Unfortunately, we must accept that the performance of integrity on a public feed is almost always tied to an underlying monetisation loop.
The only way to take back personal authority in this hyper-manipulated digital economy isn't subscribing to the next wave of contrarian online advice or buying the "honest" alternative… it’s possessing the confidence to pull yourself off the consumerist treadmill.
If you see someone aggressively telling you to throw away your current belongings in favour of a newer, more ethical, or more authentic product, my brother in Christ, ignore that sh*t.
-Sophie Randell, Writer
TREND PLUG
It's a clock! Oh my god, it's a clock!
This one's for every realisation that took way too long to arrive but made complete and total sense the second it did.
The sound comes from The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, when Katniss finally clocks - no pun intended - that the arena she's been fighting in is actually a giant clock:
"It's a clock. It's a clock! Oh my god, it's a clock!"
Creators are lipsyncing with Katniss and adding whatever obvious thing took them an embarrassingly long time to figure out.
Some of my favourite examples:
How you can jump on this trend:
Film yourself lipsyncing to the sound with your best dumbfounded expression. Add whatever took you far too long to realise as your on-screen text.
A few ideas to get you started:
Finally understanding why your manager always CC'd their manager on your emails
Clocking that the meeting you've been dreading every Monday has been optional the entire time
Realising the client who kept asking for "small tweaks" was really pushing for an entirely different project
- Devin Pike, Copywriter
ASK THE EDITOR
I know I need to be creating content for my new skincare brand but I just can never seem to actually do it. Any advice? - Priya
Hey Priya!
This is such a common thing that holds so many people back from posting content. And I hate to say it, but you just have to get over yourself and do it anyway. It may help to remember that no one is sitting there waiting for you to post. And you’re never going to learn how to make good content if you’re standing still. So just do something (anything) to get the momentum going, then whatever you do, don’t stop!
- Charlotte Ellis, Editor ♡
Not going viral yet?
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.