Maybe it's reading in the sun, or it's mismatching socks, or simply being underestimated. It doesn't matter - the format is the same, the butter yellow font is the same, and there's a new post about whatever else is "kinda chic" every time you blink. What started as a single interesting idea has been photocopied into oblivion by an algorithm that rewards repetition over originality. But what happens to creativity when the machine makes copying more profitable than thinking?

- Devin Pike, Copywriter

Fortune reports that Alibaba's Qwen family of open-source models accumulated over 3 billion global downloads in the past six months. That's more than Meta's 227 million and Google's 418 million combined. Qwen has open-sourced over 460 models and spawned 300,000 derivative versions built by developers worldwide. The Hugging Face state of open models report called it "one of the largest foundations of the open AI ecosystem."

US chip export controls were supposed to slow down this kind of progress, but... the downloads say otherwise.

Speaking of wildly unregulated tech, The Verge reports that Flock Safety - the company behind the nationwide network of automated license plate reader cameras used by thousands of US law enforcement agencies - has announced sweeping platform changes after a string of documented officer abuses. Standard data retention will drop from 30 days to 7. All searches must now be tied to a specific case number. And mandatory audit tools will flag abnormal search behaviour from January 1.

The changes came after four Richmond County Sheriff's Office employees were arrested for running personal searches through the system, including to track and stalk romantic interests. The ACLU had been calling for the 30-day retention cap to be reduced for years - unfortunately, it took multiple arrests to finally make it happen.

And finally - whatever the hell Tyga just did. Seems like the music industry's verdict on AI has the chart data to back it up. Because according to HotNewHipHop, Tyga's AI-assisted album $TARFACE sold fewer than 2,000 units in its first week and failed to chart on the Billboard 200, following Pitchfork's first 0/10 score in 19 years.

Tyga admitted using AI to help create the album's 80s aesthetic, which repelled fans and critics alike - both for the shortcuts taken, and the final result. This comes not long after Fenix Flexin admitted his song "Rubberz" was fully AI-generated. So the market's speaking pretty dang clearly:

If you're an artist using AI to make music, try this: don't.

- Devin Pike, Copywriter

Please stop.

Over the past few weeks, this specific format has completely colonised my timeline.

And it’s not the first time I’ve watched this play out. A minor micro-trend starts in a corner of the app. The interest-based algorithm flags it as high-performing. And within forty-eight hours, every lifestyle creator, brand account, and mainstream celebrity is executing the exact same copy-paste script.

We are hit with an endless, mind-numbing parade of proclamations asserting that it is “kinda chic to be underestimated,” “kinda chic to read in the sun,” or “kinda chic to wear mismatching socks.”

I can only describe it as cultural brainrot. And it has officially ruined the word "chic" for me, and potentially, an entire generation.

Historically, chic wasn't a checklist of mundane personal wellness habits or a casual phrase you slapped onto a lifestyle post to give yourself a superficial pat on the back.

It was a deeply nuanced, rare, and sophisticated distinction of personal style and carriage. An effortless, understated edge that was few and far between.

By flattening it into a generic, airheaded internet hook, the social media machine has successfully stripped the word of any remaining artistic or cultural significance. And it's transformed a concept built on individual mystery into the ultimate indicator of mindless, basic-bitchery.

The rapid proliferation of this trend exposes a much more terrifying reality about the architecture of the modern web.

We are living through a long, hot summer of systemic plagiarism. The contemporary algorithm doesn't reward creative experimentation, risk-taking, or unique human perspectives. Instead, it heavily prioritises homogeneity.

Creators have realised that trying to engineer an original thought or draft a unique narrative format is a low-yield financial gamble. The machine explicitly rewards you for borrowing proven, pre-packaged hooks that the pixel already knows how to categorise and distribute to a passive audience.

And we all just drool and clap and participate.

And it makes me sad. Because when an independent thinker does create a genuine, interesting pattern-interrupter, the system immediately incentivises ten thousand other accounts to copy it frame-for-frame, word-for-word, until the original spark is completely smothered beneath a mountain of derivative slop.

It’s the wholesale lobotomisation of creative talent.

Creators who call themselves "artists" or "directors" are willingly acting as automated distribution agents for an algorithmic loop. They're trading their creative sovereignty for a brief, transactional spike in their engagement dashboards.

If your work doesn't fit neatly into the strict, pre-optimised parameters that the platform guidelines demand, it simply does not get pushed to the feed.

It stays buried in the dark, while the most shallow, repetitive, and recycled trends are rocketed into the millions of views. This forces the entire creator economy into a race to the bottom of the attention span. One where success is measured not by the depth of your craftsmanship, but by how quickly you can jump on a trending format before the novelty completely curdles into self-parody.

The only way to survive this era of copy-paste culture is to develop a fierce internal boundary that refuses to validate the trend machine with your participation.

Know this: personal style cannot be crowdsourced from a trending timeline. I’ll keep the low views, y’all can have the copy-paste basic bitchery.

-Sophie Randell, Writer

The sound comes from Jeremy Wade during an episode of River Monsters, where he delivers a calm yet devastating narration after his fishing companion receives a wrist injury mid-expedition:

"I try to act normal but remain calm, but this is exactly the scenario I was dreading."

Creators are using it for any moment where they held it together on the outside while everything on the inside was going catastrophically sideways.

Some of my favourite examples:

Film yourself lipsyncing to the sound and add whatever situation had you desperately trying to keep it together as your on-screen text.

A few ideas to get you started:

- Devin Pike, Copywriter

Hey Anika!

Ah yes, this is a tough one! Totally get that it feels scary to put yourself out there on social media. I wish there was an easy answer to this, but if you have goals for building your brand, you kinda just have to do it even though you're scared. Yeah, people you know might see it. And yeah, maybe they will think it's cringe. But the alternative is letting what they might think stop you from doing the activities that are going to make you successful.

Posting online does require a level of vulnerability. But once you start posting regularly, it really will get easier. Because you'll realise most people are too worried about themselves to worry that much about what you're doing! I would also encourage you to seek out other people who are building a brand like you (if you haven't already). This will help you feel not so alone!

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.