Polaroid cameras were flying off the shelves. Gen Z suddenly got into vinyl, DVDs, even collecting actual CDs. It seemed like we’d all had enough of being chronically online and were finally going to stage a massive retreat. Except… that never happened. Instead, “going analogue” became just another aesthetic. Something you perform, while having your phone recording far enough away that it looks like you forgot it was there. So, is there any hope for logging off? Or was the analogue revival always a pipe dream?

- Charlotte Ellis, Editor ♡

I have a somewhat philosophical question, and that is, can the philosopher himself, be cancelled? Maybe it was "exiled" once upon a time. Actually, I’m pretty sure that Aristotle fled Athens in 322 BC after the death of Alexander the Great due to rising anti-Macedonian sentiment. Anyway, back to modern society and we’re in the absolute peak of bureaucratic absurdity. A Texas university has indeed just cancelled one of the literal founding fathers of Western philosophy.

Texas A&M professor Martin Peterson was forced to alter his contemporary moral issues syllabus and stop teaching Plato’s Symposium. The university board determined that the 2,400-year-old text violated a new policy barring "race and gender ideology". All because it contains a famous speech by Aristophanes discussing same-sex relationships and the origins of gender identity. Peterson, refusing to let politicians dictate ancient philosophy, immediately resigned from his tenured position.

Apparently, thinking deeply about the nature of love is now considered "too woke" for Texas higher education. Go figure.

And while modern institutions are busy banning ancient thinking, Hollywood’s doubling down on a different kind of mind control: weaponised nostalgia. Toy Story 5 has officially exploded into theatres to secure the biggest box office opening weekend of the entire year. Despite the fact that, for years, audiences have insisted that the franchise ended perfectly. But Disney’s predictive algorithms knew exactly how to program our brains for maximum corporate comfort.

So we aren’t allowed to debate 2,400-year-old ideas about the human soul anymore. But we are perfectly welcome to let a mass-produced, computer-animated cowboy rerun the same sh*t over and over and over again. 

Finally, fresh off dominating the music charts, Drake is preparing to secure an absolute bag in the boardroom. Reports have surfaced that the rapper is in advanced talks to sell a massive 50% stake of his globally recognised lifestyle and apparel brand, October's Very Own (OVO), to Authentic Brands Group.

The exact cash amount hasn't been disclosed. But plugging OVO into the same licensing powerhouse that manages Reebok and Champion means the brand is about to go completely hyper-global. Looks like Drizzy is aggressively expanding a scalable corporate empire. And I just cried in the supermarket over the price of cheese.

-Sophie Randell, Writer

The general consensus was that society had finally hit a breaking point with screen fatigue. And, to be fair, the signs were freaking everywhere. Vinyl records were selling-out, teens were buying low-res digital cameras from 2004, flip-phone sales were spiking, and people were proudly stacking physical paperbacks on their bedside tables. We were supposedly on the precipice of a massive, collective analogue revival.

We were all supposedly going to reclaim our attention spans, turn our backs on the algorithms, and go back to engaging with the physical world.

We didn’t log off and run away to the forest and smash our smartphones. Instead, we did something infinitely more modern and depressing: we turned the idea of being offline into an aesthetic. We converted our deep, existential dread of digital surveillance into a lifestyle brand.

We are no longer rebelling against the machine… we are instead just cosplaying a digital retreat while staying firmly tethered to the grid.

We need texture, weight, and boundaries. The modern internet and technology have smoothed over every single edge of our lives, making everything frictionless, automated, and hyper-monitored.

The analogue revival was meant to be the antidote, a deliberate injection of healthy friction back into our days.

It took our genuine hunger for a slower life, stripped away the actual lifestyle changes, and repackaged the visuals.

Now, we don’t buy a retro camera to experience the slow, agonising, beautiful wait of developing film. We buy it because the look of a vintage film grain performs exceptionally well on the feed. The same way we don't read a book to escape the screen. We arrange the book perfectly next to an iced matcha latte so we can take a photo of it with our screen.

The resistance has been completely neutralised. It has been neatly folded, colour-corrected, and sold back to us by the exact same platforms we are pretending to escape.

We scroll through videos of people living in remote cabins, baking sourdough from scratch, writing in leather-bound journals, and knitting blankets by candlelight. The content feels peaceful, grounding, and anti-tech.

But the irony is staggering. The only reason we are witnessing this "offline" life is because that creator has optimised their SEO, monitored their watch-time metrics, and deployed a hyper-aggressive digital marketing strategy to appease the platform.

Welp.

It tells us that we can buy our way out of digital exhaustion. If we just buy the right linen shirt, the right record player, or the right analogue notebook, we can pretend we are no longer cogs in the data-harvesting machine.

But a leather journal doesn't protect your data privacy. A vintage camera doesn't stop an AI model from scraping your digital footprint. It just makes the cage look a little more, idk, rustic.

If you want your brand to command real, unshakeable authority in a world of simulated authenticity, you need to change your approach from performative aesthetics:

Build real friction, not fake nostalgia.

Maybe just adding vintage filters to your marketing or putting retro fonts on your packaging… isn’t going to quite cut it. Create products or experiences that actually require human presence. If you host an event, make it a strict "no-phones-allowed" space. Don't just look analogue; enforce the boundaries of the analogue world.

Acknowledge the machine.

Continuing to gaslight your audience with hyper-polished, "organic" lifestyle marketing that pretends it isn't an ad? Yeah, how’s that going? Audiences respect a brand that looks them in the eye and says: “Yes, this is an Instagram ad, and yes, we want you to buy this. But here is why the product is actually worth your real-world time.”

Value utility over vibes.

The "vibe economy" is collapsing because vibes are cheap and easily replicated by AI software. Duh. Shift your brand positioning from how your product looks on a feed to how it functions when the phone is turned off. Focus on durability, utility, and immediate physical value.

By design, btw. It has woven itself into our banking, our relationships, our careers, and our identities. Leaving it entirely is a privilege very few can afford.

But we need to stop lying to ourselves about our consumer habits. Buying a piece of retro tech or romanticising a slower era through a 15-centimeter glass screen isn't an act of defiance. It’s just another transaction inside the panopticon.

If you’re feeling an overwhelming urge to buy into the latest offline aesthetic, do something actually radical. Even if it’s as small as leaving the phone on the kitchen counter and walking outside. Touching grass. Hugging a tree.

Oh, and don't tell a single soul on the internet that you did it.

-Sophie Randell, Writer

This one's for the people who have absolutely no idea what's going on. None. I'm talking head in the sand, zero context.

The sound comes from Good Boys, the 2019 comedy about three sixth graders who accidentally end up with a bag of MDMA (mom idk what that is I just did research) and proceed to handle the situation with the confidence of people who have no idea what MDMA is. When the teenage girls demand their Molly back, the boys look them dead in the eye and go "Who's Molly? Cause she's not with us." They genuinely think Molly is a person. It is not a person. Man, I need to rewatch that movie.

People are using it for any situation where someone has absolutely no clue what's being referred to:

Lipsync the audio reacting to the thing you're confused about, and put the situation on screen.

A few ideas to get you started:

-abdel khalil, brand & marketing exec

😂Yap’s funniest home videos - It's 2AM and your Mum is checking you're asleep at the sleepover
❤How wholesome - Its all he ever wanted
😊Soooo satisfying - GTA Stunt
🍝What you should make for dinner tonight - Cheesy chicken quesadilla

Hey Celeste!

There are so many ways you can go about getting people onto your email list. First, you could consider creating some gated content. This should be something especially valuable that requires your audience to enter their email to get access. Then, you can use social media to get the word out about these resources. Another way to get email sign-ups is to do some free webinars for your target audience. You can promote these on LinkedIn and require an email to register.

Since you're just starting out, you should definitely be going to as many networking and industry events as you can, too. You may not collect emails from the people you meet (although you might), but connect with your new contacts on LinkedIn and stay in touch there. Building up a database will be a slow grind, but the more you get out and meet people, the faster your network will grow.

- 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.