That low, constant hum of the internet doing its thing. The comments rolling in, the engagement ticking up, the feed refreshing with something new every three seconds. It feels alive. It feels like millions of people, all online at the same time, all talking at once. Except, what if most of them aren't people? What if the room you've been performing for is mostly empty? This month, a theory that spent years being dismissed as paranoid finally got the data to back it up. And it changes everything about why we bother showing up online at all.

Billboard reports that Mattel unveiled the Barbie Signature Miley Cyrus Collectible Doll on June 30, inspired by her look from the "Golden Burning Sun" music video off her 2025 Something Beautiful album. Cyrus worked with designers on every detail — down to the shape of the shoe and the microphone in her hand, which she insisted on. It's priced at around $55–$60. The doll joins Barbie's Signature Series alongside Mariah Carey, Aaliyah and Stevie Nicks. The bar for entry is apparently being an icon. Miley cleared it comfortably.

Not to be outdone, LEGO just gave Olivia Rodrigo an entire universe. Variety reports that LEGO has unveiled five collectible sets inspired by Rodrigo's discography. This makes her the first music artist ever to receive multiple dedicated LEGO sets. Highlights include a buildable vinyl record, a recreation of the crescent moon she rode over the crowd on the GUTS World Tour, and the first-ever personalised LEGO Botanicals set. FYI it's a purple bouquet with guitar-shaped petals. The full collection drops August 1. Pre-orders are already open. The Livies are ready.

And finally, Dove Men+Care has found a genuinely clever way to get people to try its newly reformulated shampoo. Marketing Dive reports that the brand has partnered with fitness app Strava on a challenge asking users to complete a 5K run by July 21 in exchange for a free product reward. The campaign also features TV personality Kyle Cooke. And it's part of Unilever's broader push into sports and influencer marketing. The Strava challenge already has over 16,000 participants. Turns out people will run a 5K for shampoo. Marketing: it works.

And halfway through, I felt a deeply disheartening realisation wash over me: I had absolutely no idea if a single word I was reading was written by a human being. It was a sea of slightly repetitive, eerily structured sentences, peppered with emojis that felt just an inch… idk, offbeat? I guess?

Obviously by now we all know about Dead Internet Theory. For years it’s been treated as a fringe, hyper-paranoid conspiracy theory.

But this month, the conspiracy officially transformed into hard empirical data. Network-wide traffic audits from Cloudflare revealed that automated bots have officially overtaken human beings. Now, they account for over half of all worldwide web traffic. Welllllp.

On top of traditional web scrapers, security firms are tracking a massive explosion of stealthy, hyper-realistic AI agents. These use machine learning to flawlessly mimic human hesitation and mouse movements. We are basically swimming in an ocean of synthetic behaviour.

And it raises a question that corporate platforms are desperate to ignore: If everyone knows the feed is full of ghosts, why should we continue to care enough to participate?

The underlying social contract of the web relies entirely on the promise of mutual human observation. We create, we write, we share, and we comment because we desire to connect with, provoke, or be witnessed by another human consciousness. It is an intricate web of invisible empathy.

But it’s a house of cards. Because the moment you strip away that human baseline, the structural integrity of the entire system collapses.

It feels like trying to have an intimate conversation in a crowded room where 58% of the people are actually mannequins playing a pre-recorded tape on loop. Talk about f*cking spooky.

That’s not community, babes. We’re shouting into a hall of synthetic smoke and mirrors.

We are quickly approaching a critical tipping point. Soon, a massive wave of independent content owners, independent writers, and creative artists are going to simply opt out.

When you spend hours researching, writing, and editing an authentic piece of work, only to see it immediately scraped by a training model or drowned out by automated engagement farms, unfortunately, the rational response isn't to work harder…

It’s to pull your capital off the market. Why should human creators continue to subsidise the content loops of massive tech platforms with our unpaid emotional labour? Especially when those platforms are perfectly content to let automated traffic artificially inflate their ad revenue metrics?

It will be a quiet, systemic withdrawal. Independent publishers will pull their archives behind encrypted, air-gapped paywalls. Creative directors will stop broadcasting their deepest strategic thinking to open, unprotected public squares.

The true creative vanguard will pack up their bags, close the browser tabs, and take their thoughts back underground… into private networks, physical print, and face-to-face circles where a machine cannot fake a pulse.

They're oblivious to the fact that they are managing a playground where the children have all gone home.

The human element of the web cannot be automated, and it cannot be simulated.

If the platforms refuse to build walls to protect real, human connection from the synthetic flood, they will find themselves sitting entirely alone in their automated empires, wondering where all the magic went.

A hill I will die on.

-Sophie Randell, Writer

The sound comes from a parent filming their kid and telling them to square up, just to see if they know what it means. The kid's confused, slightly nervous energy is absolutely perfect:

"Square up."

"Hm?"

"Square up."

"Square... up?"

"Yeah."

"What's that mean?"

"Whatchu think it means? Square up!"

Creators are lipsyncing as the kid for any moment they were either completely oblivious to what they'd done, or very much knew and were desperately trying to play innocent. Some of my favourite examples:

Film yourself lipsyncing as the kid in the sound and add whatever situation has you looking confused and guilty as your on-screen text.

A few ideas to get you started:

-Devin Pike, Copywriter

Hey Siobhan!

Your audience should be able to tell what your video is about instantly. The very first frame needs to set the context, because otherwise people will swipe rather than sticking around to find out. In the first second of your video, the audience should already be able to see there's a story here that they need to see more of.

If you're having trouble knowing what this looks like, go spend some time watching content with intention. Pay attention to the videos that grab your attention and the ones that don't. Ask yourself, What are those things that make a hook effective or ineffective? Then use what you've learned and experiment until you figure it out for your own content.

- 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.