I got this “neck stretcher” on the recommendation of a recent issue of New York mag, and it kind of works???????? I lay on it for a few minutes whenever I’m talking on the phone at home, and I can feel my jaw slowly unhinge (in a good way). Anyway this isn’t affiliate linked or whatever, I just know you guys will want to try it…

Remember when everyone wanted to be a “storyteller” as the highest Maslow pyramid tier of professional identity? Now it’s “marketer.” To wit: in her Vogue profile, Alex Cooper resolutely says, “I’m a marketer” (emphasis hers). And as Emily Sunderg noted, recognizing a marketing campaign for what it is, is now the highest compliment on the internet.

This shift makes me think about my alma mater, Mizzou’s J-School (which would prefer to be known as the Missouri School of Journalism. When I was a student, the journalism school partitioned its undergrads into a few “emphasis areas,” AKA mini-majors: magazine journalism, news journalism, broadcast journalism, photojournalism, something really hard called “convergence” no one liked, and “strategic communications.” (The school has since reorganized these emphasis areas into six career paths, including one called “social and audience strategy,” which, smart.)

The latter, known as “Strat Comm” was of course deemed by the snobs/real news hardos as the sell-out option, because it was much easier in terms of courseload. (To graduate, you just had to take some classes on PR principles and copywriting, versus actually working a semester at the local newspaper/TV station). (I am, of course, speaking as a proud strat commer.) The thinking was that the future ad men and women of America should have a basic grounding of the news business before they sallied forth into the midwest for promising careers in media buying and corporate comms, which is why they were lumped into the J-school. But it seems very ironic now that the advantage probably works the other way around: the better future journalists understand the fundamentals of advertising and marketing, the better equipped they are for the creator-like requisites that now dominate media hiring. The business of getting attention is, unfortunately, now everyone’s problem, not just the ad kids.

Meanwhile, Liana Satenstein visited magazine heaven, AKA Library180, in FiDi and had some great thoughts on the state of image sharing without the gorgeous, necessary context that beautiful images need to exist in:

Library180 comes at a time when I have become frustrated by the post-and-bloat economy of image sharing. These days, film photographs are plopped online with no context or history. Fantastical images are funneled into the “vibe” economy, the “aggregation” economy. Peter Lindbergh’s early “Walking” shoots get slapped onto an Instagram page, and, well, becomes a “whole mood.” Snippets from Madonna’s Meisel-photographed book Sex get squished into a 1:1 social post. Great, even iconic images are at the mercy of reaction videos or slideshows on TikTok and Reels. Nothing is inhaled anymore; it’s all simply swallowed.

For Bloomberg, Amanda Mull unpacks the Labubu-Dubai-chocolate-matchafication of trends and why it seems like we exist in this bizarro context-less SEO keyword state of culture. She makes a compelling argument that we’re essentially moving toward a mass infantilization of cultural product due to our, ahem, juvenile-like attention spans. After all, those purse charms are cute, sure, but I personally can’t really unsee the image that we’re all just carrying our little stuffed teddies around…

Consumer trends that thrive in this ecosystem are highly stimulating, above all else. They’re strange or cute or delicious-looking or outrageous or confusing. These attributes have long been part of what helps trends spread, but now they’re the primary attribute required for a shot at ubiquity. Traditionally, this kind of stimulation-first pitch was reliable only when marketing to children, susceptible as they are to the bright, the cuddly, the sweet. It’s not a coincidence that stuffed animals and sugary treats are such frequent beneficiaries of this system now, even if adults drive their popularity. Content served by algorithms is effective in part because it’s disorienting, which helps to short-circuit the defenses against impulse—discernment, self-restraint, patience—that are the hallmarks of emotional maturity, rendering most of us a little bit more childish.

This Defector writeup of Zohran Mamdani’s primary campaign—largely based in the development of shortform vertical video content—made me realize that oh, of course, he’s our first actual TikTok politician. (also, citing Wong Kar Wai and Christopher Doyle’s “lush, urban cinematography” as an influence was very LOL to me)

Speaking of which…

• This account is probably Gen Z’s version of Bill Nye. Every explainer is shockingly catchy…

• The only good response to the Sydney Sweeney ad

• Some people still see the world with actual childlike wonder apparently

• You really do have to see how cartoonishly this raccoon runs away

• Let this wrap up the “performative male” discourse for now…