hey, I’m Sam. 2x is where I break down what’s happening in marketing and consumer behavior before everyone else catches up.

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In January, Marketing Brew published a piece about marketers turning to content creation after layoffs. Reporter Katie Hicks had one question for me:

“Is content creation a viable career in 2026?”

I wanted to scream “Fuck no it’s not!” relying on these fickle algorithms for your livelihood? That sounds like self-inflicted waterboarding.

But then I had to stop myself. Because I *do* know a handful of creators who do this full time.

So after going back and forth, I told Katie, “The dream is sold to you.” Because it is. No matter if you’re a creator, a marketer with platform contacts, or a founder just getting started.

The social media dream is, to quote the great Cher Horowitz of Clueless, a full on Monet. From far away, it’s intriguing, but up close it’s a big old mess.

As a marketer, brand, creator, independent expert, you can fall for the Monet and idealize what’s possible, OR you can do what I recommend: take a birds’ eye view and observe how “the machine” of social media platforms actually works.

Because the moment you start chasing anything, whether it’s the algorithm, the latest format, or the dopamine hit of one post going viral, you lose. The platforms know that. But you might forget.

Don’t lose to them. You don’t have to let that happen. Instead, let me fill you in on what’s really going on right now.

The surprising predictability of today’s chaos

Imagine spending an hour learning a game like Catan only to be told midway through that the instructions have completely changed.

Welcome to the runaround of modern social media platforms.

You build a strategy around a format, a cadence, or an approach, and then it feels like the very next day it stops working. And you throw your hands in the air, curse Mark Zuckerberg, etc.

To be fair, I remember working in corporate on social media accounts and learning about algorithm changes. But they’d happen maybe two, three times a year. Now? It’s weekly. Daily, even.

As exhausting as it is, if we were to zoom out, we’d see that every major platform has independently arrived at the same algorithmic conclusion in 2026:

Watch time and private sharing now determine your distribution on social media.

And the cherry on top is that your best performing post in the last month might be one that you created off the cuff in 10 minutes (if you create content, you know it’s ALWAYS those posts…)

Psychologists call this illusory control, which is the tendency to believe you have influence over outcomes that are largely random. Platforms maintain this deliberately. The constantly shifting formats, unpredictable distribution, the occasional viral hit that keeps you believing that “OK, this next one is going to be it”…

Does this mechanism sound familiar? If you guessed that it’s the same as a slot machine, you’d be right. You’re not crazy for feeling like you can crack it, because that’s by design.

On top of that:

• IG prince Adam Mosseri has confirmed that watch time is the single most important ranking factor for Reels, with DM shares AKA sends per reach carrying the most weight for reaching non-followers

• TikTok’s Transparency Center structures its signal tiers with watch behavior at the top as well

• And YouTube replaced click thru rate with “viewed vs swiped away” as Shorts’ primary quality indicator

Are these platforms coordinating the same metrics together? Probably not. What’s happening is that they’ve all just arrived at the same logic independently.

Most people today can’t fake watching something for 45 seconds. Think about when you see a friend’s content in your feed - you might “like” it right away, watch for a little, and then move on. The platforms know that. They also know that you wouldn’t DM a friend content you don’t actually care about.

A like on social media in 2026 costs nothing. And it means nothing, too. A thumb tap while scrolling tells the algorithms very little about whether something was genuinely valuable.

And followers follow the same story. Instagram made this shift visible in April 2025 when they officially replaced “impressions” with “views” as the primary metric across all formats. By August it was changing “accounts reached” to “viewers” in analytics. Threads followed.

The platforms really aren't being subtle about which number they want you to optimize for. Follower count is a legacy metric. Views are what the algorithm runs on now.

The platforms have figured out what actually signals quality and have retooled everything around extracting those signals.

The ones I mentioned above are just the start.

Organic reach isn’t declining, it’s actually being killed

Here’s where the bird’s eye view perspective becomes more useful.

Instagram organic reach now averages 3.5% of your followers.

Emplifi’s analysis of 1.9 million brand posts across 9,678 brands found that organic reach fell 30 to 40% across every format in 2025. Metricool’s study of 39.7 million posts found that Reels reach dropped 35%.

On TikTok, something similar has happened: content shares are up 45% year over year, while follower-based distribution becomes less predictable.

Now smart marketers and creators might think that all of this is due to the sheer volume of content being posted on these platforms.

But there’s a twist - while reach dropped 31% on Instagram, views actually GREW roughly 27 to 29%, per SocialInsider’s analysis of 70 million posts.

So the algorithms aren’t struggling to manage new content. That’s not it at all, actually.

Instead, they’re CHOOSING to show content repeatedly to fewer people so as to not spread it to more unique viewers. Research almost certainly proves that views going up aren’t new people finding you, they’re the same people seeing you more than once.

Calling it depth over breadth would be far too generous. Because this is exactly what creates what? Oh, yes…. dependency on paid reach!

Organic reach is being compressed because compressed reach is of course, more profitable than open reach. Organic reach is something that can be achieved. Compressed reach, on the other hand, is an intentional, proactive product decision made by these platforms to increase their bottom line.

Months ago, I posted an Instagram story to discourage creators’ excitement about getting more views on Instagram. The platform was purposely increasing views during a time when TikTok was compressing them. I noted how Meta was inciting platform switching behavior, and guess what? It worked. Now, the creators who pivoted to Instagram are asking “Why do I have less views? What happened?!”

Welcome to a concept called loss aversion. Kahneman and Tversky’s research showed that losses hurt roughly twice as much as equivalent gains feel good.

Platforms tease you with open reach first. They let you build audiences, build strategies, and even I don’t know…your livelihood…on top of it, so that compressing hurts much more.

What makes all of this particularly insidious is the fact that engagement hasn’t just evaporated. SocialInsider put it plainly in their report: “The engagement isn’t gone - it’s just moved to the actions that actually drive reach.” i.e. saves, DMs, shares, the measures that the algorithm weighs the highest, but don’t show up in your analytics. How convenient.

When you don’t have visibility and your numbers look flat, you might feel inclined to do something about it. Sometimes, you switch platforms. But other times, you’ll open up your wallet.

Meta’s E2EE move is actually them being honest (for once)

Private sharing is the second half of the map. Per Mosseri’s own confirmed ranking factors, DM shares are the most powerful signal for reaching non-followers.

So watch the sequence of what Meta just did with that information…

December 2025: Meta updates its privacy policy to allow interactions with its Meta AI tools (think chats, voice conversations, questions asked to AI) to be used for targeted advertising across Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Encrypted DMs between users aren’t covered by this update, because Meta quite literally cannot read them.

March 2026: Meta announces that end to end encrypted DMs on Instagram will no longer be supported come May 8th. End to end encryption, or E2EE, just means that the sender and recipient can read the messages, but not Meta.

The stated reason why they’re removing it? Low adoption. Right, lol. It’s 100% due to the fact that most people don’t know what the hell E2EE is - and if they did, they almost certainly would want it supported for their “private” conversations.

Private conversations have become the last major frontier of unmined attention on these platforms. Comments are public, likes, even saves are trackable. But DMs are the mysterious black box, and the platforms know that it’s where the most genuine signal lives now.

So Meta made a move to access it and announced it in a little update buried in the Instagram Help Center. Nice.

If you use Instagram, there’s no need to panic or delete the app. I’m telling you, as I have before, that these platforms tell you through their actions exactly what their values are, and where they’re headed. Are you paying attention?

Those who have been following along know that I tracked the migration toward private platforms last summer. This move by Meta was just the next logical step.

@ElizabethEatsNYC won’t be the last

In the Marketing Brew piece I mentioned earlier, Paul Butler talked about going viral with a TikTok post regarding his Amazon layoff.

It opened doors for him AND generated income - and yet he still admitted that he couldn’t replace his Amazon salary from content alone.

ElizabethEatsNYC is a more recent version of that story. She’s a controversial “foodie” creator with 1.4 million followers on TikTok, known for recording her meals with her Meta glasses.

She posted last week that she’s quitting content creation unless a new path opens up for her because she can’t pay her bills (for reference, she averages about 600K views per video.)

It’s tempting to brush this off as a creator’s poor monetization strategy, but it’s really just the creator economy math running exactly as designed.

The platform captures the attention value the creator generates, monetizes it through advertising, and returns a minuscule fraction (if that) to the person who built the audience and drove the engagement.

Doesn’t this sound a little bit like, I don’t know, free labor from the platforms? Maybe I’m being dramatic. Or maybe soon, we’ll see legislation around this (fingers crossed).

But in the meantime, once you begin to accept that these platforms are indifferent infrastructure and not true partners, it will change the way you use them to make decisions.

The psychological warfare of Instagram Plus

You might’ve also heard that Meta is currently testing a paid subscription tier called Instagram Plus in select markets. The confirmed features are Stories-focused:

• anonymous Story viewing

• rewatch data

• unlimited audience lists

• extended Story durations up to 48 hours and

• weekly spotlight features

Look closely at those confirmed features…rewatch data, audience segmentation controls, and visibility tools. This is gated data that’s already available for further monetization.

Also notice how you’ll still be targeted with ads. Why would Instagram allow you to pay to remove ads, when you can pay to give them more tracking data?

Instagram Plus, by the way, is also separate from Meta Verified, which targets creators and businesses. They’ve clearly seen success with this program, which allows you to buy a verification badge to prove you’re you - something that should be a fundamental offering of the platform if morality was a factor.

Most modern social media platforms have already built successful businesses on putting ads in front of people. But now, they realize that there could be more ways to monetize beyond ads.

And there’s one platform who seems to have figured it out.

The one place the incentives actually line up

Not every platform has the same incentive structure.

The irony, as I wrote last fall, is that even our instinct to leave these platforms plays out on the platforms themselves - which is exactly why understanding these differences matters more than rage-quitting.

Take Substack, a relative newcomer on the social media scene.

Substack’s head of machine learning, Mike Cohen, said it directly: “The goal of Notes is to get people to discover, subscribe, and ideally pay. That’s how we built the feed and how we continue to iterate to make sure that we’re driving subscriptions up.”

Substack takes a 10% cut of paid subscriptions. No ads. Which means their algorithm is literally incentivized to connect readers to writers they’ll pay for - instead of maximizing scroll time, selling ad inventory, or mining your Chat data. Their business model requires your success in a way that Meta doesn’t.

When a platform’s revenue model aligns with your growth, the algorithm works differently.

Threads seems worth paying attention as well, despite it being under Meta. Buffer’s analysis of 52 million posts found Threads’ median engagement rate at 6.25%, compared to 3.6% on X. The algorithm also seems to reward reply depth over broadcasting, which is genuinely different than other platforms.

The window where this is true won’t stay open indefinitely, as you can imagine. But right now, it’s open.

So what now?

You don’t have to stop using Instagram or TikTok. Reach, however compressed, is still reach, and the switching cost is genuinely high, so I’m not making the argument for leaving, especially when you have a brand to build or grow.

Instead, I want to offer up the argument for making a few specific decisions that the emotional social media fog usually prevents people from seeing:

1. Lessen your reliability on reach as a primary metric: reach is the metric platforms control most tightly and have the least incentive to give away for free. If you’re measuring success by how many unique accounts saw your post, you’re measuring what they’re actively suppressing. It’s not that reach ISN’T important, but right now based on the latest research presented here, I’d recommend prioritizing tracking your shares and saves “rate” (like an engagement rate) first - as those are signals that platforms weigh the highest, which means they’re also the ones that tell you something true about whether your content is landing

2. Put real investment into Threads and Substack now: Buffer’s analysis says that engagement is high on Threads. Substack’s algorithm is incentivized to grow your audience because their revenue depends on it. Both of these are early window opportunities

3. When and if you buy paid reach, buy it with a conversion goal attached, or don’t buy it at all: paying to boost a post because your organic reach dropped is feeding the exact dependency loop the platforms designed. If the paid spend has a specific outcome attached - email captures, product sales, etc. then it’s a tool. But if it’s a reaction to a number going down, it’s a subsidy to the machine that is compressing the number. Please choose wisely

You can imagine how terrifying it must be if your livelihood depends on these platforms, and then you watch your reach drop 35% overnight and you can’t explain why. The fear is so rational and warranted.

But emotional decisions made from whiplash are exactly what the platforms are counting on.

It reminds me of a book I read last month called Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke. She’s a professional poker player and an absolute master of behavioral economics, specifically how we make decisions when emotions are running high and we don’t understand everything.

One of her central points is that it’s ok to say “I’m not sure.”

As professionals we’re conditioned to have answers. But Duke’s argument is that the most sophisticated players are the ones who can hold uncertainty without flinching. They can make the best decision available, still, with incomplete information.

Think of the platforms like your poker competitor. Your competitor is counting on you to make fear-driven reactive decisions, because that behavior keeps you producing content, keeps the feed moving, and keeps the ad inventory full.

Seeing the board clearly is both your strategic advantage, but also your sanity safety net in this hellscape of a performance loop.

You can figure this out. We’ve seen patterns from the past, but we don’t know what tomorrow looks like. And through our actions, we can help shape it.

I don’t know how things will change, but I can say confidently, the days of monopolies having this amount of control are limited.

One thing I can say for certain, though, is that being able to see the board, the players, and your competitors in the view from above is a much better use of your time than stalling and hoping to go back to yesterday.

tldr: in 2026, every major social media platform has independently converged on the same algorithmic logic: watch time and private sharing now determine your distribution, while organic reach is being actively compressed, down 30-40% across formats, in order to drive dependency on paid reach.

Meanwhile, platforms like Meta are dismantling end-to-end encryption on DMs to mine the last frontier of genuine engagement signal. What was once a marketing playbook has turned into a game that’s been redesigned around extracting more value from creators while returning less.

Tomorrow, hundreds of thousands of people will march again under “No Kings.”

Yes, it’s a protest against our government and president here in the United States.

But it’s not just about them.

The very same kind of rot that people are protesting in the streets is exactly what’s eating brands alive right now.

No, really - the same power dynamics, the same disconnect, the same people at the top making decisions they will never, ever have to feel the consequences of.

And every single one of us sees it. So can we start calling it out like we need to be?

My glimpse inside the machine

I’ve witnessed first hand a brand get eaten alive before, and it wasn’t pretty.

Earlier on in my career, I took a job as a Social Strategist at a global advertising agency.

And on my first day I was assigned to a brand (rhymes with Mapri Bun 🙃) that was having a full blown PR crisis.

They were getting obliterated on social, outed through the press, and moms, their target demo, were foaming at the mouth. My nights and weekends were subsequently spent on war room style calls with my internal team and the client.

Candidly, our agency team had one recommendation: address this head on. Acknowledge what’s going on. And do it now before it gets worse.

But the brand’s leadership team was like “Nah, we’re good.”

They felt that pulling a “look over here” campaign and consistently pushing out other stories, initiatives, and any other distractions would be better for the brand.

A year or so later, it was reported that the brand’s sales declined 6%. And to this day, their customers haven’t forgotten what happened (it’s been 13 years…)

I still think about the brand more than I’d like to admit (to be honest, it was an absolutely miserable time in my life) because that chaos turned out to be a very clear example of something I see all of the time now - stalling, bandaiding, and doing everything except addressing and fixing the problem at hand.

If you’ve ever experienced something similar as a corporate employee, hold that thought - I’m about to come back to you.

The consolidation trap

Brands have historically been able to hang out in the background, run their ad spend, and stay “nice.” They’ve never had to have an actual stance on anything, because nobody’s ever demanded one. They’re just brands, after all!

But what most teams fail to accept is that the brands most people think they’re buying from aren’t actually who they say they are.

Even the brands we’ve come to love, the ones that have felt authentic, built by founders with real values and a real vision, get acquired. Just look at beloved Siete Foods, who sold to PepsiCo for $1.2 billion.

Once you get absorbed into the bigger machine, you have to play by the bigger machine’s rules. And a lot of that means not talking about the very things that made your brand matter to people in the first place.

The court vs. the king

In 2026 bigger brands are floundering. They haven’t learned how to manage a brand when customers are actually researching what’s going on behind the curtain.

The reason these brands get stuck is structural, but it mirrors exactly what’s happening in the government.

Inside these companies, you have people doing the actual work - social media teams, marketing teams, etc. who are incredibly tapped into what’s happening culturally and socially. They’re often younger. And they’re often the ones talking to customers in real time.

And then higher up on the totem pole, you have the people with the actual decision-making power. Often a different generation, different values, different lived experiences, and critically, different financial incentives.

These are the people deciding that the brand should be donating millions to lobbying. They’re the ones actively making decisions that are incongruent with their customers’ values.

When someone on the social media team raises a flag and says “hey, I don’t think we should do this,” someone with more authority can, and will, shut it down.

The social media manager trying to do their job is like the equivalent of a local representative trying to do right by their constituents inside a fundamentally broken system.

Neither of them are *directly* the problem - they’re just on an island, stranded, and flailing their hands.

So it comes down to this:

Brands don’t just simply fail because of a bad campaign. They fail because the people who understand the brand’s customers have little to no power - and the people WITH the power are too insulated to care about the implications.

This is happening everywhere

Let me show you what this looks like in real time when there’s a disconnect from consumer-facing or consumer-managing roles and leadership decision-making.

Wendy’s big donations reveal

If you’re in the industry, you know that Wendy’s has long been a social media darling. They’re famous for jumping into cultural conversations, roasting competitors, and playing the “cool brand” persona.

But three days ago, this post went viral on Threads:

A Threads user surfaced data from Goods Unite Us showing that Wendy’s donates 89% of its political contributions to Republican candidates. The post has blown up with over 537K views, 13K likes, and 1,200 comments.

Plus, this very telling comment “You know it’s true when @wendys did not reply”

Well, it’s because Wendy’s social media manager can’t say a peep. They’re not the ones who decided to make those donations, they’re just trying to earn a paycheck.

Can Wendy’s be the cool, fun brand on social AND the brand that’s quietly funneling money to candidates who are becoming more and more unpopular? Increasingly, no.

Sephora’s AI enshittification

Brands aren’t just getting called out over politics, either.

Sephora announced this week that they’re launching an app inside of ChatGPT to “enhance the experience for their customers.” Uh, ok?

This corporate slop probably sounded great to those at the top, but to the surprise of literally no one, us peasants instantly saw right through it.

Everyone knows what “AI-enhanced experience” actually means in 2026: you’re about to make it harder for me to talk to a human. You’re stripping out the thing I actually value about your brand and replacing it with a chatbot so that you can cut costs and “impress” shareholders.

People aren’t dumb. They’ve watched this playbook at every major company.

And if you want to see just how thin the AI veneer really is:

Someone asked Chipotle’s customer service chatbot to help them write a Python script to reverse a linked list, and the bot did it, then cheerfully asked if they’d like to start with “a burrito, bowl, or something else today”.

Anthropic buries its own bad news

The tech companies selling the AI aren’t immune, either.

Anthropic, the company behind Claude, has been running a public narrative around being “responsible” and “ethical”.

They recently made headlines for refusing to sign a military contract with the Pentagon. Noble. Heroic, even!

Meanwhile, paying customers noticed this week that Claude had been quietly degraded. And instead of telling them directly, you know, through an email, blog post, or anything official - Anthropic had someone post a quiet confirmation in the Claude subreddit.

Ah, yes. This looks like the same “look over here” strategy, or lack thereof, that we’ve all become accustomed to.

What a nice roundabout way to say “we’ve cut your usage” without actually saying it.

More to MAC’s lipstick

And then there’s MAC Cosmetics, who posted what I’m sure they thought would be the most harmless engagement bait imaginable:

Maybe you think MAC didn’t do anything “wrong” in the traditional sense, and that it’s an innocent post.

But that’s exactly my point - you don’t have permission to play it cool when your parent company has baggage that everyone’s tracking.

This is about you, too

If you work in corporate this is about you, too.

I don’t mean that in a theatrical way, I mean - have you ever softened a readout because you already knew what leadership was willing to hear?

Have you ever helped sell something in you didn’t *really* believe in because the machine was moving and you didn’t feel like getting flattened that week?

I definitely have. Most of us have.

We tell ourselves that we’re just “managing up”, but really we’re just smoothing over the consequences of those in charge by shielding them from their own BAD CALLS.

I know you have a salary to make, it’s how you earn a living, you just want to get in, come out of one more workday unscathed, and go home. The job market sucks anyway…

But I want you to think seriously about this. If you’re willing to go to a protest, potentially get profiled by Palantir or shackled by ICE - then when it comes to your job, what are you willing to risk to help close the gap?

As you can see from the march before, the crowds are made up of individuals who decided to make their voice heard.

Staying quiet has a cost too. It’s just a cost that gets charged to the brand, the customers, and eventually (if we’re being honest) your own credibility.

Something worth thinking about.

No kings, anywhere

The brands getting clobbered right now all share the same structural problem: there’s a gap between the kings and everyone else.

The public-facing personality says one thing, but the decision makers behind the curtain do another. And normal people, who now have the tools, data, and receipts, know that brands are lying.

I’m not asking brands to commit to one political side or the other - that’s not what this post is about. Wendy’s isn’t getting called out because ALL of their customers are Democrats.

They’re getting called out because the brand is performing a charismatic, down to earth, relatable personality that doesn’t match its own reality. THAT’S the violation.

Sephora isn’t getting tomatoed in the comments section because people hate technology. They’re catching slack because people can now smell a cost-cutting move from a mile away.

I’ve talked about brands needing EQ and PQ, but those are useless without structural integrity. You can have the most culturally aware social team in the world, but that doesn’t matter if the higher ups are writing checks that contradict everything the brand is saying online.

No Kings is bigger than the kings themselves. It’s really about the gap between what people in power say they’ll do and what they actually do.

Tomorrow, it’ll be aimed at the government, but next week after the march, it’ll go back to being aimed at brands.

It’s all the same at the end of the day - do you mean what you say, or is it all just one big performance?

Which brands do you see right now facing the biggest disparity between how they portray themselves to be, and who they really are? Let me know in the comments.

Brands are taking matters into their own hands.

For most of the last decade, a brand’s attention playbook has become standard - build a brand channel, hire a community manager, post content, hope the algorithms show it to people, etc.

And if you want media coverage, you write a formal press release that’s fully vetted by an internal PR spokesperson and/or the C-suite before self-publishing to various wires while pitching a few journalists on the side.

Then you keep your fingers crossed that someone, somewhere picks it up.

Now, in 2026, that model has broken down.

Mostly because much of it is just ungodly slow (I used to write and send press releases out in my first job, and I would’ve rather watched paint dry.) By the time a press release gets picked up (if it even gets picked up) the news cycle has already changed.

Even social media brand channels feel like a utility more than anything, as they’ve been relegated to running ads or posting product updates.

So because of that, brands are doing something different right now to earn more attention, faster: they’re becoming the media themselves.

I experienced this firsthand when I was on the digital team at Red Bull Media House 10+ years ago, which built an entire media company inside the beverage brand. Athletes, musicians and the like were the brand’s mouthpiece, in addition to the brand’s owned channels.

At the time it felt like we were an outlier, but now it’s becoming the blueprint.

What’s actually happening

I caught a post on my LinkedIn feed tonight from Noah Greenberg about software company Gusto’s latest job posting, and it only further solidified this new direction.

He mentioned that Gusto is hiring a Chief Economist, someone who can essentially become the external, media-facing face of their proprietary small business economic data.

Zillow already has a Chief Economist who testifies before Congress and appears on national TV, and Indeed has an entire Hiring Lab research team publishing original labor market data that journalists now use as a primary resource.

But economists represent just a fraction of these kinds of new media roles. WSJ ran a story in December 2025 about how LinkedIn job postings that mentioned the word “storyteller” doubled this past year. Multiple major companies across the board are looking for Corporate Editorial and Storytelling roles, many of which are attracting former journalists.

Notion has even taken it one step further and combined their entire comms, social, and influencer teams into one storytelling unit.

And then there’s a third lane that has nothing to do with data at all…

Gap has created a new role, Chief Entertainment Officer, and hired a former Paramount exec to fill it. They call this strategy “fashiontainment” but it’s less marketing and more licensing and media from external agencies/partners to internal ideation and strategy.

The takeaway here is that brands are building their own media arms right now. Whether the raw material is data, storytelling, or entertainment, doesn’t matter - it’s that this structural shift is happening.

Why now?

These hires might feel random, but really, they’re a direct response to something that’s broken.

The traditional media landscape as we know it has collapsed, i.e. the infrastructure that’s been used to tell the stories.

Take the dismal job market for journalists right now. At least 3,400 journalist jobs were cut in 2025, and most recently, WaPo laid off a third of their newsroom last month. Print circulation has fallen 70% since 2005, and traffic to news websites has dropped over 40% in the last four years.

And this is where it gets particularly interesting, because at the same time media is contracting, there’s now a huge pool of experienced journalists who suddenly need new homes. These people are experts at telling stories, and brands are giving them a soft landing.

On the flip side, the surge of AI has enabled every company with a pulse to churn out press releases and blog posts at the blink of an eye. And while many of them do it, it doesn’t make the information itself any better. We haven’t even hit peak AI slop yet, and the Internet is already drowning in it.

So brands are stuck between a media ecosystem that’s broken and unreliable, and a content ecosystem that’s too generic to stand out in.

Which raises the real question: what do these brands actually have to offer that makes any of this worthwhile?

The first party data advantage

Now that search engines and LLMs can instantly synthesize any information that’s publicly available, the only information that has real value is

1. contextually relevant, real world experience and

2. 100% proprietary/exclusive data

And it’s not just data that isn’t public yet - it’s data that’s owned by a brand that they can put their stamp on.

Look at Walmart. They know what people are buying (or not buying) before the government releases any consumer spending reports - it’s just that their proprietary data usually lives in a dashboard with an internal team, and now it can be leveraged as raw material for a smarter media distribution strategy.

A typical press release sits on the wire and says “Hi, pick us up (if you’d like!) our story is right here.”

Now, a chief economist or storyteller can say “This is timely, and it’s critical you talk about this right now because of XYZ.”

Suddenly, the brand is proactive by being reactive to headlines and giving publications something they can’t get anywhere else - all while packaging it in a way that makes a journalist’s job 10x easier.

To be clear, this isn’t a spokesperson

Brand spokespeople are essentially external HR. They exist to protect the company, and they’re usually very well media trained to not rock the boat. That’s their job.

A brand spokesperson protects the brand. These new roles extend the brand.

Think about it: someone in one of these new roles can go on TV, write for trade publications, pitch journalists (maybe even their former colleagues) speak at conferences, write a Substack, etc. the list goes on. This turns a single expert hire into legs of distribution that a singular brand channel could never provide on its own.

I’ve talked before about brands needing both EQ (emotional intelligence) and PQ (political intelligence) and the spokesperson model has neither, because it was designed to be deliberately inert.

These new roles, though, require both: the emotional intelligence to connect with audiences authentically, and the political intelligence to navigate what to say, when, and how far to go.

Where there’s friction

This isn’t going to be smooth sailing for brands, though.

By handpicking which proprietary data to surface and which to keep quiet, these companies are behaving like journalists - a profession that’s long been held to integrity and transparency standards.

But now, brands are actively choosing to shape narratives using their own selectively presented data. Either that, or brands leverage these roles to provide exclusive commentary on current events.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with that, so to speak, as it’s what PR has always done. BUT when you dress it up as a “Chief Economist” role, it definitely carries noticeable weight.

This can absolutely have implications on how the brand is perceived, not just by media - but by customers, regulators, and competitors.

Beyond that, brands are used to having total control. Hiring someone and telling them to have strong, data-backed opinions is nice…until that hire publishes or broadcasts an off-the-cuff take that angers a client, an investor, even the CEO.

Look at what happened when Redfin’s Chief Economist publicly contradicted Zillow’s decision to remove climate data, using her own company’s data to make the case. This is exactly the kind of thing that makes these roles valuable, and exactly the kind of thing that makes a legal team sweat bullets.

The value of this strategy is also the risk. This person shouldn’t sound like a corporate mouthpiece, because that’s not what gets real coverage. But real people have opinions that don’t always align with the traditionally corporate narrative.

Lastly, by hiring someone into these roles, their face becomes part of the brand. Like it or not, if you successfully build someone into a recognized media figure, they become associated with your company the same way a CEO is. Retention is going to be a sticking point, not just operationally, but from a fundamental branding perspective.

It also begs the question of - does this person actually want to be the face of the brand for a sustained period? Traditionally when we read an article, we might rarely, if ever, notice the journalist’s name or avatar among the story.

But this strategy thrusts these roles into the spotlight, giving them an entirely different relationship to visibility.

This gets even more complicated when you’re a smaller brand without the resources or the reputation to absorb these risks.

What about for smaller brands?

The brands I mentioned earlier like Gusto and Zillow sit on datasets that are, by and large, culturally significant (jobs, housing, etc.) but what if you’re a small brand without a massive dataset?

Yes, you probably don’t need a $250K salaried Chief Economist. But you DO need to think about who your version of this is, or could be.

It could be someone in the C-suite who’s willing to be the external-facing voice, someone with real opinions and access to data that your vertical cares about.

Or you could look at creator relationships differently. Instead of a traditional ambassador or creator partner posting sponsored content, what happens when you give a credible creator actual access to your proprietary data?

For example, I’ve had a long-standing content partnership with Tracksuit (love the team and the product, not sponsoring this post either) and I’m able to produce content for my channels that leverages Tracksuit’s proprietary data.

And then there’s the talent pipeline that traditional media is creating right now. Former journalists in your industry who have been laid off and are looking for a home where they can still tell the stories they care about, but with the extra boost of data and resources behind them.

Trade publications, industry newsletters, conference stages, and the Substacks that your buyers actually read now become YOUR media network.

You likely have some kind of data or first party information somewhere - the question is, are you willing to turn it into a story that matters?

The bottom line

Branded channels aren’t dead, they’re now just an expectation (in my opinion, as a former community manager and someone who has been in or around social for 16+ years)…

The smart brands winning the next phase are the ones building distribution through expertise - experts, creators, storytellers, etc. - who carry the brand’s credibility without sounding like they’ve gone through 12 rounds of excruciating legal approval.

These experts need to be given the tools to provide real, tangible value. Think education, insight, commentary, proprietary data that makes someone’s life or work better.

I’ve said for years that value dictates your visibility (whether you’re a brand or a creator) and that’s never been more true than right now.

The new strategy to win eyeballs at scale is creating content that actually matters, delivered by people audiences trust, using data that no other person or platform has access to.

Comment below: have you seen this shift happening in your line of work or industry? Or have you observed other brands doing this right now? Do you think it’s actually working?

This is the second part of a series speaking to my personal marketing and human behavior predictions for this year, so if you want to see the subsequent posts, make sure you’re subscribed!

After digesting a mountain of 2026 predictions, I feel like the ”AI is out, human is in” take is already becoming a dated observation (and that’s fine - it doesn’t make it any less relevant!)

We know people are tired of AI. We see the backlash taking place.

But if you want to actually predict the future of marketing, you have to look past the “vibe shift” and look at economics of attention.

You hear the term “history repeats itself” constantly. In marketing, I say that consumers repeat themselves.

Biology informs our habits - and when an environment becomes oversaturated with one thing, the human brain naturally craves the opposite.

So then, predicting the future isn’t some magical psychic quality (I wish it was) - it’s about having the ability to identify scarcity.

In 2024 and 2025, the market became saturated with perfection. So inevitably in 2026, the market will correct itself by demanding organic friction.

Let’s talk about how the pendulum works, and why we’re swinging toward imperfections now and in the future.

The history of the pendulum

To understand where we’re going, just look at last 70+ years. The industry’s creative output is ALWAYS dictated by a pendulum swinging between control and chaos.

• 1950s: polished, homogenized, perfect families

• 60s/70s: the swing to grit, rebellion, and counter culture

• 2010s: “clean girl” aesthetic, the perfectly curated grid, millennial pink walls

• 2020s: grunge revival, the “photo dump,” and now, the anti AI aesthetic

AI didn’t create this drastic “change” in our behavior, despite what some people might think. Instead, it just pulled the pendulum back to the extreme right (perfection), which triggered a necessary rebellion to the left (messiness).

The inflation of perfection

Because AI has democratized “perfect,” perfection has suffered from hyper inflation. it’s now…kind of worthless?

In 2015, a flawless Instagram photo signaled status, taste, and effort. There were truly no possible shortcuts toward creating that kind of content at scale.

In 2026, a flawless image signals that there’s some kind of automation involved.

Now if skin texture looks too smooth, we assume it’s a filter. If copy reads too grammatically perfect, we assume it’s ChatGPT. If a video is too polished, we assume it’s a deepfake.

So where does the value go? It goes to friction. Blurriness, typos, bad lighting, and raw texture are now just CAPTCHAs for reality. As it stands right now, they’re the only way we can verify that a human was ACTUALLY involved.

The face of 2026 (i.e. bio signatures)

Interestingly enough, this shift from perfection to friction will also show up, quite literally, on our faces.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the iconic book Making Faces by Kevyn Aucoin from the 90s. If you’re a millennial, you remember seeing it as a coffee table book everywhere - it was THE book about unique faces, features, and the makeup that enhances them.

But for the last decade, we’ve been chasing “Instagram Face”, e.g. fillers, filters, and symmetry.

So as I noted above, looking “perfect” will no longer be the goal, because looking perfect now creates a psychological distance. It assimilates you with the bots.

So the pendulum swings back to bio signatures. Yes - micro expressions, crows feet, smile lines, chipped teeth, gray hairs, etc. These features will signal that you’ve experienced things that an LLM hasn’t.

Faces will be like the canvas for your human experience - a beautiful portrayal of stories, memories, and just living life that cannot be recreated.

The reversal of enshittification

This rejection of “perfect” isn’t just happening to our faces…it’s also happening to our relationship with brands as well.

You’ve likely heard the term “enshittification” - platforms and brands making their experience worse to extract maximum value from users (more ads, more algorithms, less connection). But I’m already starting to see this pendulum swing from extraction to nurturing.

You might’ve seen Coke’s recent holiday campaign, which was generated entirely by AI. It was technically “perfect,” but it was emotionally dead. I was bored. It was expected, and as expected, it became another brand peacocking its efficiency to shareholders while alienating consumers.

On the contrary, Polaroid anticipated this shift perfectly, way back last summer. Their campaign celebrated graininess, physical media, and the inability to “undo” a photo. They leaned into the permanence and imperfection of reality.

If brands want to get ahead in 2026, they need to stop chasing efficiency and start chasing the inefficiency of being human as a way to nurture and connect.

Inefficiency is the new luxury

So how do you operationalize all of this as a founder or brand?

Well, in a world where I can generate 1,000 emails in a second, a single handwritten note becomes a luxury good. Why? Because it represents the one resource AI cannot replicate: human time.

“Doing things the hard way” is about to earn brands and creators massive respect.

• Instead of a mass digital invite, it’s a physical card

• Instead of mass seeded PR packages to 500 influencers, it’s 10 extremely curated packages based on deep research of that person’s ACTUAL life

• Instead of a flawless AI avatar, it’s a founder showing up on video with messy hair and a real opinion

This is the core of what I talked about months ago, what I’m calling this greater movement around slow marketing. In an automated world, doing things slowly is now the ultimate flex.

What comes next?

Smart brands and founders in 2026 will use AI for the boring stuff (backend, data sorting, the logistics, etc.) But the good ones will aggressively remove AI from the consumer-facing experiences, acknowledging the above.

But remember: the pendulum never stops.

Right now, the goal is friction. We crave that messy, raw, and human experience because we’re drowning in synthetic perfection.

However if history (and consumer psychology) holds true, this phase won’t last forever.

Eventually, “messy” will become performative. And when the world becomes too chaotic and unpolished, we’ll crave the structure and polish once again.

But that’s a problem for 2030. For this year, the strategy is clear: prove you’re real.

This is the first part of a series speaking to my personal marketing and human behavior predictions for 2026, so if you want to see the subsequent posts, make sure you’re subscribed!

Everyone talks a big game about quitting. Deleting Instagram, buying flip phones, and moving to a cabin to touch grass.

But if that’s true, then why did global time spent on social hit record highs recently?

Are people actually leaving, or are they just making performative announcements? And why are people talking about quitting on social media ON social media? Does that seem weird to you?

Since I’m an annoying marketer, I’ll admit that we’re trained to watch what people do, not what they say. And when you layer biology on top of that, these behaviors make perfect sense.

Humans aren’t (intentional) hypocrites, we’re just animals following our programming.

Understanding this is key to grasping why the offline fantasy is just that - a fantasy, and what we can learn to do instead.

The endless dopamine trap

Humans don’t just like novelty - we’re completely addicted to the anticipation of it.

Neuroscience distinguishes between “liking” (pleasure) and “wanting” (drive). Dopamine controls the wanting, the chemical of the chase.

And research on reward shows that dopamine spikes when we anticipate a reward, not when we get it.

Once something becomes familiar, our dopamine drops. Your romantic partner becomes predictable. That one viral video you watched 5x suddenly gets buried in your saves.

Naval Ravikant nails this in The Almanack. You fantasize about a new car and the desire consumes you, until you acquire it - then the desire starts to flatline.

Whether it’s a new car or a TikTok feed, we’re conditioned to keep hunting for the possibility of satisfaction, not the satisfaction itself.

Why humans romanticize the “before times”

When the chase for a better future state gets exhausting (like all of 2025), we switch directions and pine for the past.

We look back to decades like the 90s - suburban neighborhoods, bikes on lawns, zero digital notifications, and think “wow, those were the days.”

We numb out, rewatching idyllic rom coms, and chase the aesthetics of a digital-less decade.

But this is a mindfuck, because we want the feeling of a slower life, but we aren’t willing to give up our access of a fast one.

I notice this especially with the migration to Substack. We say we crave something “slower”, but the homepage feed instills the same fast paced social media dynamics, just on a different platform.

Another example is the resurgence of digital cameras. Gen Z buying Canon PowerShots isn’t a rejection of digital life, it’s just tactile novelty. It’s their way of getting a fresh dopamine hit from an old format, a simple vibe shift. Nothing more.

Digital is now just the baseline

So time travel isn’t an option. The neural pathways for modern digital reward are already built. Unless we all collectively agree to smash our phones, or there’s some kind of international no-screen mandate, the digital thread is permanent.

But because we’re status-seeking monkeys, even if our behaviors make us do one thing, we’ll still try to flip the script.

Which is where signaling theory comes into play.

If everyone is online, then being online has zero status value. The new luxury becomes disconnection. It signals “I’m so rich in real world community that I actually don’t need the internet.”

But here’s the irony: a signal only works if the tribe sees it.

Take the recent phoneless party in LA that spread across social media. Did people attend and then disappear? No, quite the opposite. They went, and then immediately logged onto social to post the evidence.

Party-goers were foraging for social proof to show they were “better” than the digital masses, all while using the exact tools they tried to leave behind.

(This isn’t a knock on the party, I actually think it’s what we’ll see more of, which I’ll touch on later.)

Why we can’t just “log off”

So if we can’t really leave, and we can’t just smash our phones…why is all of this so hard?

The answer comes down to simple energy conservation.

Social baseline theory is something I discuss often with my students. It suggests that the human brain expects access to social relationships to regulate metabolic energy.

This means if you’re alone, your brain is on high alert, scanning for threats.

But in a group? You offload vigilance to the tribe (i.e. safety in numbers.)

COVID stripped our physical third spaces, sending our brains into a panic. Going online was really the path of least resistance to lower that stress.

We didn’t migrate to digital communities because we were addicted to screens. We did it because our brains are just addicted to safety.

Migrating to niche, algorithmic micro-communities is simply our brain’s way of trying to find a home amidst a city of chaos.

The toxicity paradox

Just because these behaviors are “natural” doesn’t mean they’re healthy.

Remember, we’re biologically wired to crave sugar and fat because calories used to be scarce. Now, we have grocery stores. We’re biologically wired to crave social information. Now, we have algorithms.

Social media is just the processed food of connection.

It mimics the thing we need (social proximity) but strips out the nutrients (eye contact, touch, vulnerability) and pumps it full of additives (comparison, polarization, etc.)

So we get stuck in a cruel loop:

1. We feel anxious and alone

2. We log on to find the tribe, or a tribe

3. We encounter toxicity/comparison

4. We scroll more to find the relief we missed

When I say we “can’t just leave” I’m not saying that social media is a utopia, or defending it in any way.

I’m saying that it’s a super normal stimulus for us - a biological trap that’s difficult to escape, as it mimics the exact thing we need to survive.

Understanding the impulse

Humans aren’t doomed to be depressed scrollers. We just need to stop shaming ourselves for the impulse to connect.

If you go on a digital detox and fail, it’s not because you’re weak. You’re literally just fighting against millions of years of evolution.

Demonizing or trying to burn down the digital house isn’t a solution. Trying to play the game of “I’m not like other social media users” won’t get you very far.

But if the digital space is like a new house, we probably need to stop leaving the front door open.

We don’t need to ditch our screens to find intention, we just need to build intention into our pre-existing digital life.

The evolution of belonging in 2026

As a marketer I have little interest in becoming another dopamine drug dealer.

It’s our duty as brand gatekeepers to stop building for extraction (throttling attention at all costs) and start focusing on nutrition (trying to feed the human need for safety and connection).

So if 2025 was about the need for a digital detox, then 2026 will be the start of our digital flourishing, a more recently studied phenomena.

The vernacular I’ve used around this is called slow marketing (which I’ll be weaving into future posts) which honors the need for balance instead of exploiting addiction.

To foster true belonging next year, smart marketers should understand the following:

Belonging requires barriers

In the era of mass social media, everyone was invited. But as we’ve discussed, psychology says that if everyone is in, nobody feels special.

So we’ll start to see a shift from broad, open-access engagement toward gated intimacy.

This isn’t some kind of exclusivity play - think of it more like building a sub-culture. A vibe wall vs. a paywall.

Substack’s private chat communities do just this, where the price of admission is shared values or specific knowledge. The real measure of success here is not followers, but the density of your private group chats.

Belonging requires contribution

We’ve been marketing to audiences as if they’re passive consumers. But people don’t want to be passive, they want to contribute.

Smart brands will stop focusing so much on creating content for people to consume, and put more energy toward creating contexts for people to contribute.

This means giving your community a job, as belonging is forged through shared effort. Think of co-creating and launching a product with your community, for example. People want to feel like they’re able to build the house with you.

Belonging requires safety

Re: social baseline theory, the brain seeks community to lower its stress. Most modern marketing does the opposite, though - it uses FOMO, urgency, and anxiety to drive attention.

(This is why I’ve talked about there being a shift from the attention economy to a trust economy earlier this year…)

Your goal now is to become a regulator, not a disrupter.

If the rest of the internet feels like a high cortisol threat, you should be the much needed exhale. Belonging in 2026 is reserved for the marketers and brands who can make people feel safe.

This means focusing on consistency instead of virality, as well as distinct, predictable rituals that ground people amidst a chaotic year.

The bottom line

We can’t rewire millions of years of biology. Humans will always seek out dopamine, their tribe, and hierarchies for belonging.

The marketers who succeed in 2026 won’t be the ones encouraging or participating in the doomscrolling or ragebaiting (thank god..)

Instead, they’ll be the ones creating rooms where people feel calm.

And doesn’t that sound actually…really nice?

Let me know in the comments:

Have you been able to successfully go offline…ever?

What frustrates you the most about your phone and/or screentime?

Is there ever an option for more intentionality?

Last week, someone left this comment on one of my videos.

Unlike other comments I’ve received on social, this one stung.

Me? Manipulative, just to make a few bucks? I criticize marketing all of the time. I’m basically anti modern marketing at this point.

(Yes, I took this much too personally at the time.)

What was hard for me to separate was that this wasn’t actually a personal attack, despite my initial reaction.

It was simply someone’s observation of who marketers have become.

And that’s what made it especially shitty.

Let me be clear about something…

I’m not writing in defense of marketers. I’m not asking you or anyone else to feel sorry for us.

Some marketers are in fact, absolutely vicious. They believe brands must demolish competition at all costs, that “growth above everything” is a literal religion, and that deception is actually just “being smart”.

Trust me, those marketers exist. They’re thriving, even, making bank, and shamelessly climbing on top of their colleagues’ backs to fight for their next promotion.

But I became a marketer because I love psychology. I love learning about human behavior, what moves people, and how stories connect us.

I studied Journalism in college, and it’s there where I learned the importance of ethics and transparency.

So when it came to marketing, I thought it meant that you helped good brands get noticed. Even my senior capstone project was working on a nonprofit for veterans.

Throughout my corporate career, I dreamt about helping founders who deserved attention and small businesses with real value.

And now I can’t help but think that might’ve been a little naive on my part, because the playing field for brands is anything but level. Especially right now.

The game is so beyond rigged

We need to talk about what’s actually going on.

And trust me when I say that I don’t bring up these stats to make this a partisan issue. These are just numbers to help paint the picture of the world we live in right now.

Four new billionaires minted every single week while 3.6 billion people (44% of the global population) live on less than $6.85 a day, a number unchanged since 1990.

60% of the billionaire wealth is unearned - it’s simply just inheritance, monopoly power, and crony connections. No innovation or merit.

And 18% of all billionaire wealth comes directly from monopolies. Amazon controls an overwhelming majority of online sales. Even Google has bought its way to dominance, despite anti-trust rulings.

More and more conversation is surrounding who will become the world’s first trillionaire.

This is the world we as marketers operate in now. And this is why marketing has become so toxic, lifeless, and soul-sucking.

There is no marketplace of ideas anymore. We’re marketing behemoths as underdogs and selling the illusion of choice in a system that’s trying to eliminate it.

The game is so rigged, and our job as marketers is to convince people that we have no idea, anyway, look over here at this really cool Black Friday sale! Buy buy buy!

So when people get angry about shrinkflation, inflation and tariff costs (which end up coming out the wallets of consumers) their blame is put toward marketers who manage the frontlines.

And you know what? It makes sense.

Because look at what’s happened

In February 2024 Kellogg’s CEO Gary Pilnick went on CNBC to tell cash-strapped families to eat cereal for dinner to save money. “Give chicken the night off!”

This man was making over $4 million a year at the time. He suggested families struggling with 30-year-high food costs buy his $7 boxes of Frosted Flakes for dinner.

When asked if this might’ve come across wrong, he didn’t even flinch - instead, he doubled down. “It’s landing really well right now.” meanwhile, TikTok was buzzing with people talking about how this was “corporate gaslighting” at its finest.

And you know who had to clean up the damage from this campaign and pretend like nothing happened? Marketing teams.

Not the CEO who made the statement or the board who conveniently turned the other direction. The marketers trying to salvage what’s left of brand trust.

Let’s also look at the American Eagle campaign. CMO Craig Brommers said it was like being “at the epicenter of what looked like a crisis”.

But then he talked about how they measured success by stock performance, first and foremost. Not whether the campaign built genuine brand love. Are we really surprised? (I should also note that during this fireside chat, they purposely didn’t take questions from the audience…hmmm)

This year, Southwest ended 54 years of free checked bags. CEO Bob Jordan’s explanation was that the airline had a “tremendous opportunity to meet current and future customer needs”.

Except zero customers wanted this? Hello?

The real reason was because investors demanded it. Other airlines had made $7.3 billion in baggage fees alone in 2024. Southwest was just “leaving money on the table.”

Cool, so just say that you want more money then. Don’t insult everyone’s intelligence with corporate speak about “customer needs”. And then make marketers do your dirty work.

See the pattern here?

Every single time it’s the same playbook - the C-suite focuses on prioritizing stock gains, the plan trickles down to the marketing team who has to force “customer first” language, and when it blows up, that same team picks up the pieces.

Marketers are like the clean up crew of capitalism

CEO makes tone deaf statements? Marketers clean it up.

Companies prioritize stock prices over people? Marketers and PR teams (specifically below the CMO level) are forced to spin it.

A brand exploits workers and price-gouges customers? Marketers push the “we care about you” messaging.

Monopolies consolidate power and destroy competition? Marketers talk about “innovation” and “choice”.

Decision-making for the brand comes top down, instead of asking people who are on the front lines with customers and employees what should be done.

I say this over and over again, but people aren’t stupid. They clearly see it, feel it, and are experiencing it every single day.

But now with social media, employees post videos, customers share screenshots, and the receipts are everywhere. There’s no PRing your way out of bad faith anymore.

I’ve worked for my fair share of shitty, righteous brands and bosses. I mean come on, I spent 12+ years in corporate.

So I’ve written and re-written corporate speak, crafted campaigns to bandaid issues customers were having, talked to PR teams at all hours of the day and night, and so much more.

This is truly what goes on behind the scenes.

Sadly, while I didn’t create the system, at some point in my career, I agreed to sell it.

Most marketers are complicit. I was complicit.

But might we also be scapegoats for a system we didn’t create? Possibly. Both things can be true.

What marketing could be

While the state of marketing feels dismal, there are also glimmers of hope for the future - or, at least, what many marketers have always wanted marketing to be.

Just look at Zohran Mamdani’s NYC mayoral campaign. He won by (simply) talking about what actually matters to people right now: affordability, rent freezes, free buses, and universal childcare. No corporate speak or shareholder values.

People celebrated this campaign because it connected them to everyday problems they face. The campaign validated the majority of the city’s honest struggles.

That’s what marketing could be if it wasn’t shackled to a system designed to extract maximum value from people while giving them minimum respect.

But what the current environment does is give us enough contrast to acknowledge that collectively, people want a better way. Better, honest solutions to the problems they face.

And with that shift, more brands, leaders, and teams will emerge to authentically satisfy that demand.

Not in a way that drives sales at all costs or bows down to the stock market, but in a way that creates an ecosystem of true fulfillment and integrity.

What happens now

I can’t fix this, and I can’t break up monopolies or redistribute wealth or force CEOs to stop being out of touch assholes.

But I can refuse to participate in the deception.

I can work with brands and people who have integrity and care about customers as humans and not just revenue sources.

Now that I’ve been out of corporate for a bit, I can tell you that these brands do exist.

On top of that, when I see marketing that's clearly just spin for corporate greed, you know I’m going to call it out on social.

If you’re angry about being manipulated by brands - good!

The system isn’t going to fix itself. Monopolies won’t break themselves up. Billionaires will even become trillionaires.

So when you see marketing that’s clearly spin for greed, talk about it. Share it.

When marketers defend the indefensible, hold them accountable.

And when another marketer says that they didn’t sign up for this, ask them what they’re going to do about it.

That’s the work we all have to put in right now to see change.

Let me know in the comments:

Does this resonate with you as a marketer or non-marketer?

What do you think is the best way to encourage change?

Where do we go from here?

There’s a rumor going viral on TikTok right now.

The more you post, the more the algorithm will reward you.

Seems simple enough, right? The algorithms need content, because more content means more engagement, longer sessions, more ads served, more money made.

Except that if you create content in any capacity, the thought of posting even more is laughable. Because you’re already on a freaking hamster wheel.

And what’s worse - you can’t afford to stop.

So what’s actually going on? Is every person who creates content just stuck in a revolving door forever?

How social media algorithms work in 2025

Capitalism has incentivized social platforms to prioritize attention above all.

While users try to stave off gambling-like addictions, creators, the true machines behind the algorithms, have grown more frustrated than ever.

And that’s because traditional social media platforms have “black box” algorithms, meaning there’s no REAL way to know how they work.

At a high level this is necessary - nobody wants to watch content gamed for the algorithms.

But this perpetuates a never-ending cycle of stress and addiction for users and creators.

AND it facilitates a system where creators are always posting so as to not die an algorithmic death.

Does this mean we hit a dead end? No.

I decided to conduct research far and wide and get to the bottom of what the algorithms are doing right now.

Here’s what I found:

Research shows that over 50% of an Instagram user’s feed at any given point is populated with content from accounts that they don’t follow.

Yes, more than half of what users see comes from strangers. Meaning - follower counts are increasingly irrelevant. Creators are competing in a recommendation lottery where every post fights against infinite content from accounts the algorithm thinks your followers might like.

Head of Instagram Mosseri has also confirmed that “sends per reach” i.e. how often your posts get DMed/shared relative to impressions carries heavy algorithmic weight.

That’s right. Not likes, not saves - whether strangers share it, at the end of the day, determines whether a creator’s content is “feed worthy”. So followers can’t determine the success of posts alone. Aside from Stories, followers just don’t matter that much, according to data.

Beyond Instagram, platforms are tweaking their algorithms weekly. In the last three weeks LinkedIn users have noted their reach absolutely tank. And between late 2021 and 2023, 95% of creators saw their reach on the platform drop 50%. This happens often with algorithm changes, there’s no heads up. Call it the TikTok FYP effect.

Speaking of TikTok - Buffer recently conducted a mega study analyzing 11.4 million TikTok uploads from 150,000 accounts - and discovered that posting 2-5 times per week generates on average 17% boost in views per post - the most efficient gain per post out of any posting frequency.

In fact, posting 11+ times weekly only nets creators a 34% total increase in reach. So technically, by posting more, you’re working harder for diminishing returns.

Lastly, Meta’s Q4 2024 Transparency Report revealed that 97.9% of Facebook views targeted posts without external links - up from 86.5% in Q3 2021. They’re systematically suppressing anything that takes users off-platform, another trend that is noted across platforms like Instagram and TikTok.

While each platform is different, the patterns are mostly the same: more creator content equals more feed options, more ad insertion opportunities, and better targeting data for personalization.

So even without explicit confirmation from the platforms themselves, we can gather that social media algorithms likely prioritize the following in 2025:

• Suggested content, as it garners more engagement and attention than just a feed of people you follow (despite what users say they want)

• Highly shareable content (which turns into suggested content)

• Posts without external links

• Creators posting at least somewhat frequently

The platforms train creators to optimize for metrics that don’t serve them while reducing their organic reach to keep them on that hamster wheel.

Who are the biggest losers of social media algorithms?

But what about users? Don’t they suffer the worst effects of social media?

Not entirely.

The creator economy is booming. Research projects that by 2034, creators will grow from $149.4 billion to $1,072.8 billion, a +21.8% CAGR.

Yet somehow, 71% of creators earn less than $30,000 a year.

The demand for creators will continue to expand because the supply of content will increase as more enter the game.

But thanks to the ongoing abundance of content, platforms can increase their “algorithmic demands” without losing content volume.

This means that individual creator reach will continue to decline due to competition. The platforms vastly benefit from this virtuous cycle: organic reach decreases for creators, but there’s more content for ad placements - then the platforms profit, while handing over pennies to creators.

And when I say pennies, I mean literal pennies.

Right now, what we’re witnessing on social media is an extraction economy where platforms and agencies capture value growth while creator compensation stagnates.

The creator economy will hit $1 trillion by 2034. And guess who captures that growth?

Not the 71% of creators earning poverty wages.

Not the 34% making under $5,000 despite working full-time hours.

The platforms bank billions while paying creators poverty wages for the content that makes those billions possible.

These platforms have a monopoly. These platforms are for profit. And right now, there are no mandates that creators be compensated fairly, even though creators are the fuel that keeps these platforms afloat.

In my opinion, social media platforms have become the virtual creator sweatshops of the internet.

Social media isn’t sustainable (for anyone)

The research tells a very clear story outside of the creator disadvantages.

Algorithmic optimization creates documented psychological harm.

One 2025 report from Billion Dollar Boy shows that 52% of creators have experienced burnout, with 37% actively considering leaving content creation altogether.

The primary causes? Creative fatigue (40%….go figure), demanding workloads (31%) and constant screen time (27%).

But financial instability is the top severity factor of those experiencing burnout at 55%.

Creator burnout happens regardless of income level, showing that algorithmic demands, not just money stress, drive creator stress.

Awin’s 2024 study found that 70% of creators identified constant algorithm changes as their top anxiety source, which is higher than any content creation challenge itself.

They’re not stressed about making content. They’re stressed about the invisible, constantly shifting rules that determine whether anyone sees it.

It’s also not just creators, either. BMC Psychiatry published the most rigorous quantitative evidence of social media’s cognitive impact - studying 5,314 people and documenting that platform engagement directly impairs everyday cognitive functioning. Social media users reported significantly higher cognitive failures than non-users.

Both creators and users are at the mercy of unregulated platforms that have structurally incentivized harmful patterns through reach reduction and constantly modified algorithms.

And these algorithms will never care that you’re burned out or need a break - just that you decide to stop paying attention with your eyes or stop feeding it with content.

How to rise above algorithmic dependence

Social media platforms, as noted above, are not dissimilar to slot machines.

And there’s always the hope that your next post as a creator could be “the big one” that makes it. But these feed boosts are fleeting, and often result in very little ROI.

So if you’re a creator genuinely trying to make it, how do you shift from algorithmic dependence to sustainable strategy?

Here’s what actually matters:

Take the rose-colored glasses off about follower counts and recognize that no data anywhere supports that more followers equals better engagement rate or more engagement. It’s a vanity metric that will trap you into thinking you need to post more to get less. I’ve watched accounts with hundreds of thousands of followers get modest likes per post while accounts with small followings actually move product - this is why you have to build a real audience, just not rented attention.

Accept that more content doesn’t equal better results. Spending time creating more content does NOT mean you’re going to have a hit piece on social media. Buffer’s research proves it - posting 2-5x weekly gets you 17% boost per post. Don’t work harder for a tiny bit more of a return.

Not to mention meta analysis from the Journal of Marketing examined 134 studies covering 5,370 brands and found content quality is the strongest predictor of both engagement and sales performance, significantly outweighing posting frequency.

Please note that I’m not talking about cool production value (although it’s nice)…at the heart of this is really storytelling and value.

If you’ve worked with me before, you know how much I harp on content value as the #1 focus. By honing in on the value you can deliver, you’re serving people who need what you know, which ultimately creates a funnel of customers - but in a meaningful, organic way.

Post 2-5 times per week if you can on short-form video/carousel platforms. Not because the algorithms demand it, but because that’s where efficiency peaks.

Strategically diversify your platforms. Instead of only focusing on Instagram, exist on 2-3 platforms that all stem from the same piece of content creation. I call this content cycling so you’re not reinventing the wheel each time.

Focus on gathering first-party data. You don’t own your followers anywhere right now (that will soon change with decentralized social). But you do own your email list.

Before you argue with me about the viability of email, think outside the box for a second. Multiple independent studies document email marketing ROI of $36-42 return per dollar spent.

Email subscribers represent direct access independent of algorithm changes, platform policy shifts, or competitive content flooding.

A creator with 100,000 Instagram followers but zero email subscribers has a rented audience subject to algorithmic volatility. A creator with 10,000 email subscribers has an owned asset that compounds over time.

And technically, Substack (while being under the social platform umbrella) does give you the email addresses of those who subscribe. First-party data collection is important, and the mediums are just evolving.

As a marketer, this is just another shift in a never-ending landscape of attention. Except now I see that the one thing that matters more than attention right now is trust.

And that’s something the platforms have failed to deliver on.

The strategic imperative

This crisis is systemic, not personal. Trust me…you’re not failing. Individual creators cannot solve structural extraction by working harder, even though every social media guru will tell you otherwise.

The platforms need you posting constantly because their business model REQUIRES it. Your business model requires the opposite.

You have a choice: optimize yourself into burnout chasing metrics that don’t pay your rent, or build something that any algorithm simply just cannot touch.

If you don’t diversify and focus on delivering value via quality, an algorithmic death just might be your fate.

But it doesn’t have to be.

2025 will be remembered as the year we watched brand playbooks get completely torched.

no one is safe.

and every piece of content now feels like it’s one draft away from a green screen screenshot deep dive or a trending boycott.

brands aiming for “cultural fluency” risk facing backlash in a world where politics has infiltrated every algorithm.

so what’s actually going on right now?

is it safe to market a brand?

is it worth getting loud? or is it better to stay quiet?

over the last six months I’ve noticed that surviving in this new era requires a fundamental step change beyond just chasing trends.

and in my opinion, it’s the most critical conversation marketers need to be having right now.

the new mandate: defining brand EQ and PQ

brands don’t need more tactics - instead, they need a new framework to survive the next decade.

I’m calling it the EQ/PQ axis. in 2025 and beyond, brands must learn how to operate with a high EQ (emotional quotient) and PQ (political quotient).

let’s start with EQ. broadly speaking, it’s the ability to intuitively understand and manage the emotional landscape of an audience - moving beyond demo data to dig deeper and uncover feelings, anxieties, and aspirations.

on its own, it’s not a radical concept, as smart marketers have championed empathy for years. but what’s different in 2025 is that PQ has raised the stakes of EQ to a life or death level.

a brand with high EQ isn’t just going to launch a fitness app - it’s going to understand users’ need for control amidst the swirl of news around GLP1s. it’s going to get to the root of users’ feelings to forge a real connection. right now, that connection is a brand’s only defense when an emotional misstep can instantly become a political incident.

and that brings us to the variable that has torched the old playbooks - what I’m calling PQ, or political quotient.

PQ is the ability to navigate the polarized world where every action is interpreted thru a values-based lens. and I want to be clear here - this isn’t a “pick a side” partisan decision that brands need to make. rather it’s about understanding the core belief systems a brand’s customers use to see the world, so that the brand can act with consistency and integrity.

a brand with high PQ understands that launching a “Made in America” product line isn’t ONLY a supply chain decision - it’s a literal statement about specific economic and cultural values that need to be reflected across the entire organization.

where cultural fluency fails

if you’re a brand, then you recognize the importance of tapping into modern culture.

yet “cultural fluency” right now is predicated on what’s happening in the moment. in some ways, it’s reactive. but it’s always about keeping up with the world around us.

EQ and PQ are proactive - they provide deep rooted wisdom and strategic thinking that cultural fluency glazes over.

think about it this way:

cultural fluency asks “what’s the trend?”

but EQ and PQ together ask “what’s the trend - AND what deep human emotion is it tapping into? what are its political undertones, and does engaging with this trend align with our core values?”

cultural fluency without this filter will be the root of most modern brand disasters, as we’ve already witnessed from major brands this year.

so the financial stakes for getting PQ and EQ right (or wrong) are astronomical.

and the decisions that brands make in this realm should reflect the values that only they themselves know to be true with their brand and audience.

take Gap’s latest campaign with Katseye. Gap’s entire team, from its leadership to its brand management, collectively embodied high EQ by understanding the need to deliver a campaign that spoke to the emotional landscape of Gen Z, a generation that views culture, music, and identity thru a global lens.

partnering with Katseye, a globally represented musical group, demonstrates the brand’s grasp of this mindset and meets their audience where they are.

on the flip side, Disney’s current debacle with Jimmy Kimmel represents a classic low PQ move, where business logic directly contradicts how customers view the brand.

the move to take Jimmy Kimmel off air signaled that a politically motivated deal was more important than the constitutional right of free speech, thus “picking” a side. this decision ended up clashing with the values of a significant portion of their customer base, resulting in a mass boycott against Disney.

at the end of the day, brands are run by people. so nailing the organizational makeup is a crucial piece of the puzzle.

the new team: how the future of hiring will evolve

truly understanding and embodying EQ and PQ as a brand is only possible with the right team.

in order for a brand to possess EQ and PQ, the PEOPLE who work for the brand must also possess these qualities.

and I’m not talking about people who just operate at the campaign level - I believe top to bottom, these are organizational capabilities that must be hired for and cultivated.

we’ve all heard about hiring for a “culture fit”, but that’s insufficient and quite frankly exclusionary at this point.

the new mandate will be to hire for values alignment and contextual intelligence.

this is NOT about creating a team of likeminded clones who all adopt the same opinion or political ideology. diverse thinkers should bring their unique strengths and opinions to the table, and then use a shared framework of EQ and PQ to channel that debate into a single brand expression.

it’s almost like a symphony, in a way - you need different instruments to create harmony, but they all need to play complementary keys and notes for it all to flow.

this means that a brand’s team must be composed of individuals who can act as stewards of the brand’s character.

hiring thru an EQ/PQ lens also requires evolved interview questions:

• “can you anticipate how this message will be interpreted by three different values-aligned groups?” (PQ check)

• “can you respond to an emotionally charged complaint in a way that de-escalates and builds trust?” (EQ check)

• “describe a time you advised AGAINST a popular trend because it was misaligned with a brand’s core identity.” (EQ/PQ check)

the irony is that for over a decade social media teams have been on the front lines of this battle. now, the rest of the org must learn their fluency.

we can also look to individual creators for the blueprint. they’re typically teams of one who don’t have any kind of corporate playbook. their EQ and PQ are tested daily. for creators, brand and identity are inseparable.

the human advantage and why AI can’t solve for this (yet)

I recognize the challenge EQ and PQ might represent in a world where teams are faced with and old school c-suite who are used to doing marketing by the book, or an outdated playbook that is keeping the brand on life support (somehow).

unfortunately, despite billions in market cap, hungry shareholders, and close billionaire connections on the elite brand side…

if ANY brand fails to understand, embody, and practice PQ and EQ, they will destroy any semblance of a relationship with their customers.

after all - if there’s one thing that capitalism and boycotts have taught us in the 2025, it’s that gen pop wallets talk - and collectively, that voice is louder than the wealthy elite at the top.

EQ and PQ are not nice to haves. they will soon be the lifeblood of every brand.

the change for brands and marketers will have to start from within. this requires compassionate leadership, and a real desire to build a strong brand that aligns with customers - not one that just satisfies shareholders or those at the top.

given the importance of EQ and PQ, I’d imagine some brands would want to cut corners with AI.

there’s no question that algorithms will continue to advance, and it’s challenging to anticipate what could even happen a few months from now.

but if there’s one dilemma with AI platforms, it’s that they cannot fully understand cultural fluency because they cannot access, in such real time, what’s happening. literally - ChatGPT does not have access to the latest conversations on TikTok.

this is an exciting time, because it shows the real inherent value of humanness in marketing.

you can’t out-creative or out-buy your way to more sales now.

instead, brands have to do something arguably much more difficult - they have to turn inward to understand how they themselves identify with the outer world, and current/future customers.

so the playbook is gone. there are only two paths left. brands can be a victim of the cultural crossfire - constantly reacting, apologizing, and trying to please everyone until they stand for nothing…

or they can be an architect, doing the difficult inward work to build a brand with a character so strong and authentic it can withstand the heat.

the choice is no longer optional, though. it’s really the only one that matters.

“so it looks like…yeah, possibly 49% of your followers are real.”

I was testing out a new social analytics platform a founder was building - and I started to panic.

“wait. so the rest of my followers could be bots?” I asked.

“it’s likely...” she trailed off as she clicked around to pull a few more numbers.

“but like…I haven’t bought any followers. ever. I’ve never run ads. I don’t get it.” I started to freak out that I looked like a complete fraud - like Instagram influencers who get caught buying followers - except I’m apparently so boring that bots just decided to follow me for free (it’s charity work, clearly…)

the founder laughed and explained that this more common than ever now.

“bots are everywhere.” she noted. “sometimes when I tag my location I notice I’ll get a few followers from that. most likely bot accounts.”

“ok, well…how do I fix this?” I asked.

“that’s the thing. there’s really nothing you can do about it.”

I left that meeting still feeling like a total scam artist. my immediate gut reaction was to curse Mark Zuckerberg (obviously) but it also sent me down a rabbit hole to understand what’s really going on right now.

if half of my followers are fake, then that means half of other people’s followers are fake, then…(insert woman doing math gif)…

are we even creating content for humans anymore?

why the internet feels exhausting now

for the second time in internet history, bots have outnumbered humans online.

that’s right - humans are now in the minority of internet “users”.

and sadly it’s much bigger than fake followers or spam comments. brands are spending billions of dollars advertising to people who…don’t exist.

while you might think of big brands and immediately celebrate their demise, keep in mind I’m also talking about the small business owner who is paying to run their first ad campaign - only to find that the 350 clicks they get translate into 0 visitors.

god forbid they take those results to heart without ever acknowledging that it was never going to be successful in the first place.

the dead internet theory isn’t so much of a theory now as it is a reality.

the evolution of bot behavior

when you think of bots right now, what comes to mind? maybe Russia. maybe hackers.

but that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

modern bots are more like an arranged marriage between non-US mafia and Silicon Valley.

the quickly escalating problem is really a symptom of two things:

1. cybercrime now being big business and

2. governments turning information into a weapon.

then layer on top of that arguably the biggest accelerator: generative AI + LLMs (think ChatGPT, Claude, etc.)

and you have the recipe for a bot-filled web.

most people think that bots are spam and they can spot them easily from things like:

• generic “great post!” commentary

• obviously generic usernames (user34209528i309523)

• broken English

• generic profile photos that look like they’re coming off of Google image search

but bots are smarter now. they might be the frequent skincare commenter in the beauty subreddit who’s convinced you to buy a $200 face cream. or the mom who’s obsessed with a certain stroller brand in the local moms FB group.

and as much as you might want to believe that you can spot them, there’s a higher likelihood every year that you can’t. a 2024 study from Notre Dame found that humans can’t spot bots 58% of the time. I even want to test my knowledge, but I’d imagine at this point my gut instinct would be off.

your brand is talking to itself

let’s get into more specifics to paint the picture of how insane this is:

X/Twitter: (I know I know) during the 2024 Super Bowl, cyber security firm CHEQ found that 76% of traffic from advertisers was fake. not low quality. not unengaged. not real! and brands paid millions to advertise there.

Instagram: it’s been leaked that on average, 40% of all activity on Instagram is artificial. so that means if you’re a brand signing a deal with an influencer, you’re partially paying for bots (and don’t blame the influencers here! many of them are ethical and haven’t bought followers)

ecomm: last holiday season was the tipping point - nearly 57% of all internet traffic to ecomm websites were bots, according to Radware.

gaming: when limited drops sell out in seconds, don’t always fall for the hype. we’re looking at 57% of traffic being bots.

there’s also one brand in recent memory who really took a bot beating.

in 2023, Zara came out with a campaign that had mannequins wrapped in white cloth. you might remember it as it drew tons of attention. many people believed the brand was taking a shot at Gaza conflict, and immediately started to call it out.

however the backlash was massively amplified by a bot network. 39% of all social profiles who engaged with the #boycottzara hashtag were found to be fake according to Cyabra. and on the peak day of the controversy, more bots engaged with the brand than real people.

Zara ended up pulling the campaign as a result of the backlash.

how to stop performing for bots

if you’re a marketer or a brand or even a creator, let’s just accept that your analytics are likely lying to you.

but if you want to go deeper, you can always look at the following:

• geographic data (my founder friend pulled this for me and it was shocking)

• session durations on websites (a lot of bots will visit but not stick around)

• surge patterns for traffic, followers, etc. if you amass a following at a certain random time, there’s a high likelihood of those being bots

also bots aren’t going to do everything. if there’s a conversion on your site with real money spent, then that should be your KPI - not how much traffic you’re getting.

find ways to have quality interactions. if a customer DMs you with a question, maybe have a genuine conversation with them instead of just creating an automation that forces them to act like a robot too.

and this won’t come as as surprise but - build a real community. there’s a reason why human-led communities and private networks are becoming more and more popular right now. it helps bot-proof everything.

you are you, and that is your power

right now we’re speedrunning toward an internet of mostly bots. so much so that it’s been rumored multiple times that in 2026 almost 90% of the content on the internet will be AI generated (by a human or bot).

this is why one of my most popular videos has been on the two-tiered internet we’re about to experience. so much of that prediction was based on the acknowledgement of bots being everywhere.

if you’re a human (and a human reading this - hi!) then this is actually great news. because your competitive advantage is…well, being a human. and creating content as a human.

at some point I’ll write about human verification, but for now just know that showing up creating content as you is one of the biggest assets you can have. who knew?

take this as your permission slip to show up as you.

let’s also not forget that business used to be about building relationships. it’s like we’ve strayed so far from that that we’ve forgotten the why.

AI can go ahead and pummel the masses, but you can be part of the humans showing up online who truly prioritize 1-to-1.

and that’s going to be a superpower.

thanks for taking the time to read!

some things I’m up to:

• building my Future-Proof workshop for C-suite/brand teams who want to stay ahead (DM me if you’re interested - more info coming soon!)

• running my own private Slack community for female founders who want to show up on social

• hosting a few incredible workshops with Bonfire in Burgundy, France in September for those who feel creatively burned out (come join us and hit the reset button!)

• observing and posting on TikTok and Instagram

lmk in the comments - have you become more aware of bots on social media over the last few years? what’s your sign that’s a dead giveaway for them? tell me below!

a few months ago a friend and I were walking around Max Mara when she gasped.

the perfect cropped puffer coat hung right in front of her. the one she'd "been looking for forever" (her exact words)

twenty minutes later, after she’d modeled it zipped/unzipped/inside out/upside down/possibly backwards she hung it back up.

"wait, what?" I asked. "you were obsessed with that coat. why aren't you buying it?"

she leaned in. "why would I pay $1,200 when ChatGPT can find me the same one for a better price?"

the sales associate waved goodbye, entirely unaware of my friend’s intentions.

and that's when I realized my friend never really had to search for anything - at least not in the traditional sense.

Google’s stopped banking on traditional search

every single marketing “expert” or SEO “expert” has claimed, yet again, that search has died. frankly, we’ve held this funeral 15 times.

but really, search is just ghosting us - and if we’re being honest, we’re ghosting it first.

my friend above didn't type "cropped puffer coat” into a search bar. she didn't doomscroll and amass 80 browser tabs in one session. she just screenshotted the coat, sent it to an AI and said "find me this exact coat, but wallet friendly"

and this is what I’ll call pre-search (and no, it’s not exactly zero-click, and it’s not predictive search either)…

• pre-search: when AI acts on implicit signals (images, behaviors, patterns) before you formulate a traditional query. no search bar, no keywords, just context and inference*

• zero-click: you type a specific query, and Google (or an LLM) answers directly. still requires conscious intent and specific keywords.

pre-search will help your brain do a little bit less work. and who doesn’t want that?

*note: in my research, terminology did not exist to describe this capability. so I made it up. but if you know what it’s already being called, please lmk in the comments!

you've already been living it

AI and this type of agentic behavior aren’t necessarily new.

when's the last time you actively searched for toilet paper? unless you’re deeply passionate about testing different brands, chances are it just shows up at your doorstep every few months. Netflix queues up your next show before you've fully recovered from the last one. and Spotify’s Discover Weekly understands your music taste better than anyone - even yourself.

in reality, we’ve been conditioned to see this coming from a mile away:

2010: "customers who bought this also bought..." (cool)

2015: "based on your listening history..." (ok, helpful)

2020: "you might be running low on..." (stalkerish but practical)

and soon, it’ll be:

2026: "I noticed you usually order the same lunch on Tuesdays, so your order is ready for pick up” (oh WOW)

2028: "your favorite band just announced another stop and I’ve already secured tickets for you and your friend” (wait…an agent could potentially save me from TICKETMASTER?)

(potential) practical applications for skeptics

if the past isn’t an indication of the future for you, let’s pivot.

think about your day-to-day right now. surely there are opportunities where agents could step in and help you.

I’ll give you a very real scenario that involves searching and time, one that I experience often: Resy.

how often have you been on a waitlist for a restaurant, only to watch your phone like a hawk when a new reservation becomes available?

what if you could pay an additional amount to have an agent secure your spot instead when something pops up? maybe even a barter between agents if it’s in demand?

sound bad? ok, what about this?

your AI books restaurant reservations based on your Slack message sentiment analysis. a bad day might mean you’re going somewhere that has your very favorite dessert, thanks to your agent. one less thing to think about.

could be cool…

what this means for brands (and marketers)

all of this fundamentally shifts the behavior between searching and doing.

so most brands need to figure out now how to co-exist and program robots instead of programming for humans.

robots won’t care if a CEO got a full length feature in Forbes about climbing the corporate ladder. but since an AI agent is working on you (the customer’s) behalf, it will care about Reddit reviews, and whether someone in r/BuyItForLife recommends a product.

much of the future will involve marketing to AI. humans will be out of the picture.

the beautiful chaos of what’s to come

now there’s a reason why this isn’t available TODAY. and that’s because if you’ve ever used AI, you know that it can hallucinate - badly.

sometimes ChatGPT will interpret a cropped white puffer as a Michelin-man inspired outfit, just like the online grocery order you’ve placed incorrectly assumes a substitute for an item.

while hallucination may never go away, we will see AI’s responsibilities and capabilities drastically increase.

in the future, your agent will know:

• your size (and your “period bloat” size)

• your budget (including your “little treat” budget)

• your ethics (no fast fashion)

• your aesthetic (90s grunge meets soft girlcore)

physical stores may just become experiential playgrounds for you to try things on, express what you’re interested in, and train your agent.

next time, my Max Mara friend's phone camera will be teeing up about six different nicely priced options to be delivered straight to her condo.

the real question nobody's asking

yes, we’ve already mourned traditional search, and we’ve accepted that AI search is a thing.

but the bigger question now becomes - what could happen to wanting itself?

when algorithms answer questions before we ask them, when they fulfill needs before we feel them, are we outsourcing our own desire? or will it give us more time to get inspired and be out in the world, the utopian flip side of the dystopia everybody is always talking about?

my friend found her perfect coat; she just technically never bought it. her AI will find the same coat for a better price, and she'll be satisfied enough. but that Max Mara moment of discovery and joy is something that AI can’t replicate. as time goes on, even if we become more efficient, we might miss the steps that allow us to think for ourselves.

but honestly? that coat really was perfect on her.

thanks for taking the time to read!

some things I’m up to:

• building my Future-Proof workshop for C-suite/brand teams who want to stay ahead (DM me if you’re interested - more info coming soon!)

• running my own private Slack community for female founders who want to show up on social

• hosting a few incredible workshops with Bonfire in Burgundy, France in September for those who feel creatively burned out (come join us and hit the reset button!)

• observing and posting on TikTok and Instagram

lmk in the comments - are you open to using AI agents? have you noticed your search behavior changing - and are you ok with it?

I’d posted a question sticker on my Instagram Stories to understand how people are dating, meeting others, and if anyone is still leaving their house.

but the replies I got were something else entirely:

then last week, Bumble announced that they’re laying off 30% of their global staff. The founder noted that dating apps are “at an inflection point”.

no shit!!!!!

but it’s not just dating apps standing at the edge of a cliff.

it’s every app that’s turned us into algorithmic lab rats over the last 15+ years.

trust has left the building

I’m a marketer, and I’ve been watching this car crash in slow motion. I’ve even made videos about it here, here, and here where I called the future algorithm-free.

@samogbornnwhat do you think? let me know in the comments… screenshots from @CreatrixNicole on TT @Kajal Vora on TT @krissy ♡ on TT @katherine amanda on TT @michele on TT @The New York Times www on @medium @Slack @Discord #socialmedia #algorithms #marketing #community

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people are exhausted. they’re done.

Northwestern researchers even uncovered that once you understand how the algorithms work, they exhaust you more. every marketer and social media manager I know is a fried egg at this point.

for as long as smartphones have been around, our swipes have been tracked, our pauses have been analyzed, and our interactions have been weaponized to keep us addicted.

and now, we’re the first generation to not only experience this digital manipulation, but understand it - in real time.

so we’re doing something about it.

we the people are consolidating

at the heart of social media is the desire to stay connected to one another, which is a human need.

it’s also become a way for people to express their free speech.

so instead of leaving social as we know it entirely, people are building new digital escape hatches.

one of those escape hatches is Discord, which has exploded with 30% growth in 15 months.

and those small, invite-only servers feel like actual friend groups, consistent with Dunbar’s 15-person ‘sympathy group’ layer.

one creator I’ve talked to has even created an entire paid Discord community off of TikTok Lives (it’s in the finance space - happy to share the name if you DM me :))

yet this exodus spreads beyond Discord and off of algorithm-centric platforms.

Slack and WhatsApp have also become popular 5-9 “untraditional” community hangouts now.

users are essentially abandoning “group” or “group chat” functionality baked into the platforms (Facebook Groups, group DMs, etc.) in favor of more neutral, widely used apps (and yes, these are not small platforms either - one is even owned my Meta!)

all of this checks out. people are realizing, especially in a post-COVID world, that they WANT to be social with human-curated content…just not what Big Tech has called “social media”.

but social media apps (and the government) still need you

naturally, Zuck sees this exodus. why else would Instagram and WhatsApp desperately push “private” group chats? they need to keep people confined in their walled gardens.

even TikTok announced yesterday that in light of their prospective ban (which has been the song that never ends in the United States) that they’ll be launching their own version of the app called M - for United States users only.

and because it’s been 15 years of increasing distrust, people are conditioned to seeing the writing on the wall.

the government (with Truth Social, X/Elon, and now this debacle with TikTok) and Big Tech are all after our data, our interests, and our attention.

so users are scattering to find the next place where we feel like we can belong without sacrificing our sanity, our privacy, and our safety.

and many of those next places just happen to be decentralized spaces where no big billionaire or country can “own” us.

thinking critically about what this means for you

I’m a marketer who works with brands, and I already know what most brands are going to *think* they should do.

let’s be clear: do NOT go to to create a Substack or a new Discord server right now.

this is a drawing board moment. you want to be a trusted confidante and curator who doesn’t need to be followed.

how can you help save YOUR PEOPLE from algorithms and doomscrolling?

no, really - how can you become an asset and not another barrier?

(don’t make them sign up for another email newsletter!!! you’re on their side)

what does it mean now to cultivate a real community because you want to, not because your CEO says you need to be on Substack because they heard it’s the “next big thing”?

marketers have long been seen as manipulators, but at our core, we serve needs.

take a step back and think about how your brand can fill one.

not something you want to do on your own? then figure out creators you want to align with who have their own trusted communities.

this is a massive step toward privacy and consolidation for users. don’t fuck this up.

thanks for taking the time to read!

some things I’m up to:

• building my Future-Proof workshop for C-suite/brand teams who want to stay ahead (DM me if you’re interested - more info coming soon!)

• running my own private Slack community for female founders who want to show up on social

• hosting a few incredible workshops with Bonfire in Burgundy, France in September for those who feel creatively burned out (come join us and hit the reset button!)

• observing and posting on TikTok and Instagram

I watched Redditors complain about the 220-minute queue as a million people (and likely lots of bots) competed for 5,000 bars of Sydney Sweeney x Dr. Squatch bathwater soap.

buying behavior has shifted and it’s as obvious as ever right now.

fake countdown timers are dead. but cultural bragging rights scarcity is sooo in ✨

you’ve probably noticed that brands are no longer begging you to “buy now”…

instead they’re making you earn the right to buy, and the tougher the rite, the hotter the flex (tired yet?)

this is explains why Nike’s SNKRS app celebrates your losses, why Supreme made a brick that’s reselling for $1,000, and why cans of Liquid Death infused with Ozzy Osbourne’s DNA vanished in 11 minutes.

these drops are snake-swallowing the Internet, peacocking as cultural “bragging rights”.

and I’m intrigued by it all.

let me explain.

the deeper shift

traditional urgency tactics like those stupid fake countdown timers of 2010s DTC past are cooked.

same with the “X person from X place just bought X product” ticker in the lower corner.

we know Sarah from Michigan didn’t just buy that - but thanks for lying, brand!

over the years, as these seemingly harmless “marketing” tactics started to become Bible for DTC ecomm, consumers became conditioned to catch on and ignore the game.

oh, you’re having…another sale? and it “ends” this weekend? right.

it’s the end of times for brand scarcity 1.0:

• fake timers and popups

• “sale ends Sunday” language

• loss-aversion triggers

• the ultimate goal: push volume at all costs

what brands are doing now is possibly even more sinister - they’re making people compete for cultural relevance.

the manipulation is the same, it’s just wearing a trendier outfit.

this is the age of brand scarcity 2.0. you’ve seen it happening:

• celebrity-anchored micro drops

• “only 100 ever” language (and they stand by it)

• status-signal trigger

• the ultimate goal: mint social currency

as of late, these drops are a brand’s hopeful way of staying culturally relevant.

both scarcity 1.0 and 2.0 manipulate desire, but only one creates stories worth telling. noodle on that for a sec.

the evidence stack

Nike is a great example (how many times have I said that in my life? I don’t want to know) of a brand that’s played the evil/genius scarcity game…

…because they’ve learned how to gamify losing.

if you miss out on a sneaker drop, the app shows exactly how many Ls you’ve taken.

so rejection goes from being something that’s kind of embarrassing to a sociopathic flex. being a loser is cool now! pass it on…

Supreme launched a brick (no not a phone - a literal brick) in 2016 that sold for $30. now the current rate on StockX is $950-$1,400.

also Supreme never does restocks. they learned to manufacture scarcity so well that a useless object became valuable.

@dj_11040Yall, the Liquid Death brand is WILD. What novelty/rare item did they just drop (and I get my grubby little Italian hands on)? Mwahahaha... I make NO sense! #liquiddeath #ozzyosbourne #fyp #adorable #fashion #foodie #fyp≥ #snacks #uniqueitems #unique #rareitem #crazy #wild #ridiculousness

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Liquid Death’s always been deranged, but maybe the brand is peaking.

their latest launch is called “Infinite Ozzy” which is water with Ozzy Osbourne’s DNA. so many water drops lately (pun intended)!

$450 for ten cans and it sold out in 11 minutes.

let’s just call it what it is - at this point we’re witnessing performance art masquerading as CPG.

Stanley is also trying to find ways to keep their brand as relevant as possible after the initial post-COVID craze (think Instagram stories of women crying in Target parking lots, etc. etc.)

their recent drop with Post Malone helped them sell out, again, in minutes.

will it stick? time will tell - but taking a page from the new age scarcity marketing playbook isn’t a bad idea.

why this changes things

yes you’re not Supreme, but that doesn’t mean this doesn’t apply to you.

you need to recognize now that the goalpost has moved. the customer journey doesn’t end when the customer pays - it actually ends when the customer shows proof, preferably publicly, on social.

Scarcity 2.0 is measured by:

• waitlist size

• referral velocity

• secondary market delta

• pure UGC volume

customers being annoyingly loud about the outcome is ideal.

MOST brands should just focus on creating demand for their products first.

but if you WANT to play with scarcity marketing, try the above and at least make it meaningful.

the reality

these hype cycles can’t just be turned on and off. this shift from 1.0 to 2.0 is indicative of a permanent rewiring of consumer psychology.

and that’s because social media has trained an entire generation to see purchases as identity markers.

if you’re an opportunist, you might see this as an advantage. the “best” products don’t really win unless they double as content.

so how do you get picked for both the purchase and the post?

lmk in the comments - what’s a recent drop of scarcity marketing you fell for?