Open Tabs

This week’s tabs: Brands are using Easter eggs to deepen fandom and Gen Alpha is bringing back the stigma around being a poser, from lifestyle tourism to cosplaying a life you don’t actually live. Timestamps: 🥚 0:45 - Easter eggs are becoming a brand marketing strategy. From Google’s interactive Fat Bear Week feature to TikTok’s celebrity comment pop-ups and movie theater booking interfaces that...

This week’s tabs: Beauty brands are bringing QVC-style shopping to TikTok Live, and creators are proving that the best brand partnerships are built on stories audiences are already invested in. Timestamps: 💄 0:23 - Beauty brands are bringing QVC to TikTok. From Rihanna joining Fenty Beauty’s TikTok Live to brands building recurring livestream shopping shows, we’re unpacking why live shopping is g...

This week’s tabs: Executive women are turning to astrology and tarot to navigate their careers, and Big Tech is giving AI assistants the cute-character treatment to make them feel more human. Timestamps: 🔮 0:20 - Workplace witchcraft is having a moment. From executive women hiring “workplace witches” for $1,000 a month to astrology becoming a regular topic on professional calls, we’re unpacking w...

This week’s tabs: The NHL tried to capitalize on the hockey romance boom and listicles are making a comeback in the age of AI. Timestamps: 🏒 0:00 - The NHL tried getting into hockey romance. The league launched “Hot for Hockey,” a series of fan fiction-inspired audio stories featuring real NHL players. They quickly scrapped the entire project just days after launching. We’re unpacking why it felt...

This week’s tabs: Kids are turning Spotify comments into group chats and New York City is becoming the unofficial soundstage for social media. Timestamps: 🎧 0:00 - Kids are finding new ways to socialize online. Middle schoolers who aren’t allowed on traditional social platforms have turned Spotify podcast comments into makeshift group chats. * Kids turned the comment section of an NPR podcast int...

This week’s tabs: Personal blogs are making a comeback with young women and CoStar is launching a dating app for book lovers. Timestamps: 💻 0:00 - The personal blog is back. Young women are reviving the early-2000s personal blog as a customizable alternative to social media. We’re unpacking creator fatigue, algorithm exhaustion, and why people are craving their own little corners of the internet....

This week’s tabs: Youth sports are becoming more expensive, competitive, and all-consuming, and we’re unpacking what that means for kids, parents, and the future of sports. Plus, how one Olive Garden superfan turned a Lifetime Pasta Pass into a niche internet community, and why YouTube is finally investing in the community features creators have been missing. Timestamps: ⚾ 0:00 - Youth sports are...

Today’s topics: Duolingo is taking its language-learning shtick to New York Fashion Week, and we’re asking whether its latest merch drop is actually the beginning of a bigger lifestyle brand. Plus, why A24 has become a cultural status symbol for Gen Z, and Charli D’Amelio is back in the discourse with a new chapter in her family drama. Timestamps: 👜 0:00 - Duolingo enters its fashion era. Duoling...

Today’s topics: Alix Earle is officially a reality TV star, and we’re breaking down what Earle Meets World says about the creator-to-reality-TV pipeline, the Alex Cooper/Unwell drama, and why the show’s storylines keep playing out on social. Plus, W Magazine is bringing back the teen magazine with W Youth [pronounced double youth]. Timestamps: 🎬 0:00 - Alex Earl enters her reality TV era. We deep...

Today’s topics: TikTok is updating their comment sections to be more like iMessage, and workshopping Megan Collins ’s upcoming piece breaking down Ross’ latest marking push. Timestamps: 🎙️ 0:00 - TikTok wants your comments to be content, too. TikTok is rolling out voice comments, polls, photo carousels, and Live Photos, making its comment section more interactive than ever. We talk about the rise...

Today’s topics: Why Olivia Rodrigo’s Daisy Chain Fields Festival feels like a new model for cultural and brand experiences, and how sorority recruitment has become a full-blown social media and marketing ecosystem. Timestamps: 🌼 0:00 - Olivia Rodrigo’s Daisy Chain Fields Festival is more than a music festival. We break down how Olivia turned her album rollout into a sold-out, 45k person festival,...

Today’s topics: Why so many influencers are making the jump into real estate, and how Poppy is turning social media into its newest recruiting tool. Timestamps: 🏡 0:00 - The influencer-to-real-estate-agent pipeline. We break down why creators, celebrities, and former athletes are moving into real estate, why influencer skills translate surprisingly well to selling houses, and how the creator play...

Today’s topics: Callaway and Good Good Golf are facing backlash over a brand collab that went very wrong, Lovesac learned the hard way that snarky brand responses don’t always land, and we’re asking whether brands should be focusing less on being funny and more on being useful. Timestamps: ⛳ 0:00 - When a brand collab goes very wrong. We break down the viral Callaway and Good Good Golf ad that de...

Today's topics: TikTok is trying to make Substack happen [and Substack users are not exactly thrilled], YouTube is paying creators millions to keep their content away from Netflix, and Kim Kardashian is executive producing a new reality show about baseball moms. Timestamps: 📝 0:00 - TikTok made a Substack. We break down TikTok’s new The Creator's Cut by TikTok LIVE , why the reception has been so...

Today’s topics: Young people are finding new ways to use Instagram without being beholden to the algorithm, and the Savannah Bananas are turning baseball into a fandom-first entertainment machine, complete with celebrity cameos and social media stars. Timestamps: 📱 0:00 - We unpack “ghost posting,” the Gen Z habit of posting to Instagram and immediately archiving content and then unarchiving to c...

Today’s topics: The backlash against filming in public is growing as people push back on being unwilling extras in someone else’s content, and Hinge turns its love stories into audiobooks for this year’s No Ordinary Love campaign. Timestamps: * 📱 0:00 - We unpack the growing backlash against filming in public, from Pilates studios banning phones to “no influencer” signs and no-phone concerts. We...

Today's topics: Gen Z is finally leaving the house [yay!] for a "summer of outside" and Netflix planted an actor inside a house-shaped billboard on Sunset Boulevard to promote its new horror movie, a cool stunt that we think could have been cooler. Timestamps: 🌞 0:00 - Gen Z is breaking out of their pandemic funk, and we dig into why this summer feels different: more drinking, more spontaneous pl...

This was a bit of a free-range episode, so enjoy our tangent-filled conversation! Here’s what we covered today: A lo-fi Instagram show following an NYU grad's friends running mundane errands around NYC has us thinking about the internet's hunger for unproduced, human content, Olivia Rodrigo's surprise $25 Brooklyn show (box office only, no online sales), and a fun-yet-messy public spat between inf...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit mtdeco.substack.com Today's topics: Reddit is adding native video and a "spoken Reddit" text-to-speech feature to grab back the audience that's been ripping off viral posts for TikTok, MySpace's owners insist a relaunch is coming (eventually), and OpenAI's first-ever influencer brand trip read more like an ad for a Hudson Valley hotel t...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit mtdeco.substack.com Today's topics: Meta is working to combat the “creepy” reputation that their smart glasses have and why [some] lifestyle influencers are ditching luxury hauls for low-stakes rage bait like $130 DoorDash orders. Timestamps: * 🕶️ 0:00 - Weeks after we called out Meta's glasses branding problem, activist groups have pla...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit mtdeco.substack.com Today’s topics: what a new USC Annenberg study reveals about Gen Z’s relationship with live sports, and why brands are ditching mega-influencers for regular people with a few hundred followers. Timestamps: 🏟️ 0:00 - A new USC Annenberg and ACC study finds that nearly 80% of Gen Z only goes to live sporting events for...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit mtdeco.substack.com Today’s topics: the new social media app that promises no algorithm and no ads, Spotify’s move into music videos, and charli xcx ’s “anti-marketing’ prediction and what it says about super fan culture. Timestamps: 📵 0:00 - A new app called Yope has raised $20 million on a promise of no ads and no algorithms, built a...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit mtdeco.substack.com What’s on the docket today: the Dunkin’ x Parke collab, the bean soup-ification of TikTok, and social media’s AI slop problem and how Substack is fighting against it. Timestamps 🍩 0:00 - Dunkin’ Donuts is partnering with clothing brand Parke [Gen Z’s fav sweatshirt brand] on a new line of drinks and a limited-editio...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit mtdeco.substack.com Today we're talking about the Gap x Hailey Bieber jean drop and what it says about the brand's comeback, why ballet is having a moment, and the Phia affiliate scandal that's put Bill Gates' daughter under scrutiny. Timestamps 👖 00:00 – Gap and Hailey Bieber launch “The Hailey Jean,” a ‘90s-inspired denim capsule . W...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit mtdeco.substack.com Today, we're talking about why Meta pulled its new AI image feature just days after launch, our thoughts on Time’s 100 Creators of 2026 list, and whether an app can actually fix the loneliness epidemic that tech helped create in the first place. Timestamps 🤖 00:00 – Meta pulls its Muse Image feature days after backl...