If you really want to be on-trend, you need to know this season’s coolest creatures. We’ve been under the collective spell of the capybara for the past few years, but an insider tip from the San Diego Zoo’s social media manager has it that okapis, echidnas, and aardvarks are all the rage. Get the plushies while you can!
Scroll down to read about hedgehogs, friendship bracelets, and diamond memberships.
Stats to power your week
🎮 It’s official: the next Legend of Zelda game will have Zelda herself as the main playable character for the first time. Combine that with Grand Theft Auto 6 introducing its first female protagonist and it’s starting to look like a good moment for women in gaming. They’re often overlooked, and the data suggests one reason why – although women only make up a third of people who talk about games online, they represent 47% of actual gamers. GWI Core
🦔In the UK’s record-breaking heatwave of 2022, the then-Culture Secretary and sometimes contentious figure Nadine Dorries asked people to put aside their political differences and help dehydrated hedgehogs. She had a point: even now, animal welfare is seen as the most “politically neutral” issue. GWI Zeitgeist
🏈 Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Travis Kelce is now quite literally sweeping his paramour Taylor Swift off her feet on stage. But has her fanbase reciprocated with support of his team? If Teen Vogue readers are a good proxy for the Swiftie audience, then yes – the number of them who support the Chiefs is up 63% year-on-year. Support is also up 46% among people who enjoy drama(on TV, that is). GWI USA
📝 Every so often a breakout hit draws attention to an emerging form of media. Kind of like Serial did for podcasts, and a laidback cranberry juice/Fleetwood Mac fusion did for TikTok. The latest iteration of that is YouTuber Jenny Nicholson’s 4-hour deconstruction of the Star Wars hotel, which is putting extensively-researched video essays on the mainstream radar. Shout out to the 22% of Gen Zs who watch these, dispelling rumors of their short attention spans. GWI Zeitgeist
📸 If you’ve ever scrolled past that shot of the Trolltunga rock formation in Norway, you’ll know firsthand the impact Instagram has on travel spots and photo ops. On the other side of the world, a trending app is similarly influential. The number of Chinese internet users logging on to Xiaohongshu (also known as RED) is up 13% year-on-year, pointing more tourists to university campuses, a canvas bag store, and…Düsseldorf.
What’s on our radar
As we properly enter the summer season, some unfortunate side effects of extreme weather are apparent across the world: power cuts in Kuwait, water rationing in Colombia, and climate anxiety in Korea.
Some of the most interesting things we saw come out of Cannes: the assertion that advertising is in a “post-purpose” world, which might have something to do with the addition of a “humor” category to the awards this year.
As retailers crack down on shoplifting, one retailer’s ban on “granny trolleys” shows the difficulty in trading off against customer experience, while Gymshark invited passersby to steal its products in a recent campaign.
One of the big trends this year has been the growing market serving Ozempic users. Skincare group Galderma is jumping on the opportunity to address “Ozempic face,” and fashion retailers are scrambling to increase the amount of smaller sizes in stock.
Both Asda and Starbucks are doing their part to address loneliness with initiatives designed to spark conversations between people in real life. Meanwhile, Amazon’s new AI-enhanced version of Alexa could possibly offer deeper conversations to its users – for a price.
Universal Music Group has announced a new partnership with an AI tech company focused on “ethical” tools for music creators, even as it teams up with other music labels to sue AI-generated music tools Suno and Udio for copyright infringement.
Chart of the week
Social media app BeReal has just been acquired and a TikTok meme uses AI to provide alternate endings for some classic Vine videos. All in all, it’s a good time to look back and remember some of the social platforms that made an imprint on the public consciousness – even if they didn’t quite match the leading players.
Neither BeReal nor pandemic darling Clubhouse matched the dizzying growth Vine achieved before it was discontinued in early 2017, but one that came closest to prolonged success in the last decade or so has been Google+. As users of existing Google services (like YouTube and Gmail) automatically received an account, it experienced a rapid surge in user numbers. But it struggled to maintain engagement and eventually folded.
In case you’re wondering who used Google+, a little delve into our archive shows that it had its biggest fans in Thailand, Kenya, and Vietnam, and it was particularly favored by The Economist readers and photography fans.
Local lowdown
Australia's probable premium placebo
Australia is a big country, and its cities sprawl out into large suburbs. It’s no surprise that it has a strong car culture, but one aspect of it is distinctively Australian – filling up with premium fuel at the pump.
Australian drivers do this more than any other country in the world. But the reason why isn’t immediately obvious. On the face of it, premium fuel can sometimes improve driving efficiency, which is helpful for a long commute. But more than one study has suggested that perception does not match reality, and drivers give premium fuel a kind of halo effect that isn’t borne out by the statistics.
But maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe it’s a Rory Sutherland-style positive placebo effect, and we shouldn’t try to look for rational explanations. The confusion around how much better or not premium fuel in Australia really is can be summed up by one Reddit poster: “It doesn’t make a difference but it does; but only for old new high performance some cars and something something E10.” Exactly.
