Acoustic Hostility + “Love-Bombing” the A.I.

Now Boarding: Acoustic Hostility. American Airlines has embarked on a social experiment, adding acoustic hostility to the lexicon psychology. The airline will soon test a social signal— a chime—that will call out “line violators” attempting to skip boarding groups.

Our Take: This sounds novel, but the idea of hostile architecture exists already in modernity, but does little to deter behavior.

Take hostile architecture—which prevent the homeless from sleeping next to a building—or sonic deterrents, which discourage loitering in public spaces. A beep-ahead-of-your-turn beep at would-be line-cutters may no more steer them into behavioral compliance than the many (many) pleas from boarding gate attendants to clear the lane.

The pseudo-psychology behind “Boarding Battles” suggests that these strategically jarring tones induce slight embarrassment, a mechanism of compliance for today’s traveler. While it may not reach the annoyance level of anti-loitering classical music or “mosquito” sounds meant to disperse crowds, it’s a glimpse into our continued need for social control, and the fact that we’re slowly losing grip of social decorum in Western society.

Reverse Recommendations? Reddit’s r/London community is flooding Google with glowing reviews for Angus Steakhouse, hoping to steer clueless tourists to less-than-stellar experiences; this leaves room for the pubs and eateries that locals enjoy. AI “Love Bombing” is a crowd-sourced hack to steer algorithmic recommendations, hijacking the innocent “best-of” lists with an ulterior motive.

‍‘Chaos Packaging’ Enters the Cultural Vernacular. ‘Friend of the pod’ and cultural canary Michael Miraflor has again created popular discourse. The trend he dubbed Chaos Packaging in January 2024 is going mainstream thanks to recent coverage in the Wall Street Journal and The Today Show.

‍Our Take: “Imagine ice cream tubs styled like tampons or sunscreen stored in whipped cream cans,” was how WSJ began the piece. Chaos Packaging is becoming a game of shock-and-awe aesthetics meant to disarm customers, forcing a “second look” moment that makes each product an experience, not just a purchase. No one rides this wave better than Life Raft Treats, who launched Not Fried Chicken Ice Cream—complete with faux chicken bones and crispy “breading.” This is retail’s answer to social media’s “double take” meme, putting brands like Life Raft on the map as they push the boundaries of product presentation. Available now on Goldbelly, the product is pure disruptive genius, daring customers to engage in a multi-sensory way that fuses novelty with nostalgia.

Goodbye Trough of Despair. Stripe’s acquisition of Bridge Network this week—a whopping threefold return for early investors—is the dawn of the next phase of the hype cycle. Stripe’s historic buy signals crypto’s “Slope of Enlightenment,” validating stablecoins as a mature digital economy anchor. While the acquisition marks the largest acquisition in crypto history, the implications run even deeper: Stripe’s long game is to revolutionize a SWIFT-dependent network, something competitor Adyen forecast at this year’s All In Summit. This move also cements the end of crypto’s “Trough of Despair,” a period of sobering deflation that followed the hype cycle’s boom.