The Tea on Body Tea

Target Taps Shopify: Target partners with Shopify to integrate more sellers into its third-party marketplace, aiming to compete with Amazon and Walmart​​. Given Target’s former darling status as the pinnacle of the DTC branding aesthetic, this feels, well, on Brand. It’s also a smart move, given Target’s recent performance struggles and lagging eCommerce experience. Shopify also wins here, giving its brands the opportunity to de-risk marketplace strategies.

Algorithm is a dirty word: VISIONS Summit: NYC contributor Kate Lindsay dives into how awareness of the mediocre output and curation of the algorithm is turning “algo” into a slur. A use case: “that dj’s playlist was some algo shit”, conveying that either the algo created the playlist and it was not very good, or that it was so poorly curated by the dj that an algo could have performed at the same level. 

Brookfield Mall Minicities: Brookfield's ambitious plan to transform malls into minicities is struggling due to financial and operational challenges​​​​​​. It turns out that projects that require complexity and multi-year timelines might be outdated as a concept by the time they’re complete. In the coming years, flexibility is going to be key for transforming real estate.

‍Crumbl Cookies Cereal: Crumbl Cookies launches its new cereal line exclusively at Costco, blending its popular cookie flavors with breakfast cereal​​​​​​​​. Resident Costco stan Brian approves of this strategy, but parents everywhere just heaved a collective groan due to the amount of collective begging ahead from their shopping cart clingers.

Hard Mountain Dew Review: A new Hard Mountain Dew was recently taste-tested in Indiana, receiving mixed reviews from local consumers​​​​. Our question: was the sample of taste-testers exclusively composed of nerds and underage drinkers? We doubt it. Yiksies.

AI's Impact on Thinking: AI's potential to disrupt traditional linear thinking patterns is explored in detail by Professor of Business Technology from Villanova, Thomas G. Labrecque. We covered this in detail in Quantum Yeet. The next wave of leaders and luminaries will be non-linear thinkers.

Social Media Slang Crisis: Social media is undoing the benefits of American slang. The immediate and broad access we now have to subcultures’ language games (as covered by Brian in The Asynchronous Fiction and Language Games: How New Nostalgia is Borne) due to electronic communication and social media was predicted fifty years prior Marshall McLuhan’s concept of allatonceness. All subcultures wash over us, continually. Language has evolved similarly in the past, but previously it took years for it to propagate. “Basket of Oranges” was a Victorian term that would roughly equate to today’s “Body Tea”. Just as Body Tea evolved from use of tea to describe gossip, basket of oranges evolved from an Australian metaphor to describe the discovery of gold nuggets, and then years later made its way to England. This cycle is now happening at the speed of light, and language has lost its weight in the process.