A brief overview of what is currently trending in news, culture, and/or trending hashtags and formats.
Venezuela: Trump confirms a conversation with Venezuela’s President Maduro, highlighting rising tensions with the U.S.
Oxford: ‘Rage bait’ is named word of the year by Oxford University Press.
Zootopia2: Zootopia 2 opens to more than half a billion dollars globally.
A deeper dive into a subject that is impacting culture on a macro level, beyond just the social space.
Curation As the New Creation
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What It Is: Social users are increasingly discussing how the future of social lies in curation, calling it the new creation. With the influx of content, data, and AI-driven information overload, attention has become a scarce and valuable asset. This shift has made tastemakers and curators essential, as taste is emerging as a new form of social currency. Curation is not just about compiling information but about providing context, clear storytelling, a perspective, and added value that helps make content digestible. The rise of Substacks and podcasts reflects this movement by empowering individuals to become skilled collectors and organizers of ideas. However, curation also involves gatekeeping and omission, which raises concerns about what is deemed worthy of attention. Some users point out that curation can lead to echo chambers and reinforce social hierarchies, since taste often reflects upbringing rather than true individuality. When good taste aligns with dominant classes, it can be used to draw lines between what is valuable and what is dismissed.
The Brand Takeaway: Consumers are increasingly drawn to strong storytelling and look to brands to act as tastemakers. Individual curators have earned trust in ways that traditional brands and media outlets are still trying to match. Users want ways to differentiate themselves and push back against algorithm-driven feeds. A growing mistrust of the algorithm is making people turn to human tastemakers for guidance. The scroll feels endless and often leads to doomscrolling, which heightens the desire for direction. Consumers are looking for intention and meaning in what they consume rather than passive browsing. They want to feel like conscious consumers, and this mindset now extends to their media habits as well. For brands, providing thoughtful curation rather than simply content may become the new value proposition.
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