cluely's attention slop, plutonomy vibes, artist collabs and more

Hiii,

This send will be short as my brain is still melting from jetlag (28 hours in transit is somehow even worse than it sounds). But hi everyone! I’m in NYC, if you want to hang.

Things im wondering if people are discussing at Cannes:

thebusinessmagnets

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I haven’t been logging on to LinkedIn but if they aren’t already writing about Cluely, they will be soon

Cluely is a ‘cheating platform’ with a VERY young leadership team - spearheaded by the prolific Roy Lee, suspended by Columbia for cheating - currently establishing a new playbook for ‘attention hacking’ that every growth marketer turned content creator on linkedin is probably salivating over right now. Techcrunch called it ‘rage-bait comedy marketing’ and the ever-astute Andrea Hernandex of

Snaxshot

described their approach as ‘attention slop’.

This intro to their marketing team captures the vibe better than i would be able to (sorry for the X link, it isn’t on their youtube… lol). In the last few months, they’ve made a bunch of hires that went viral, dealt with a “scandal” around the CEO hiring strippers for the team, raised 5.3m in funding, held an afterparty last night for a Y Combinator event that got shut down by police.

I don’t know what this new genre of marketing is, but it’s… something. They declare that “distribution is a solved problem for us” (presumably due to their confidence in going viral). This is either the next stage evolution of Duolingo-style ‘unhinged as an ethos’ or, more simply, what a bunch of nerds who spent their formative college years doing classes via zoom might think ‘cool’ is, packaged up for algorithms that are delighted by things that make people mad. What do yall think?

America’s shifting class structure and system // 2025 as a new era of Plutonomy

Substack gently pushed a couple of articles from

Carmen Van Kerckhove

my way recently via their weekly suggestions emails (probably because i’ve been writing about the future of work amidst the mainstreaming of AI), & recently she’s made a couple of interesting points around class that i find provocative.

“Americans love to pretend class doesn't exist in this country. We use euphemisms like "socioeconomic status" and talk about "income levels" instead of acknowledging the obvious: we absolutely have a class system, and it's been built on some very specific assumptions about what kinds of work create what kinds of lives…. [so] what happens when white-collar jobs vanish and the "blue-collar" work becomes the only path to financial security? When the electrician outearns the marketing director, when the dental hygienist has more job security than the data analyst? This isn't just about individual career changes. It's about the entire infrastructure of how Americans build middle-class lives. The college-to-office-job pipeline wasn't just about paychecks—it was about accessing a whole system of benefits, social connections, and cultural capital that came with white-collar work.”

boop.

“We can intellectually understand that the white-collar ladder is crumbling. We can see the evidence that traditional "prestigious" jobs are becoming less secure while skilled trades are thriving. But emotionally? We're still trapped in an outdated status system. […] Most people recognize that the economy is shifting, but they're hoping they can ride out the transition without having to personally recalibrate their relationship to status and success. They want to be right about the trends without having to live through the implications.”

BOOP.

I also stumbled recently across a paper from Citigroup, unpacked and linked to in rigorous detail here by

Dougald Lamont

, written in 2005 but discussing the emerging ‘plutonomy’ in the US -“"when the top, say 1% of households in a country see their share of income rise sharply, i.e., a plutonomy emerges, this is often in times of frenetic technology/financial innovation driven wealth waves, accompanied by asset booms, equity and/or property.” so much of it feels ripe for today, and we’re arguably at an even worse point now than we were then;

What are the common drivers of Plutonomy? Disruptive technology-driven productivity gains, creative financial innovation, capitalist-friendly cooperative governments, an international dimension of immigrants and overseas conquests invigorating wealth creation, the rule of law, and patenting inventions. Often these wealth waves involve great complexity, exploited best by the rich and educated of the time.

Whew. A lot of converging, desperately disruptive forces all happening at once.. Please also check out his piece titled aptly “For the Internet Economy to Work, Big Tech Can't Be Allowed to Ignore Intellectual Property Rights Anymore.” Given that a lot of people have more recently espoused ‘novel’ ideas like ‘everyone can be a creator in the age of AI!’, he eloquently lays out the ways in which even this is ‘solve’ is, and will be, a market failure under current conditions.

The challenge facing creators is not new. Journalists, musicians, artists and research scientists all have something in common: It has always been easier and cheaper to make a copy of something than to some up with something original. What is new is the scale of the infringement and piracy, and that some of the companies who are benefiting from infringement are so dominant in their markets that rights holders cannot negotiate a fair price for the use of their property.

thats enough doomerism from me for today :)

Feets/feets-adjacent zone

• Nerding out on the

  Blackbird Spyplane
  post from Tory Burch footwear designer Kat Henning — this one is for the heads. Great tips on how to spot a quality sandal with some of her fav brands included.

• Who is going to fanaticsfest and can you secure me a Salehe knicks jersey?

  salehebembury

  

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• Feid x Salomon - have they done anything with an artist before? this is quite the entrance. I.. need?

  feid

  

  A post shared by @feid

• on topic - latest from converse / golfwang shows how expansive these types of collaborations can be if you align with the right artist. I don’t think ive seen anything from converse that feels so fresh (while also feeling like its versatile enough to be a new classic for them) for a looong time.

  streetnightlive

  

  A post shared by @streetnightlive

  honorable mention to what Badbunny has been doing with adidas too.

• love the cote & ciel take on the Merrel moc:

  coteetciel

  

  A post shared by @coteetciel

Quick links & things im loving

• Deeply appreciate this piece from Felipe Rocha, founder of the iconic Design studio Porto Rocha, over on Its Nice That.
  
  ”Design talks a lot about inclusion, but it still expects people to perform confidence in one very specific way. Polished, loud, sales-y. But that’s not the only way to lead. You can be thoughtful, vulnerable, speak with an accent – and still be taken seriously. You can do the work your way and still be a strong voice in the room.”
  
  HERE, HERE!
  

• Absolutely riveted by this creator whose ambition is to ‘de-influence the world’… from the brand account of his snack company. His perfect delivery of “influencer accent” and neologisms is unbelievable. A breath of fresh air. Go buy some Daadi Snacks.

  

  @daadisnacksi feel like a modern day Christopher Columbus #nyc #influencer #nycfood

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• Cannes coverage for normal people who dont know what Cannes is. Never heard anything as true as “a more honest Coachella… Capitalism is always on the main stage.” Im locked in to his assessment of the vibes.

  blakelythornton

  

  A post shared by @blakelythornton

  • Streets are saying theres too many ‘vibe guys’ in brand/marketing who aren’t savvy on the commercial/business side. WARC have done an incredible service with this resource, ‘Financial analysis for marketers’. An absolute must for anyone agency-side with aspirations on moving in-house to client land.

  • Exclusively for my fellow brand strategy nerds- finally caught up with

    PK Lawton
    ’s post on ‘reassembling the strategist’, followed by the dense and immersive whitepaper from
    Zoe Scaman
    entitled The Work. Both pieces attempt to map out an evolution of the discipline rooted in the realities of how business (and our environment/culture) has changed. Zoe’s piece really resonates with me - but you will need to sit with it and really give it some time (it comes in at a whopping 114 slides and its full of very layered analyses. I dont know where she finds the hours in the day honestly- an absolute big-brained legend).

  • Interesting take from Lebron on ‘ring culture’ in the NBA and how limiting a filter it is that tends to overlook some real GREATS.

    sportsillustrated

    

    A post shared by @sportsillustrated

Thats all for this week fam - enjoy Cannes if you’re there and if you’re not i love you and you count. :)

GG