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This weekend I watched Kate Berlant’s brilliant new stand up special Parmesan. Without giving too much away, the show ends with what is essentially an anti-closer. When Varietyasked her about the decision to not wrap with some big rapturous punchline, she said, “There’s something inherently embarrassing about [a closer], because you’re reducing yourself to this expectation of the form.” She goes on to say, “It’s funny how everyone knows their role, which I think is really comforting about seeing something live. For me, the most interesting thing is disrupting that expectation.”
Photograph by Emilio Madrid/HBO
It got me thinking about the roles we play online. The scroller and the poster. The audience and the performer. Platforms are now trying to meddle in that relationship even more than they already have. As strategist Carmen Vicente pointed out in a recent video, platforms are releasing AI agents within their apps to guide content creation. Instagram nested theirs within Edits and YouTube rolled out Ask Studio. As algorithms collapse “what works” into a more defined set of rules, is that relationship between the poster and scroller getting too predictable? And is there something “inherently embarrassing”, as Kate puts it, about playing by those rules?
In her video, Carmen posits that “chatbot-optimized social media will narrow the range of high performing content until what constitutes as ‘successful’ is just one, homogenized, milquetoast middle.” One person commented, “Things already look the same. People using the same hooks, holding microphones, GRWM…” In my latest interview, Dana Mosa-Basha, Director of Marketing at Shinola, pulled a similar thread, noting, “I worry that optimization is slowly sanding off the edges that make marketing memorable.” It feels more important than ever to stay sharp.
As feeds homogenize, the best brands will derail audience expectations. Hold up a funhouse mirror to “best practices”. Turn a belief on its head. Never let them know your next move, but make it a strategy. Subverting assumptions has always been a helpful tactic in marketing, but in this era of over-optimization it will become a super power.
Today’s newsletter is a guide to getting there. It covers:
13 ways to upend expectations on social media
Why low-stimulation social works right now
Examples from brands like PBS, Reformation, The Buffalo Bills, Ramp, and more
Tips from the agency behind Visit Oslo’s viral “anti-ad”
My favorite brainstorm prompt...
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