OVERWORLD:
-Nightmare AI-made romantic comedies are coming-

ONE BETWEEN:
- Prada dressed their first basketball player - and it’s a woman-

THE DEPTHS:
-This camel made kids smoke and was fined $368.5 billion-

“If you understood everything I said, you’d be me.”
— Miles Davis

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Media

Nightmare AI-made romantic comedies are coming

We made it people. Release your tears of ecstasy. AI-generated rom-coms are officially a real thing.

Last Friday, TCL, a budget TV manufacturer, announced Next Stop Paris.

It's a heart-twisting, gorgeous masterpiece that doubles as the aphex of technology and culture.

Just joking, it's a freak show mess. Total crime against human dignity.

In the trailer, fake deformed flesh-bag humans are seemingly in some sort of love triangle - which we’re informed about via the dialogue between their awkwardly warping mouths.

✦How they’re going to make you watch it✦

Next Stop Paris is being released by TCLtv+, a free digital TV service included in all TCL TVs.

These days, most smart TVs have an equivalent of free entertainment services. They're called “FAST” channels (free ad-supported TV).

And the rom-com formula is the perfect fit for FAST - because rom-com’s production cost to watcher loyalty ratio is so profitable.

(The Hallmark Channel’s rom-coms make $350m+ per year, a third of its annual revenue.)

So, if incentives are any indicator, we'll soon have full channels of AI content in the FAST ecosystem - whether with TCLtv+ or other competitors. That includes low-quality studios, YouTubers, and TikTok accounts.

It's kinda happening already: AI creators spam us across platforms with highly specific, niche content that costs dirt to make and can be easily paired with ads.

Modern common sense kinda knows that phones are surveillance systems. But... few know that TVs are also surveillance machines with targeted advertising.

TVs get data not only from your watch history, but your phone, location, and more. For example, the microphone on your remote can capture voice data.

✦It’s probably going to do well✦

Yes, TCL is really pushing Next Stop Paris, claiming the film is a genuine product. Which is true, in the most black-and-white capitalist definition that a product is "something people consume."

And people will consume it, for sure - but most likely to ridicule. Which is why some people like rom-coms anyway. So yeah. On brand.

Chris Regina, TCL's Chief Content Officer, says their goal isn’t to piss on human creativity (too late) but to complement it, utilizing unemployed talents in the industry.

“We’re using writers. We’re using actors and animators. We’ve been really fortunate to find a lot of great talent out there who weren’t working that have become part of our team.”

Good PR, Chris.

✦QUICK HITS✦

Google fired 28 employees involved in protests against Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion contract with Israel. The contract, criticized for potential use in military applications, has sparked widespread controversy and protests.

Jean Paul Gaultier is collaborating with Shayne Oliver of HBA for a capsule collection launching on Met Gala night in New York. Great fit, will probably look cool.

Is it a, or an? Figure it out, once and for all.

AltStore is the first ever approved third-party app store on iOS, and is now available in the EU. Exciting times.

Comedy Central and SEGA are making a new animated "Golden Axe" show based on the legendary beat ‘em up sidescrollers. It’ll have 10 episodes and is penned by Mike McMahan and Joe Chandler.

LVMH reported a 3% rise in first-quarter organic sales - which would’ve been higher if it weren’t for inflation, the slow economy, and customer fatigue with logo-heavy fashion. Overall, this was LVMH's slowest quarter since 2020. Yikes.

Uber just published their “2024 Lost & Found Index,” which lists all kinds of weird info: The most forgetful cities, the most commonly lost items, the most forgetful day of the year, forgotten foods, and more. (Somebody forgot their frontal hair toupee)

Elon is in bed with Elon: Tesla has spent about $200,000 advertising on X platform and is paying X for consultancy.

TikTok is trying out an Instagram competitor called TikTok Notes in Australia and Canada. It’s kinda more like Pinterest though, with some unique headline options for images and a grid-image home layout.

You should buy this: A 100-year-old Beverly Hills mansion, home of Billie Burke who played the Good Witch in Wizard of Oz…. for $21.75 million

Play: Math puzzles that’ll make your niece a savant.

Read: How many bathrooms have Neanderthals in the tile?

⛹🏻‍♀️ The WNBA draft is a booming fashion opportunity - Prada seizes it.
This Monday's 2024 WNBA Draft broke all previous records - 2.4 million viewers, which is a 307% increase from last year. Huge.

For fashion brands and players, that means a primetime opportunity to create fat looks - much like the lads at the NFL and NBA do.

So, for the first time ever, Prada dressed up a basketball player, 22-year-old Caitlin Clark - an honor that not even male players have gotten.

And it’s Prada as fuck. White on white. Transparent frame shades. Tiny bag. Pointy toes. Classic.

The funky part: The full outfit costs about $17K. Which is pointless information until you remember….

Clark was the no. 1 pick for Indiana Fever, and according to BI, she’ll be making $76,535 in her first year.

That outfit is 22% of her income. That’s how out-of-whack WNBA payouts are relative to sponsor spend.

THE DEPTHS

Advertisement

This camel made kids smoke and was fined $368.5 billion

The coolest guy you could ever hope to be in the 90s was Joe Camel. He was the advertising mascot for Camel cigarettes, and he was a fly, handsome, slick, suave motherfucker.

Originally known as "Old Joe," this sexy pool-shooting camel was initially created in 1974 by British artist Nicholas Price for a French ad campaign.

Here’s the original Joe Camel design by Price:

Some 14 years later, the Camel was revamped by the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company into the infamous Joe Camel design.

These ads were propagated in hopes of competing with Marboro’s grasp around cool, masculine audiences they had captured with their “Marlboro Man” campaigns.

So, they kinda morphed together a mix of Sean Connery and Don Johnson in Joe Camel’s face to cook up an instantly recognizable Hollywood-cool vibe.

But… the cartoon aesthetic had some disastrous side effects. Kids really liked Joe Camel.

In 1991, the Journal of the American Medical Association published a study in which kids would match brand logos with products. 91% of 6-year-olds matched Joe Camel with cigarettes, the same amount who matched the Disney Channel logo with Mickey Mouse.

And then, they compared Camel’s recognition with teens vs. adults over 21. The result… 97.7% of high school students recognized Joe Camel, versus 72.2% of adults.

Basically, Camel was far better at reaching kids than adults.

The situation reached a boiling point in 1991 when several public health groups, including the American Medical Association, demanded that Joe should retire.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) eventually stepped in, launching an investigation into the allegations that R.J. Reynolds was targeting children with its Joe Camel campaign.

In 1997, the FTC decided that the company had indeed engaged in unfair and deceptive marketing practices that aimed to attract young smokers.

RJR, the owner of Camel and other tobacco companies was forced to pay a $368.5 billion settlement to states seeking to recover costs due to tobacco-related illnesses. Since then, cartoons have been banned from a ban on the use of cartoon figures

Just to put things into perspective, $368.5 billion in 1997 is $698 billion in today’s money. The entirety of Tesla is worth $477 billion. Shit.