Keep scrolling for the corporate girlies taking over TikTok.
Meet the internet's newest it-girl: Moo Deng. Over the past week, fan edits have circulated TikTok, and social media users have rushed to watch Moo Deng's 24/7 livestream from Khao Kheow Open Zoo. In a new piece for WIRED, Angela Watercutter explains the internet's obsession with Moo Deng and the online world's long-time hyper-fixation on certain animals.
For those unfamiliar with Moo Deng, she’s a baby pygmy hippo. Her rise to viral stardom began when the zoo invited followers to help name her, eventually landing on Moo Deng, which translates to “bouncy pork” and refers to a type of meatball.
Since then, workers at the Khao Kheow Open Zoo have been doing, “All they can to keep up with her fans’ appetite for more. They post videos, photos, updates. They also welcome thousands of visitors a day and find themselves having to defend Moo Deng when tourists throw shells at her while she’s just trying to chill,” Watercutter says.
She goes on to point out that Moo Deng is just the latest in a long line of internet "favourite animals"—many of which have become memes. Iconic examples include Doge and Grumpy Cat, both of which have achieved lasting fame online.
Watercutter adds that it’s difficult to tell how long each animal will stay in the spotlight, where capitalising on their virality becomes a timely matter.
“It seems heartless to think of animals this way, but if their owners don’t, someone else will,” she writes. “Perhaps that’s why zoo director Narongwit Chodchoi told the Associated Press this week that the zoo has begun the process of trying to trademark and patent the hippo to avoid her likeness getting used by anyone else.”
The funds from Moo Deng's viral fame will (hopefully) go towards improving her quality of life — something that has become increasingly important. Her growing popularity has left visitors feeling entitled to see her, with Moo Deng attracting unprecedented numbers of tourists.
With anything capable of going viral these days, it's crucial to establish protections and boundaries—especially when it comes to protecting animals like Moo Deng.
Read the piece via WIRED.
How Gen Z ‘corporate girlies’ took over TikTok
Moo Deng might be working hard, but the Gen Z corporate girlies are working harder. In a new article for Fast Company, Eve Upton-Clark details the rise of a new kind of corporate influencer.
On TikTok, there are seemingly more and more Gen Z women romanticising the corporate grind, sharing their “day in the life” or “week in my life” videos in the workforce — often at renowned international accounting and law firms.
“Corporate girlies are documenting their 9-to-5s, from work-appropriate ‘outfit-of-the-day’ to ‘what’s in my work bag’ videos. And people are watching,” Upton-Clark writes.
Classic Gen Z corporate girl content is essentially the newest iteration of That Girl a.k.a, the woman who can do it all.
“It’s career porn that feels like soft luxury: waking up early, hitting the gym, grabbing a coffee or green juice en route to the office, and documenting the perfect desk setup or cinematic views from the office,” she continues. “Post-work, there’s a meal-prepped dinner, a few chapters of a book by the soft glow of a candle, and an early bed-time, ready to do it all again tomorrow.”
For a generation that preaches work-life balance, this content surprisingly resonates with this demographic.
“Gen Z are buying into it, sticking with companies 18% longer than millennials did in their first seven years on the job, aligning more with Gen X and Boomers in their loyalty to one place.”
Read the story via Fast Company.
The history & legacy of The Brit Crew: Lessons from one of the first creator collectives
But before Gen Z was obsessed with the corporate girlies, there was The Brit Crew. In a recent deep dive for the 'infinite scroll podcast', host Lauren Meisner explores the rise and fall of the Brit Crew— one of YouTube's most famous creator friend groups of the 2010s.
The Brit Crew were culture-defining — made up of siblings Zoe and Joe Sugg, Alfie Deyes, Jim Chapman, Tanya Burr, Marcus Butler, Niomi Smart, Caspar Lee and Louise Pentland. Together, they changed how creators operated, setting trends that would shape influencer culture for years.
Throughout the episode, Meisner outlines each creator's trajectory and the group's iconic moments and scandals. She argues that their frequent collaborations and brand-safe content helped the Brit Crew pivot into more mainstream fame— specifically through publishing and launching lifestyle brands.
“The Brit Crew managed to snag various brand deals, commercial opportunities, and sponsorships, but through it all, they still maintained a sense of relatability. This relatability, in turn, became one of the key drivers of their viral success,” Meisner explains.
The impact of the Brit Crew can also be seen through how they shifted the direction of vlogging, moving away from skits and focusing more on their daily lives and friendships. This change popularised more authentic, relatable content and laid the groundwork for content houses and other creator collectives that followed.
“Whenever the Brit Crew attended an influencer event, fans knew they could expect up to nine different vlogs— each showing a slightly different perspective of the same experience. Viewers loved this, as many of them had developed some sort of parasocial relationship with the friend group,” she continues.
As for what led to the demise of The Brit Crew, there were several factors, including a loss of relatability, audiences aging out of the content the Brit Crew became famous for, and the demise of a “squeaky clean brand.”
“By 2017, as the internet became increasingly oversaturated, we saw the rise of intense, fast-paced (and often, confrontational) content and creators. The internet had moved away from wholesome YouTubers and embraced characters like Tana Mongeau and Jake Paul,” Meisner says. “Audiences had grown tired of sanitised and family-friendly content— exactly what the Brit Crew thrived on.”
While the Brit Crew no longer dominates the zeitgeist, no other friendship group or content house has matched their longevity, influence, and overall success.
Tune into the ‘infinite scroll’ podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube.
Why do we obsessively watch our own Instagram Stories?
That said, many of us occasionally find ourselves stalking the Brit Crew, curious about what each creator is up to these days. While we tend to check in on our once-favourite influencers, we also tend to stalk ourselves. In a new piece for Mashable, Jordan Page explores why so many of us can’t stop scrolling through our own social media profiles.
Speaking with several psychologists and creators, Page outlines a few reasons why users can’t resist rewatching their own stories and viewing their posts. One common reason is the desire to understand how we are perceived by others.
Eloise Skinner, a psychotherapist and author specialising in existential identity, explains that the urge to gauge how others perceive us has long been a fundamental human instinct.
"As we try to understand ourselves – answering the timeless question of ‘who am I?' – we often draw on the opinions and reflections of others to guide us," Skinner explains.
Psychologist Zoe Mallet makes a similar claim to Page, saying that it comes from our deep-rooted desire for social acceptance and to fit in.
“It’s a subconscious attempt to enhance our social standing, increase our chances of belonging and create a positive self-image, which is part of our survival coping mechanisms as humans," she says.
Page goes on to note that “not everyone uses social media in the same way,” where some users may not prioritise how they present themselves online. But for others— especially those with public-facing or digital-first careers— it truly becomes an extension of their personal brand.
“When someone taps on my story, are they going to come away with a full understanding of who I am? If yes, I’ve done it right. If not, I’ll add something or take it away. It sounds so insidious and weird, but it’s true,“ journalist David Chipakupaku tells Page.
No matter how we engage with social media, it often serves as a digital scrapbook. With that, it’s no surprise that many of us enjoy scrolling through our profiles— reliving memories and “older versions of ourselves.”
Read the piece via Mashable.
The Truths and Distortions of Ruby Franke
In a new piece for The Cut, Caitlin Moscatello provides an in-depth look at Ruby Franke and the 8 Passengers family channel.
For those unfamiliar, in August of last year, Ruby Franke— once at the helm of the now-defunct 8 Passengers family channel— was arrested on multiple counts of child abuse.
She was taken into custody alongside Jodi Hildebrandt, founder of the personal improvement group ConneXions. The two were arrested at Jodi’s home in Ivins, Utah, after one of Ruby’s children escaped through a window and sought help from a neighbour, who then called the police.
Both Ruby and Jodi have since pled guilty to four counts of felony child abuse and are now in prison.
Moscatello’s piece takes an inside look at how this all unfolded, detailing Ruby's journey from Mormon mommy vlogger to felon.
She started 8 Passengers in 2015, and over the next six years, it become one of the most popular family channels, peaking at around 2.5 million subscribers.
“In 2015, when 8 Passengers launched, the content that had reigned on mommy blogs in the aughts and then moved to Instagram in the early 2010s was making a hard turn toward video; from 2016 to 2017, viewership of family channels on YouTube increased by 90 percent,” Moscatello explains.
By 2019, viewers noticed that things had changed. While Ruby always had a strict parenting style, she started to appear even colder. Soon, it was revealed that Ruby (and her husband, Kevin) had sent their eldest son to a wilderness camp for troubled teens and stopped letting him sleep in his own bed.
The family also often filmed embarrassing moments involving their kids, with few boundaries in place.
“Very little, it seemed, was off-limits. A video with a thumbnail of the Frankes’ tween daughter with shaving cream on her legs, sitting on the edge of the tub, got almost 2 million views,” the journalist recalls.
When Ruby joined ConneXions, things became more intense. Jodi offered one-on-one coaching alongside gender-segregated group sessions. Ruby quickly became part of Jodi’s inner circle, and Jodi even stayed with the Franke family for a period.
At one point, Ruby and Hildebrandt locked themselves in a room for several hours in some sort of religious trance.
As Moscatello writes, “There, in the suburban home that millions of people had seen on YouTube, a bizarre scene unfolded: While the children played in the yard, Ruby and her friends were upstairs receiving ‘visions’ from God.” That night, Ruby asked Kevin for an “in-home” separation.
Up until their arrests, Ruby and Jodi became increasingly intertwined. Ruby even rebranded the 8 Passengers Instagram account to “Moms of Truth,” an offshoot of ConneXions described as a support group for parents.
“Theories about Ruby’s spiral still circulate, but the answer to what happened might be fairly simple. Ruby, primed to follow an authority figure and prize obedience, was the perfect prey for Hildebrandt, a woman with a God complex who had won the trust of their community leaders,” Moscatello concludes. “That Ruby would come to trust her, too, and offer up her platform to spread Hildebrandt’s message, isn’t so much a deviation as an extreme version of what she’d already been taught.”
Read the full story via The Cut.