In this issue: Damn AI-generated stand-up comedy is a waste of time / X’s video talk show roster / RIP Kum & Go+ more!
Welcome to Context Collapse, the world’s best comms newsletter. I’m Neal Ungerleider. I run Ungerleider Works and used to work as a reporter for Fast Company, write op-eds for the LA Times, and work as a senior copywriter for R/GA. This newsletter helps readers navigate the weird new world of media and gleefully ignores all the conventional wisdom about journalism, public relations, marketing, and advertising.
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“An AI assisted podcast released a new comedy special featuring an AI-generated version of the late comedian George Carlin, and it’s worse than you could possibly imagine.”
”I think there was some concern about the inadvertent double entendre of the Kum & Go name,” a former Maverik member shared. “I also believe that [Maverik CEO] Chuck Maggelet envisions growing Maverik into a multi-regional brand, and he’s not deterred by Casey’s, Kwik Trip or other well-respected brands in the Midwest.”
”As with TikTok’s arrival as a social platform, its shopping venture — which is similarly disorienting, amateurish, and initially reads as downmarket — would be easy to dismiss as, basically, another conduit for junk, only this manifested in physical form. As it was last time around, this is a fair observation mixed with a questionable prediction: TikTok has done well for itself by pairing cheap, mass-produced amateur content with aggressive and metrics-driven machine-learning recommendations in an infinite feed. Why not actual stuff, too?”
”Cyberpunk 2077,” featuring actor Keanu Reeves, was one of the most expensive games ever released. Last month, it capped an improbable comeback by winning best ongoing game at one of the industry’s biggest awards shows.
The three-year journey from flop to phenom required spending more money and represents one of the more dramatic examples of how videogame makers can try to redeem their failures through means that aren’t as feasible for other forms of entertainment.”
”On a windy Monday in front of the headquarters of Cognizant, a contractor with YouTube Music's parent company Google (in turn a subsidiary of Alphabet), around 40 Alphabet Workers Union members were picketing. YouTube Music's Content Operations team, which provides day jobs for many Austin musicians, has been organizing for 10 months under the banner of the AWU (which has about 1,300 members nationwide) and filed for a union election in October. This is the first known strike in Google's history.”
”Stanley, a manly hundred-year-old brand primarily aimed at hikers and blue-collar workers, was rediscovered in 2019 by the bloggers behind a women’s lifestyle and shopping site called The Buy Guide. They told CNBC that even though the Quencher model of the cup was hard to find, no other cup on the market had what they were looking for. Which is a bizarrely passionate stance to take on a water bottle, but from their post about the cup, those attributes were: “Large enough to keep up with our busy days, a handle to carry it wherever we go, dishwasher safe, fits into our car cupholders, keeps ice cold for 12+ hours, and a straw.”
The Buy Guide team then sent a Quencher to Emily Maynard Johnson from The Bachelor after she had a baby because “there is no thirst like nursing mom thirst!” Johnson posted about it on Instagram and it started to gain some traction. The Buy Guide then connected with an employee at Stanley, bought 5,000 Quenchers from the company directly, set up a Shopify site, and sold them to their readers. According to The Buy Guide, they sold out in five days.”
”Publish or disconnect episodes from an RSS feed on YouTube.
If you’re a podcast creator, you can use YouTube Studio to upload your podcasts to YouTube through an RSS feed.”
”X Corp. announced three new shows, including with former CNN host Don Lemon and former Hawaii congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, as the social-media platform seeks to draw more eyeballs and move attention away from controversies over owner Elon Musk’s own posts.
The platform also said Tuesday that it will host a show with sports commentator Jim Rome that will stream five days a week.
X Chief Executive Linda Yaccarino has been drawing on her television roots to try to turn around X’s business after having spent three decades in the media industry before joining the company last year.”
I don’t think about you at all.
When your ad agency starts tracking badge swipes and your IP address location when you log in during the RTO mandates.