Pretty Filters, Brain Rot & Scam Granny
5 in 5 - Brave & Heart HeartBeat #222 ❤️
This week we’re celebrating the demise of beauty filters on TikTok, Reddit’s new popularity and the TikTok awards vs brain rot.
Plus, what are scammers using AI for and introducing the new office Christmas party.
Let’s get into it.
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#1 - Bye Bye Filters
TikTok’s latest act in their quest to make the platform less harmful for young people is fousing on filters.
Under-18s will soon no longer be able to use filters which change their features in a way that makeup can’t. For example, the “Bold Glamour” filter that makes you look extra-gorgeous, according to TikTok beauty standards, by making your eyes bigger, your skin smoother and brighter and your lips bigger.
There’s been a lot of concern around beauty features, as some young people have described finding their real faces ugly, which just isn’t good enoug when you can click a button and see what your “perfect” face would look like.
A small minority have even undergone what has been referred to as “Snapchat Surgeries” which made the news as far back as 2018. Basically, cosmetic surgery to look like the ‘prettier’ version of themselves. And the surgeons said they find it pretty handy to have an actual photo to work from…
With no more filters from a young age, maybe the body dysmorphia to be perfect might calm down.
Obviously, it’s not simply a coincidence that these measures are coming in at the exact right time to comply with EU and UK regulation, but hey, it’s a start.
#2 - Reddit Overtakes X
Reddit has now officially overtaken X in the popularity rankings for social media in the UK.
The lineup is now headed by YouTube, followed by Facebook, Instagram and TikTok, with Reddit coming in fifth place, above X and followed by LinkedIn.
Reddit operates as a forum but is still technocally a social media, and it’s interesting for a forum-based social media to be in the top five, which has up until now been dominated by our classic “social feeds”.
Obviously X is going down the pan, that’s no longer up for discussion, and although LinkedIn is famously boring there are a LOT of people on it so it’s surprising to see Reddit up there.
Apparently some of this popularity may have come from changes to the Google algorithm which meant more people were finding the site, or alternatively some of the publicity the site has had in the last year around AI data scraping and going on the stock market.
Reddit is a bit of a weird one. It already had a cult fan base, so let’s see how they mix with the new users…
#3 – Welcome to the TikTok Awards
The UK and Ireland’s first TikTok awards took place this month, featuring such winners as a man who films himself cleaning pools and a woman who makes homemade pickles.
But while the winners were obviously thrilled with their awards, there was also a lot of conversation around “brain rot” and whether their videos were contributing to it.
Brain rot was Oxford University’s 2024 word of the year, despite being two words, and refers to the deterioration of a person's mental state due to over-consumption of low-quality or unchallenging online content.
And it’s not just a meme term, it’s a real thing.
Academic research has found evidence that the internet is shrinking our grey matter, weakining memory and attention spans and distorting our cognitive processes. The term “digital dementia” has even been thrown around, especially for those who have “divided attention across multiple media sources”.
Watching TV while scrolling Instagram anyone…
The TikTok winners weren’t so concerned about brain rot, however, with one girl saying that she’s proud to represent brain rot and described herself as a “brain rot girly”.
#4 - AI Video Scams
We’ve talked a lot about AI videos and voice cloning tools that can steal people’s likenesses – but what are those naughty people on the world wide web actually doing with them?
1 – The classic scam. Martin Lewis, famous UK “money saving expert” had his likeness used in a video advertising a cryptocurrency investing programme which scammed one man out of 70,000 pounds and landed him in pretty bad debt. That’s NOT very on brand for him.
2 – Romance scams. Another tool in the romance scammers technical tool belt, AI video software means that the age-old question “but have you video called them?” no longer means anything.
3 – Influencer videos. You know those influencer videos where they’re holding up the product? Well, now they can be copied with any product in them, according to some guy on LinkedIn advertising his software. Great!
Nothing is real folks.
#5 - The New Office Christmas Party
When we say “office Christmas party” – what comes to mind?
If the first image into your head is the office Christmas party in Love Actually, sipping champagne and inappropriate slow dancing, that may be a thing of the past.
Companies are changing it up with activity-based christmas parties rather than the classic dinner and drinks. Think crazy golf, escape games, or even go karting – which just so happened to be the Brave & Heart Christmas party activity of choice this year.
Why this change? Some seem to think that people are now demanding more from their companies, and would be a bit disappointed with a classic “party”, but also companies booking their Christmas parties are increasingly wanting to move away from alcohol-focused events and focusing more on bringing people together.
Gen Z drink a lot less than older generations, and add that to the fact that diversity and inclusion is high on everyones radar, alcohol is no longer the thing that brings British employees together.
Plus, with the uptake of home working, many employees don’t spend as much time together as they used to. Getting together to do an activity is arguable a better way to get to know each other than just sitting around a table.
Brave & Heart over and out.
Bonus
Scam Granny
The newest AI scam that we didn’t know we needed.
Phone company 02 have created an AI granny to drive fraudsters mad by wasting their time on the phone when they call to try and scam people.
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