VisionPro, AI Metaverse & Scam Ads
5 in 5 - Brave & Heart HeartBeat #187 ❤️
This week the VisionPro is finally out… but nobody is really bothered? Mark Zuckerberg has finally left us speechless, for real this time, and TikTok ads are getting out of hand.
Plus, how can employee wellness programmes actually make employee wellness worse, and should you film yourself getting fired and post it online?
Let’s get into it.
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#1 - You Can Now Pre Order VisionPro… Or Not, No Worries
Apple’s VisionPro headset is finally available for pre-order, but hype is glaringly absent from the official launch, which has been described as having a distinct “no worries if not” vibe about it.
The announcement was quietly made, with no official launch events and no celebrity endorsements – worlds away from the Apple watch product launch back in the day.
Analysts expect Apple to sell about 400,000 units this year, in comparison to the 12 million Apple Watches that flew off shelves during their first year of sale. The price is of course wildly different, the VisionPro will set you back about $3,500, but still.
Other companies don’t seem to be too bothered about it either, with the biggest shock being that Netflix will not be making a specific app for the VisionPro. While Apple have been marketing the headset as the “ultimate entertainment device”, Netflix don’t seem to be leaning in to that concept.
A spokesperson said “Our members will be able to enjoy Netflix on the web browser on the Vision Pro, similar to how our members can enjoy Netflix on Macs”. Is that a burn? Unsure, but they’re not even going to make their iPad app compatible with the Vision Pro, so they are bringing no effort to this.
YouTube and Spotify will also not be making compatible versions of their apps. Spotify have publicly butted heads with Apple about their App Store profits anyway so no surprises there.
Will the product be a success? Are Apple even bothered about making this product a success? Is the mac version completely fine for the headset and we’re all making much ado about nothing?
#2 - Zuckerburg And AI
Oh good lord he’s at it again, Mark Zuckerberg has once again found the key to the future, and this time it’s AI.
You know that Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) everyone is going on about, basically when AI becomes sentient, well don’t worry, he’s on it, he’ll get that done.
Sure Mark, and how’s that Metaverse world building dream panning out for you?
AGI, if you didn’t know, is the goal of building AI systems with autonomous self-control, self-understanding, and the ability to learn new skills. Basically, what the sci-fi movies have been warning us about.
Zuckerberg thinks that Meta are the only company big enough to get this done, and part of it seems to be the thrill of the race – he talks a lot about how many people want to be the first and the best to come up with GIA.
Although this may seem a bit like Mark has an attention deficit issue, don’t worry (or do) he says this AI malarcky totally ties into the MetaVerse. He apparently sees a future where AI generates the virtual worlds people live in, and AI characters accompany them.
He also suggested that AIs could post their own content onto Threads, Instagram and Facebook. Just, wow…
#3 – What Is Going On With TikTok Ads?
If you’ve spent enough time on TikTok, you may have been unlucky enough to be the recipient of targeted ads. And in some cases, many, many different targeted ads of the same product.
One YouTuber decided to do a deep dive on what was going on after being shown targeted ads for the same dress one too many times – 54 different ads, to be exact, over a period of four weeks, from 32 different websites.
That’s right, all selling the exact same dress, using the exact same clips of influencers trying the dress on and the exact same images on their sites.
The YouTuber in question, ex Buzzfeed alumni Safiya Nygard, wanted to find out if they were all the same dress, and WHY was it being sold on so many different websites, with so many different prices? Yep, although it was apparently the same dress, the prices ranged from $3 to $200.
So what’s the deal? After much digging Nygard discovered that the original dress was the $200 dress, from a pretty nice brand that went viral with influencers online – the dress they’re actually promoting in all the videos.
Latching on to this viral dress, at least 54 different shell companies created listings using this brand’s images – so, false advertising – and stole the influencers videos to create promoted ad content on TikTok.
Nygard bought various dresses from these sites – in some cases she received a badly done knock-off, in one case she received a completely different dress, and guess what, the $3 one… simply never came. Just complain to the sites, right? Wrong, in most cases they’ve been deleted in the meantime.
The influencers in question are well aware of what’s going on, and have complained to TikTok – they don’t want their followers to think they’re advertising a scam dress, but TikTok are letting it slide – they’re getting paid for promoted content after all.
#4 - Work Wellness
It turns out wellness strategies at work can make your wellbeing… worse somehow?
Companies across the world spent over sixty billion dollars on wellbeing interventions in 2021, an amount which is predicted to grow to almost ninety-five billion in 2026. Despite this, studies show that they don’t really have much impact on employees.
An Oxford university study examining the impact of a range of wellbeing interventions from stress management and mindfulness classes and apps found that almost none of them had any significant impact on worker wellbeing or job satisfaction.
Even worse, workplace resilience and mindfulness training seemed to have a slightly negative on the self-rated health of employees who took them.
So what would help? Apparently, the best approach is cutting stress rather than spending time and money on stress-cutting measures.
Research done on employee wellbeing interventions in the NHS concluded that the most effective ways to improve wellbeing in the healthcare profession included cutting back pointless beaurocratic procedures, reducing the length of meetings, improving staff rotas and giving employees a sense of psychological safety in their team.
Further general research found another important way to improve employee wellbeing was to improve the quality of frontline managers.
Wellness interventions may be in fashion, and they look good on paper, but that money could probably be better spent on quality training for managers and make a lot more difference to your employees without them having to download ANOTHER app.
#5 - Filming Your Firing
Brittany Pietsch recently went viral as she filmed herself getting fired over video call. Why film such a personal and not very pleasant moment? Apparently to share what happened to her with her family and friends. And everyone else on TikTok, as it turned out, where she also posted the nine minute video that was watched by millions.
She isn’t the only one either, the hashtag #layoff has over 365 million views. What’s this trend about then?
One view is that for Gen Z, a chronically online generation who are used to sharing what they wear, what they eat and how they clean their apartments, filming themselves getting fired is a logical extension of that lifestyle.
Another, though, suggests that the videos show employees taking back some power in a situation where they are otherwise powerless.
It could also be a way to feel less alone during such an experience in the remote working era – at least when you got fired in the office you could commiserate with your employees when you got out of your bosses office – especially if it was part of a mass layoff.
Videos like this also prove that employees are less worried about protecting a standard of professionalism that protected employers no matter what they did – they’re not afraid to put them on blast.
In the viral video Pietsch was fired by two company representatives that she’d never met, who told her she wasn’t meeting targets. She gave examples of good work she’d brought to the company and positive feedback she’d received, but when probed the representatives sacking her could give her no other concrete reasons for her firing – it doesn’t seem like she was the villain here.
Some commentators, however, have noted that this trend may have long-term career repercussions. Any employer who googles her will come across this video.
But maybe she doesn’t want to work for an employer who would be but off by this video anyway…
Brave & Heart over and out.
Bonus
Skibidi Toilet
Something absolutely mental is going viral on YouTube, and for the first time even Gen Z don’t get it.
Introducing, Skibidi Toilet.
It’s a really scary looking animated series on YouTube about heads in toilets, and it’s popularity (135 million views) is being driven by children under 13.
It’s also fueling a moral panic about how the internet is poisoning children’s brains.
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