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A snaggle tooth. A gap in someones smile. A birthmark or mole. What do each of these facial features have in common? They all have wabi-sabi. Thats according to TikToks latest trend, which has users highlighting their imperfections and labeling them wabi-sabi.” Not to be confused with the sushi accompaniment, wabi-sabi is a Japanese aesthetic philosophy that finds beauty in imperfection and the natural process of agingsomething we could all use a little more of in the age of preventative facelifts. The concept celebrates imperfection and the natural wear and tear that occurs with the passage of time, whether thats a gently worn step, a chipped mug, or smile lines. A sound featuring the term has since gone viral on TikTok, introducing many to the idea for the first time. Nearly half a million videos have been posted under the viral audio, originating from the animated sitcom King of the Hill. In one episode, the character Bobby Hill picks up a rose and says, I like how mines a little off-center. Its got wabi-sabi. That clip has since been repurposed by users celebrating everything from crooked teeth to aquiline noses as wabi-sabi. As with any concept that takes off on TikTok, some of the subtlety of the original philosophy has been lost as it spreads online. Yet, in an age of unrealistic beauty standards, looksmaxxing, and aesthetic micro trends, one that celebrates individuality and acceptance of perceived flaws is a step in the right direction. In 2019, The New Yorker declared it “The Age of Instagram Face.” Six years on, Dazed wrote We have entered the age of TikTok Face. Aesthetic inflation or the normalization of more and more extreme cosmetic interventions over time, defined by Flesh World writer Jessica Defino, has eaten our collective brain. In just the past few weeks, headlines about the skinny BBL (thats Brazilian butt lift, for the unitiated) and facelifts at 28 demonstrate the pervasiveness of the pursuit of aesthetic perfection. Its a vicious feedback loop that also bleeds into our offline reality, with plenty of research finding a correlation between time spent online and desire for plastic surgery. If youve noticed the faces you see online slowly morphing into one and the same, you are not losing your mind. These days, we could all stand to embrace more wabi-sabi.
Category:
E-Commerce
As best I can tell, the über-wealthy believe the world as we know it is ending, that there wont be enough to go around, and that this means they need to accumulate as much money and land as possible in order to position themselves for the end of days. The way they do that is with an induced form of disaster capitalism, where they intentionally crash the economy in order to have some control over what remains. So the function of tariffs, for example, is to bankrupt businesses or even public services in order to privatize and then control them. Stall imports, put the ports out of business, and then let a sovereign wealth fund purchase the ports. Or as is happening right now: Use tariffs to bankrupt soybean farmers, who have to foreclose on their farms so that a private equity firm can purchase the farmland as a distressed asset, then hire the farmers who used to own and work that land as sharecroppers. The über-wealthy, in collaboration with the current White House administration, are engaged in a controlled demolition of this civilization because they realize the pyramid is collapsing and they dont have faith that there will be enough left to feed and house everyone. The best they can do is earn a ton of money, buy a lot of land, control an army, and get people accustomed to seeing that army deployed. Thats what were watching on TV and on our city streets. {"blockType":"mv-promo-block","data":{"imageDesktopUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/10\/adus-labs-16x9-1.png","imageMobileUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/10\/anduslabs.png","eyebrow":"","headline":"Get more insights from Douglas Rushkoff and Andus Labs.","dek":"Keep up to date on the latest trends on how AI is reshaping culture and business, through the critical lens of human agency.","subhed":"","description":"","ctaText":"Learn More","ctaUrl":"https:\/\/www.anduslabs.com\/perspectives","theme":{"bg":"#1a064b","text":"#ffffff","eyebrow":"#9aa2aa","subhed":"#ffffff","buttonBg":"#ffffff","buttonHoverBg":"#3b3f46","buttonText":"#000000"},"imageDesktopId":91420531,"imageMobileId":91420530,"shareable":false,"slug":""}} It’s no coincidence that AI is emerging at this same moment in our civilizations history. As Lewis Mumford observed, new technologies are often less the cause of societal changes than they are the result. Culture is like a standing wave, creating a vacuum or readiness for a new medium or technology. If we really are at the end of capitalismthe end of this 800- or 900-year process of abstraction, exploitation, and colonialismthen we would also, necessarily, be at the end of the era of employment. I will get to why I think that may ultimately be a good thing, but lets go through the scenario thats running through everyones heads right now, and then find our way through to what I think are better days. The spreadsheet people Yes, AI is coming for our jobs. Not the super-creative ones, or the high-touch human ones, but the ones that maintain administrative control over everything. The majority of your jobs, dear Fast Company readers. All the people in the mortgage departments, the insurance companies . . . the spreadsheet people, the PowerPoint people. Doomers say its 90% of jobs, but lets say its just half of office jobs taken by AIs and, of course, blue-collar jobs taken by robots. The problem with that, from a business perspective, is if you have no employees earning money out there in the world, then who will be your consumers? Even Henry Ford, despite his enthusiasm for fascism, understood that workers commoditized by his own assembly lines still needed to earn enough money to buy a Ford car. But how are AI billionaires going to continue to make money if there are no gainfully employed people capable of buying AI services from themor at least buying products from the companies that do purchase AI services? And this is the weird part; in their vision, it won’t be by selling products to people, but selling stuff to the AIs themselves. It’s a tricky idea, but once you wrap your head around it, it all makes perverse sense. In today’s economy, a small number of wealthy people and corporations employ us and sell to us. They don’t really need to care what species we are, or whether we are human or android, as long as we are producing value for their companies and then purchasing products from them. We already see how AIs can replace us as workers. But how could AIs also become the new population of consumers? They dont have time off to spend money. What do AIs need? To do their jobs better. The humans dont matter Instead of retailers selling food and clothes and entertainment to human consumers, tech companies will be selling energy, memory, network access, and processing power to the AIs so that they succeed in their jobs working as agent contractors for other corporations. The AIs will earn crypto for completing their agentic tasks, and then spend it with technology companies who provide them the resources they need to function. As far as the owners of the companies are concerned, there’s no difference between a population of human employees with whom you have no contact and a population of artificial employees with whom you have no contact. The only game that matters is the competition with the other big companies for the agents business. The humans don’t matter. So, assuming this tech-bro dream comes true, we end up with a small elite of big-business owners living in luxury with a small number of human servants, and a huge population of AIs doing the work and consumption. And, of course, in their vision for how this plays out, the rest of us humans become so disenfranchisedespecially the ones who live in citiesthat we will need to be kept under control until we presumably die out. We are simply not needed. The good news Sounds like a nightmare for most of us, but it also offers clues to an emancipatory vision for the end of employment. So lets consider that good option: For close to 1,000 years, growth-based capitalism has depended on real human beings doing work while a small elite extracted value from that work at ever greater degrees of leverage. In order to get that leverage, capitalism abstracted again and again and again. Each level of abstraction further removed from the people and places actually providing or creating the value. There’s a mineral in the ground. There’s a company mining the mineral, and another company selling the mineral. There’s yet another company investing in the company selling the mineral, there’s a stock company leveraging that investment, there’s a derivative on the stock, and a derivative on the derivative, and a platform trading the derivatives, and so on. Or, more simply, there’s a person who needs to live in a house, but they just rent from someone who owns the house. Thats called the rentier. But the rentier has a mortgage on the house, and pays up to the bank, which pays up to another investor that owns the security, and so on and so on. Thats the pyrmid of capitalism, with each investor or participant trying to move further up and away from the mineral or labor or living person into the abstraction of pure financial instruments. And this pyramid has simply grown too top-heavy to support itself. Theres only so much one can leverage up there before it comes tumbling down. Total abstraction AI, at least theoretically in the minds of crazy tech billionaires who believe AGI is genuinely around the corner, allows them to move on from the employment, exploitation, and colonialism of people, and simply level up in what they believe is a simulation anyway. We humans are discarded as capitalism moves up into a layer of total abstraction. It becomes the video game it was destined to become, with the humans replaced by non-player characters represented by digital icons or NFTs instead of flesh-and-blood mammals. Our real-world economy only had so much stuff anyway. We matter-based entities cant scale as much as they need, so they leave us behind while they move into a layer of total and absolute abstraction. They live in a realm made entirely of digital representations, themselves manufactured by digital agents in exchange for digital currencies. It works because at least the AI agents value that crypto as much as the billionaires need them too. Instead of just 9 billion human customers, they get trillions of AI customers. We are not required. But this is a good thing. Its akin to an enslaved population being released by the owners who no longer have use for them. We were not born to be their employees. As Ive explained in some of my books, the whole concept of employment was invented as a way of preventing us from getting wealthy. In the late Middle Ages, right before this capitalism was invented, people in Europe were starting to do really well. They learned how to make and trade stuff at local markets. They were doing so well that people were only working two or three days a week, and got taller than at any time until the 1980s. Thats when the aristocracy came up with the idea of a chartered monopoly, and made it illegal for people to be in business for themselves. They had to become employees of one of the chartered companies, or face a penalty of death. Thats when we started working for companies instead of ourselves, and ended up in an economy built to favor those monopolies over small businesses. A moment of transition So the end of this scheme is not necessarily a bad thing. We simply have to return to the real economy that isnt worth capitalisms attention. Human commodities like food and housing are no longer asset classes worthy of their time, so theres no point in making growth-based markets for them. We can instead look at them as the commons-based resources they areoptimize for distributed flourishing instead of extraction and profit. Yes, there will still be competition for energy. The AI economy would probably end up needing a bunch of nuclear power plants and better ways of dealing with all those spent fuel rods (if any of that AI scenario even becomes a reality). The current state of the technology doesnt fill me with hope for much more than a fierce market correction. To me, its less important whether it happens than that we take advantage of this moment of transition. The ultra-rich have accepted the end of capitalismor at least the end of capitalism that depends on human labor and consumption for its survival. So its time we accept we are no longer valuable to the capitalist extraction machine and begin to look instead at how we are valuable to one another. {"blockType":"mv-promo-block","data":{"imageDesktopUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/10\/adus-labs-16x9-1.png","imageMobileUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/10\/anduslabs.png","eyebrow":"","headline":"Get more insights from Douglas Rushkoff and Andus Labs.","dek":"Keep up to date on the latest trends on how AI is reshaping culture and business, through the critical lens of human agency.","subhed":"","description":"","ctaText":"Learn More","ctaUrl":"https:\/\/www.anduslabs.com\/perspectives","theme":{"bg":"#1a064b","text":"#ffffff","eyebrow":"#9aa2aa","subhed":"#ffffff","buttonBg":"#ffffff","buttonHoverBg":"#3b3f46","buttonText":"#000000"},"imageDesktopId":91420531,"imageMobileId":91420530,"shareable":false,"slug":""}}
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E-Commerce
In 2023, Pop-Tarts changed the world of brand mascots forever when it sacrificed the life of a Strawberry Pop-Tart and fed its remains to the Kansas State football team as a reward for winning the Pop-Tarts Bowl game. The weirdly macabre stunt got 4 billion media impressions, and in the eight weeks following the game, parent company Kellanova sold 21 million more Pop-Tarts than in the eight weeks before the game. Riding on that success, the brand upped its ambitions and brought three flavors to the Pop-Tarts Bowl last year, letting the winning teams MVP choose which one was toasted and eaten (Iowa States quarterback, Rocco Becht, picked Frosted Cinnamon Roll). Now Pop-Tarts has announced that its dramatically expanding its edible mascot lineup for the next big game, scheduled to be played in Orlandos Camping World Stadium on December 27th. Six edible Pop-Tarts mascotsthree on Team Sprinkles and three on Team Swirlswill be up for mass consumption, with fans voting ahead of time on which team should be sacrificed. For Pop-Tarts, its a significant jump in both sacrificial anthropomorphic breakfast pastry and the stakes for its brand stunt strategy. Many viewers will undoubtedly be giddy at the prospect of doubling the number of mascots involved, but there’s a cost to escalating the premise so much in such a short period of time: Pop-Tarts is now entering into an unnecessary arms race with itself. When I posed this theory to the brands VP of marketing, Leslie Serro, she didn’t agree. Expanding from three to six edible mascots this year isnt about an arms race; its about evolution, she says. Serro tells me that they concluded after last year’s success that fans have an “insatiable appetite for the playful and unexpected nature of the Pop-Tarts Bowl.” Thus, the doubling down from three to six mascots and “raising the stakes.” To be fair, will I be looking for social clips from the game on the 27th, in that dead zone between Christmas and New Year’s? Sure. Serro’s got me there. But will I feel as sick as if I ate six Pop-Tarts rather than just one (or even three)? Yes. Let me explain why Pop-Tarts, which so brilliantly spoke to the culture two years ago, risks toasting all that goodwill. Mascot Power Its easy to see why Pop-Tarts would want to crank up the mascot machine and get even more brand characters into the game (albeit to kill and eat them). A 2021 whitepaper by the Moving Picture Council found that long-term campaigns featuring a character increased market share 39.2%, compared with 29.7% for campaigns without a character; it also boosted profit gain 34.2% (versus 29.7%). A report by System1 found that 2025 Super Bowl ads with brand characters performed better than those featuring celebrities. For example, an M&M’s 2023 Super Bowl spot starring Maya Rudolph underperformed because people didn’t make the connection between Rudolph and the brand. As a celebrity, she could’ve been selling anything. Scores then soared once the M&Ms characters returned in a second spot. Mascots arent just cute and fun. They create a faster route to being memorable, and being memorable tends to directly influence what we buy. Two key factors in any successful mascot are longevity and consistency. Just think about the lifespan of some of the most iconic mascots: The Michelin Man was created in 1898! Tony the Tiger was born in 1952. Mr. Clean’s mascot came around in 1957. Chester Cheetah of Cheetos fame first dropped in 1986. And the Energizer Bunny started banging that drum in 1989. Both the Aflac Duck and Geicos Gecko have been flogging insurance since 1999. Even Duolingos Duo, often considered a new-wave TikTok darling brand mascot, has been around since 2011. These are brand assets built for the long game. Pop-Tarts is attempting to do something similar. Six months before the 2023 Pop-Tarts Bowl, the brand unveiled its new cast of characters, the “Agents of Crazy Good, as an update to characters from its Crazy Good ads of the early 00s. The Agents were described as representations of the beloved toaster pastries brought to life, including Frosted Strawberry, Brown Sugar Cinnamon, Hot Fudge Sundae, and a squad of Bites. The ingenious crew come fully frosted and ready to challenge expectations for where the brand can show up next. Funnily enough, in tying the Agents back to the Crazy Good doodle characters from 20 years ago, Pop-Tarts is at least trying to conjure a new history of consistency. (Side note: Bring these ads back!) Beyond Breakfast The original goal of introducing Pop-Tarts as edible mascots, and even sponsoring the college bowl game in the first place, was to expand our purchase intention beyond breakfast and into the rest of the day. To go from breakfast to snack. The brand saw college football as the perfect vehicle to take that message. The edible mascot came about as the brand knew it had to contend with a laundry list of branded College Bowl games, each with their own brand mascot gimmick (Dukes Mayo dumping mayonnaise on the winning coach, or Kellanova sibling Cheez-It’s mascot Ched-Z officiating a wedding during a game time-out). 100% real love at first bite!Congrats to our newlyweds for tying the knot! #CitrusBowl pic.twitter.com/jhHq1H3nd7— Cheez-It Citrus Bol (@CitrusBowl) December 31, 2024 According to Serro, last years Pop-Tarts Bowl drove nine times more share of voice than 20 other non-Kellanova Bowl games combined, a 275% increase in social engagements versus 2023, and the highest brand search in more than 15 years on game day. The brand also sold millions more Pop-Tarts in the month following the game than the month before it. The brand could have stuck with the single edible mascot for a few years, then slowly, methodically, year after year, started adding more characters and concepts. In my opinion, this would build more familiarity, anticipation, and, by extension, enthusiasm. But where do we go from here? If its 6 edible mascots this year, do we jump to 10 or 12 in 2026? When will the numbers game cease? Maybe it goes full Bud Bowl, and we have two full football squads of Pop-Tarts on the field playing for the right to be enthusiastically toasted and devoured. Glorious. To be clear, I love this idea, and it’s a prime example of a marketer cleverly finding “white space” in a saturated marketing landscape and eventizing something, seemingly out of nothing. In that way, it’s kindred to FanDuel’s “Kick of Destiny” work in the last three Super Bowls. It also turned things up a notch, going from Rob Gronkowski as a single kicker during a live commercial break to Peyton and Eli Manning facing off in a special pregame show. Both 2024 and 2025 attracted about 2 million participants on FanDuel, so the evolution appears to have worked. With Pop-Tarts, the edible mascot barely became a tradition before it was hurriedly super-sized and multiplied. As a result, Pop-Tarts may have just bitten years off the gimmicks lifespan by so quickly feeding into our cultures insatiable appetite for newer, bigger, now now now. Its a reflection of a broader issue in brand culture, where marketers are churning through ideas so quickly that nothing is given the time to become truly iconic. Its also possible the brand needs to cash in its Bowl hype on a short timeline, given it signed a one-year title sponsorship deal for 2023, then exercised its two-year extension option last year. Serro wouldn’t provide details on whether the brand will extend its Bowl investment beyond this year. “While we cant share much just yet, lets just say we love football and the way it brings fans together,” she says. But based on its popularity so far, and if they play their breakfast pastry cards right, the horizon for edible mascots could be incredibly long. They could star in ads, and then dip into real life as pop-culture nomads, showing up at any given extravaganzastate fairs, movie premieres, music festivals, the Super Bowluntil the end of time. Lets face it, with a yearslong legacy like that, the people would . . . ahem . . . eat it up, and we’d have the Energizer Bunny of deliciously suicidal brand mascots.
Category:
E-Commerce
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