Lettuce. Candy. Milkshake.

Lettuce Rejoice! 

Today Liz Truss loud quit her job as prime minister of the United Kingdom. She set a new speedrun record, managing to off a monarch during her brief 44 days in office. More importantly, the lettuce won. Last week a UK tabloid set up a livestream of an unrefrigerated head of lettuce to ask the very important question, “who will last longer, Truss or a wilting head of lettuce?” Dear reader, we now know the answer to this question of the ages: lettuce. 

Platform Updates

Instagram 

• Instagram’s Testing a New Option Which Would Enable You to Add a Song to Your Profile (I swear they are one week away from letting you display your top eight most important friends on your profile) 

• Instagram is testing an in-app scheduling tool for posts and reels

The Rest of Meta 

• Facebook Announces the Retirement of ‘Instant Articles’ - The Latest Step in the Reformation of the App

• Meta Makes Branded Content Tags Available to All Facebook Reels Creators

• Meta Forced to Divest Giphy After Long-Running Court Battle in the UK

• Meta Develops New Speech-to-Speech Real-Time Audio Translation Process

TikTok

• TikTok is raising the age requirement for going live and introducing adult-only streams

• TikTok Launches Automated ‘Smart Performance Campaigns’ to Boost Ad Performance

YouTube

• YouTube expands audio and podcast advertising for brands (YouTube is actually a very popular site for podcast consumption, so this makes a ton of sense)

Google 

• Google Updates Search Display Formats to Provide More Context to Users 

• Google’s new ad hub offers more control over the advertising it shows you

Pinterest 

• Pinterest Provides New Insights for Marketers, Updated Conversions API

• Pinterest Provides New Music Option for Idea Pins, Including Tracks from Popular Artists

Snap 

• Snapchat expands its paid subscription with Story expiration controls, custom sounds, and more

Culture Movers 

Film & TV

• Amazon Prime Video will stream NFL Black Friday games starting in 2023

Music 

• Taylor Swift’s new album “Midnights” comes out tonight (I’ll be in full swiftie mode tomorrow if you need anything)  

Creator Economy 

• Women and BIPOC Are Earning Way Less Than White Men When Monetizing Online Content

• Here is how much TikTok, Meta and other social platforms are paying creators

Gaming 

• What Bayonetta 3’s drama tells us about the market for video game voice work

A Moment of Schadenfreude

Yesterday I learned the latest Meghan Trainor music video is a Candy Crush Saga exclusive for a full day before the new album drops. That’s right, if you are one of the dozens of people clamoring to watch a new Meghan Trainor music video, you’ll need to fire up the old free-to-play tile-matching app to view it. A special “candified” avatar of Trainor will also be taking over the app, where “fans” will be able to watch behind-the-scenes content. The video is also rumored to feature some random TikTokers the press release claims are friends with Trainor. 

This whole thing is layers of sad that honestly make me happy. Why? Because I’ve never forgiven Meghan Trainor for wearing that ugly unicorn onesie when she was a guest judge on Season 9, Episode 5 of RuPaul’s Drag Race. She’s since apologized for her outfit choice, but for me, the damage has been done. The silliness of disliking Trainor over this infraction has now given me more joy than her previous music ever did.

Despite having committed to the ongoing bit of not liking Trainor, I do wish her well. No one should have to pretend Candy Crush Saga is such a transcendent part of their life that they desperately needed to give the Candy Crush community a 24-hour preview of their music video. If I hear back that this new album is good, I’ll give it an open-minded listen. 

I Hate That I Get This Tweet

For everyone lucky enough not to understand that tweet, earlier this week, someone became “it” on Twitter for yelling at their Instacart shopper, then meme/politics/pet account Jorts the Cat got called ableist for commenting on it. Yea, Twitter is weird.

P.S. Peep the alt text on the drag race pic if you want more of how I feel about the situation.