CATCHING FIRE: Demotivational dolphins, The Dare and Gen Z marketing scripts

Do keep up!

Hello everyone, especially those new to highly flammable. If you subscribed after reading the last post on Blake Lively’s PR nightmare then I think you’ll love a previous edition that analysed Lauren Sánchez and Vogue’s wild misjudgements from a few months back. And fingers crossed you’ll lap up this new post that takes a look at the latest trends that are giving off heat which are published in between the deep dive pieces like the one on Lively.

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Today we’re digging into…

• The Gen Z slang trend that just got really good

• Why The Dare is about to be everywhere

• That viral dolphin and rainbows meme

Let’s get into it….

1. Turns out that putting Gen Z in charge of marketing is a really good idea

The ‘Gen Z colleague writes the marketing script’ trend has been bubbling for several weeks but in the last few days two videos have gone viral and proved that when done right it can be a smash hit format.

Videos from British electronics retailer Currys and a small bed and breakfast in Oxfordshire, England have both blown up across multiple platforms, garnering millions of views.

Fyfield Manor cracked it by getting its plummy-voiced owner to perform a tour while presenting a script written by her Gen Z daughter. It featured the greatest hits of Gen Z slang including no cap, rizz, understood the assignment and multiple mentions of slay. The juxtaposition between the script, the presenter and the aesthetics of a 880 year old guesthouse is something to behold…

Since being posted on Sunday it’s been watched more than five million times on TikTok alone and has also been widely shared on Twitter/X.

And last week the retailer Currys posted a similar video where a man, who appears to be a sales associate, tours a store while dropping Gen Z catchphrases. He says a microwave “ate, and left no crumbs”, before moving to the electronic device section to say, “need a new phone? I bet, say less. This one is bussin skibidi toilet rizz”.

The video has had nearly two million views on TikTok but also picked up a lot of views on Twitter/X when it was reposted and went viral there.

If you’re struggling to understand the Gen Z slang, I got you with this cheat sheet.

2. Here comes The Dare

You’re about to hear a lot more about a man who goes by the name The Dare.

The musician and producer already has a cult following, two tracks on TikTok’s viral music chart, is mates with, and produced, Charli xcx and Billie Eilish’s smash hit single Guess, and in a few days he’ll release his own highly-anticipated electro clash album.

His black suit, skinny tie and oversized shades uniform has inspired a viral tribute from the model Tom Meacock that’s been watched more than seven million times.

And in turn Meacock’s video prompted others, like Meg Rudy, to showcase their own fits to the sound of The Dare’s pounding party anthem Girls.

If all the buzz about The Dare translates into real life energy then The Dare Fall might be about to succeed Brat Summer. It could also finally realise the much hyped (and much debated) revival of the early 2000s indie sleaze era, or at the very least loosen the chokehold girl pop, from artists like Chappell Roan and Sabrina Carpenter, have on our playlists.

So who actually is The Dare?

The man behind the alias was born Harrison Patrick Smith and raised “deep in the forest” outside Seattle, Washington. The 28-year-old previously released three indie rock albums that featured tracks which raged against misogyny and sexism under the name Turtlenecked. After the pandemic he reemerged as The Dare with a totally different sound and vibe. He now produces and performs raunchy electro rock with lewd lyrics that include, “I like the girls who like to lie that they came, Girls who fuck on the train, Girls who got so much hair on their ass, it clogs the drain”.

While The Dare has divided critics, his beats and slogan lyrics are so perfectly optimised for the TikTok algorithm I’d be stunned if he’s not able to spark even more viral trends once his album, What's Wrong With New York?, drops this Friday.

3. 2024’s most unhinged meme

Images of dolphins leaping out of the sea overlaid with demotivational quotes and soundtracked by the Clean Bandit and Zara Larsson track Symphony have taken over the internet.

The meme, known as Symphony Dolphin, has got so big it’s sent Symphony, a dance track from seven years ago, to the top of the TikTok Billboard Top 50 chart.

The trend appears to have been started by the TikTok user heiratet on August 18 when they posted the now iconic image of dolphins and rainbows with the caption “i’m depressed”. Their entire account is now dedicated to Symphony Dolphin with their “I love alcohol” version attracting over seven million views.

A few days after heiratet’s first post the meme went super-viral when the singer of Symphony, Zara Larsson, published her own version with the caption “What the fuck is happening”. That video has since been watched more than 64 million times.

Larsson went on to fully embrace the aesthetic and is now featuring dolphin and rainbow imagery during her live shows. Clean Bandit also went all in and posed the question “Do you want another song with Zara” on their TikTok.

The post got thousands of comments with fans urging them to collaborate once more, alongside requests for the new track to be about… dolphins.

Both Clean Bandit and Larsson are benefiting from the streaming boost their track has enjoyed and a new collaboration could further up their profiles. I’m sure other accounts and brands will jump on Symphony Dolphin too. Whether it’ll have the versatility - and staying power - of the very demure, very mindful trend is to be seen.

✨Callback corner✨

I recently wrote that young people’s political views are increasingly split down gender lines and used data from the U.K. general election to illustrate the gap.

Now new polling from The New York Times and Siena, conducted ahead of the U.S. presidential election, further proves the point. Their data shows that women were more likely than men to support Kamala Harris over Donald Trump in every age group, but that the divide is largest among 18 to 29 year-olds.

This week I’ve been…

OBSESSED WITH:

1. The ironic downfall of the Bee Better guy on TikTok who grew his nearly one million following by creating videos about the downfall of others

2. Cate Blanchett’s entire vibe

3. Brad Pitt’s flared trousers

4. Summer’s continuation. And the pumpkin-spice-season people who are willing it to end. I’m with Jake Cornell who has decreed that “when it gets cold summer’s over”…

5. Madeline’s excellent articulation of how it can be lonely when you’re meme obsessed and chronically online. Gonna get “brainrot trailblazer” printed on a mug…

6. Decoding J. Lo’s Instagram posts following her split from Ben Affleck

7. The power of SEO - and the enduring appeal of Hawk Tuah Girl - which means that this article is still making The Cut’s top five most popular articles, despite being published two months ago

   

READING:

The thread of tweets from the woman who brought the viral chocolate muffins from the Olympics to a New York City cafe

What 9 teens wore on the first day of school in L.A. from the Los Angeles Times

The New York Times’ Ezra Klein problem from Semafor

LISTENING TO: Short n’ Sweet, the latest banger-packed album from Sabrina Carpenter, on repeat

WATCHING: Whether TikTok star Alix Earle can survive the resurfacing of social media posts where she used the n word. She issued a second apology on Saturday but then quickly returned to her usual TikTok posting routine…

highly flammable is produced and written by Rachel Richardson

She’s a content creator, commentator and consultant at Beginning, Middle and End

Want more? Check out Threads, Twitter/X and Instagram

Contact me at rr@bmend.com