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Hello lovely people!

We’re launching a new campaign for 2025, to rid the world of boring zombie B2B marketing, and find fascinating human stories. If you’d like to know how to stay human in the face of the algorithm apocalypse, then we’ve made a fun and useful guide to help you. If you’d like our help to turn your B2B marketing from boring to brilliant, hit the button below and we’ll schedule a (very human) chat.

Right then - there’s lots of juicy links to get through, hand crafted by the lovely humans at Storythings. Let’s dive in!

Matt

Why Do TV Titles Have So Much Stuff? (6-minute read)

Once More With Feeling (5-minute read)

Your Favourite Newsletter’s Favourite Newsletter (very comprehensive list)

Let An LLM Pick Your Next Book (Interactive tool)

How To Grow Your Newsletter Without Social Media (8-minute read)

Apple TV’s Awesome Severance Pop Up (1.5-minute watch)

The Anti-Social Century (13-minute read)

The New Rules of Content Marketing (10-minute read)

I Think You Should Start a Band (2-minute read)

David Lynch’s Reimagining of the Trinity Nuclear Bomb Test (1.5-minute watch)

Don’t become a B2B zombie. STAY HUMAN.

Storythings is the content marketing agency that helps you STAY HUMAN in a sea of marketing slop. If you think you’re at risk of becoming a B2B zombie, we’ve got the antidote. Click the button below for your free guide.

Why Do TV Titles Have So Much Stuff? (6-minute read)
This is a great article on something that has been bugging me for a while. But the article misses the real point - the trend for clouds and rivers of stuff in TV titles is a by-product of VFX software getting really good at particle effects. There should be a word for an aesthetic that pops up because a tool or software makes it easy - like heavily gated drum sounds in 80s pop music, or the HDR photography you saw in Wired in the 00s.

Once More With Feeling (5-minute read)
You know we love a good data visualisation at Storythings. This one throws in a good measure of film theory as well. The charts of how Joy and Sadness peak over a film’s length is reminiscent of Kurt Vonnegut explaining the Shapes of Stories.

Your Favourite Newsletter’s Favourite Newsletter (very comprehensive list)
The excellent, and excellently named, newsletter Links I Would GChat You If We Were Friends asked their favourite newsletter writers to recommend their favourite newsletters. The result is a great (if a little too US-focused) resource for discovery outside of algorithmic streams. The map of the ‘newsletter-verse’ is lovely as well!

Let An LLM Pick Your Next Book (Interactive tool)
Thank you to Ash Mann for putting this in his awesome newsletter this week. AI, like a lot of tech (eg SMS, Twitter, Facebook) will go mainstream not because of the lofty ambitions of our tech overlords, but because of millions of vernacular use cases. This is a great example - use an LLM trained on GoodReads to find your next favourite book.

How To Grow Your Newsletter Without Social Media (8-minute read)
Talking of escaping the algorithm, this is a great guide to audience building without giving money to tech bros who are rapidly disappearing up the backside of a certain US president. You probably know most of these, but it’s great to have them all in one resource. Now delete that Meta and X account already.

Apple TV’s Awesome Severance Pop Up (1.5-minute watch)
Today is Happy New Severance day for all who celebrate [raises hand]. I just wish I could have been in NYC for Apple TV’s popup recreation of the classic Macrodata Refining Cubicle. I used to commute into London Victoria when I worked at the BBC and Channel 4, and there would nearly always be some marketing promotion event on the concourse. Maybe the experiential train station marketing stunt is the last thing to come back after COVID?

The New Rules of Content Marketing (10-minute read)
In response to Kyle Chayka’s New Rules of Media, Joe Lazer has come up with a brilliant, provocative, and funny version for content marketing. Worth it for number 13 alone: “The second-best way to get budget is to make your CEO feel loved on LinkedIn. They almost certainly didn’t get enough unconditional affection as a child. Use that.”

The Anti-Social Century (20-minute read)
This long read from Storythings’ fave Derek Thompson is a great analysis of how every day life has lost a myriad of small, but important, ways in which we connect with each other. This has a strong nod to Robert Putnam’s classic Bowling Alone, but adds useful insights into how digital platforms connect us, just not in all the ways that are important: “Families teach us love, and tribes teach us loyalty. The village teaches us tolerance.”

I Think You Should Start a Band (2-minute read)
If the last link made you feel lonely, then you should start a band. No, you really should. Not to make money or become famous, but because, as this great post by Tyler McCauley says, doing things we love with friends is the best antidote to living in difficult times: “if the big lesson post-Trump is post less and “create community” more, a band is an awfully good way to start to create a community around something that isn't your job or a political identity.”

David Lynch’s Reimagining of the Trinity Nuclear Bomb Test (1.5-minute watch)
With David Lynch sadly passing this week, its a good moment to revisit his astonishing, innovative career. If you missed Twin Peaks: The Return a few years ago, seek out Ep 8, which has an incredible sequence based around the Trinity Nuclear Bomb Test. Lynch’s version is all black and white eldritch horror, closer to the anxious and dread-filled atmosphere of his early film Eraserhead than Christopher Nolan’s over-blown VFX spectacle in Oppenheimer.

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That’s your ten links for the weekend. Sharing with your friends and colleagues is always appreciated. And if you have ideas of how we can improve it, we’d always love to hear from you!

Have a great weekend! And go out and start a band!

Matt, Anjali, Hugh and the rest of Team Storythings