Darin Fisher is a little older than the fresh-faced, newly minted PhD types you see roaming the well-appointed floors at OpenAIs second location in San Franciscos Mission Bay district.
Before arriving at the AI super-startup, he spent 25 years working on some of the most important web browsers in the history of the web: He worked on Netscape Navigator, which helped define the early consumer internet. He worked on the popular Firefox browser at Mozilla, then went to Google, where he was a member of the Chrome team. After Google, he wanted to explore alternative browsers; he did so first at Neeva (which offered an ad-free experience), then at the Browser Company, which built the influential Arc browser. The opportunity to come to OpenAI and infuse the AI model into all of this and to think about how that can really transform the experience was all kinds of super interesting to me, Fisher says.
In OpenAIs new ChatGPT Atlas browser, all tasks start with a prompt to the AI models working in the background. As the user accesses the web, the chatbot, which rides along at the right of the screen, can see the content of each webpage, answer questions about it, or take actions on it. An agent mode allows the AI to perform complex, multi-step tasks like filling out forms or shopping on the user’s behalf.
We asked Fisher about the choices, trade-offs, and innovations that went into designing OpenAI’s AI-first browser. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What’s the core philosophy behind Atlas?
One of the most important features of Atlas is really that chat is at the heart of it. You should start your journey with ChatGPT. Not because we work at OpenAI, but because I actually realize so many times, I kick myself why didn’t I just ask the model first? It would save me time. It should be the thing that’s there on autocomplete in the browser. It should be there so conveniently, effortlessly. This is the feedback we hear from people who’ve gotten to try Atlas.
How did you approach the design challenge of getting people to adopt new habits?
There’s this dance of the familiar as well as moments when you can optimize some things. I worked on browsers that have tried much more radical takes on browser UI, for good reasons, because there’s frustrations with a traditional browser UI. When you have all these little tabs at the top, at some point that starts to break down and you’re like, “Well, I guess I have to clean up now.” We really tried to get the basics right because people live in this thing. Not only are they used to it, but you’re working. You don’t want to be frustrated by it.
One of the big challenges of browser design is tab management. Can you explain Atlass scrolling tabs feature?
We built a classic tabs mode which works just like Chrome, but we also have a scrolling tabs mode in Atlas. What it does is it makes the tabs stay a fixed width and they start to scroll. But importantly, for this to work, new tabs enter at the left, which can be very disorienting for people. But once you get used to it, it’s kind of neat because what it means is new tabs are always opening on the left, old tabs are going off to the right. Your area of focus and what you’re working on stays on the left and all the tabs are nice and visible. What’s really cool is once you get used to this, you start accumulating a bunch of tabs and you can use the tab search feature Command+Shift+A. It’ll find your tab, and then you can zoom it back to the left.
How did you approach building on Chromium while maintaining design freedom? [Chromium is a Google-developed open-source browser project that provides the foundation of several major browsers, including Google Chrome itself.]
When people build on top of Chrome, you’re sort of constrained in some ways to the shape that it takes and the structure that it has. Not because you couldn’t change a lot of stuff, but because the more you change, the harder it is to update Chrome. What we really wanted to do was have our cake and eat it too. We came up with this clever way of essentially running Chrome almost unmodified, projecting the contents of the web pages into a Swift app [Swift is an Apple-developed programming language for building apps for Apple devices.] So Atlas could just be a pure Swift app, a relatively small app actually. It means we had this blank canvas on which to make anything look like anything we want. We were very free from a design perspective to rethink how so many things work. The main constraint is what people think a browser is and how they think it should work.
Can you walk me through the side chat feature?
When you click on links inside of ChatGPT inside of Atlas, it does this transition of moving the chat into side chat and opening the web page. This side chat . . . is now connected to the site that you’re on. You can ask questions about the site. [While shopping for couches at a retail site, for example] it could be things like, “What is the price range of your couches?” or “Who else sells something like this?” The model can go and look at the internet and tell you about all that stuff and you can just ask it a very simple question. Sometimes these websites are so cluttered too. A good example is a recipe site. You might say, “Can you just tell me the recipe?” You just ask the model to do that for you. Even on the recipe, you can be like, “I actually want to make this for four people, not six. Adjust the amounts of each portion.”
When you open a new tab, you dont immediately see the chat sidebar. You see a chat window right in the middle of the page. Why did you do it like that?
We really went with this idea of one box. You should feel like it’s a simpler, cleaner experience. When we did this, we got a lot of feedback where people were like, “Where’s my URL bar?” We discovered that we could put one thereyou just have to hover and then it will be there. Or if you’re a keyboard user and you did Command+L, it would activate. One of the innovations with Chrome was one box where you can enter URLs or searches. But if you go to Chrome and you open a new tab, you’ll actually see there are two boxesone at the top and one in the middle. We’re like, “Well, can we have one instead of two?” It was remarkable that it didn’t have to actually be in your face for that to be true. Everybody was happy. Everybody has no problem finding it.
Using agent mode, you might, for example, ask Atlas to go out and find the best deal on a plane ticket, or even go further toward a purchase.
You’re definitely asking this thing to go do stuff on your behalf, but you want to feel in control too. There’s a stop button that’s very prominent. There’s a take control button. The model is tuned to understand that it should present you with results at a certain point and now you can take it to the next step, review its work, see what it’s doing. The model can open multiple web pages in the background to do its work. Also prominently, you can choose, “Do I want this to use my authentication, my cookies, or no?” [This might be your username and password at Google, and your preferences stored as cookies.] This is actually huge because aybe you just don’t trust it yet and you want to develop some trust. You want to see what it’s going to do and you want to try it out in a safe way.
How do you think about ChatGPT search versus traditional search engines?
Google, full stop, is amazing. It’s an amazing tool. But at the same time, it works the way it works. It works a certain way. People are used to it as the tool that it is. This AI stuff is different and it’s a different kind of interaction. What we’ve done to improve ChatGPT search capabilities inside of Atlas was not just because it was important for ChatGPT, but also because it’s kind of essential when you’re approaching it from a browser lens. Sometimes you’re typing in that box because you have high navigational intent. Like, “I want DNS for the web” or “I want to go look at a product on Amazon.” I don’t need anything else other than just get me there. Google’s outstanding at that, but ChatGPT with these capabilities does a great job at that, too.
What did Sam Altman and the leadership team tell you about wanting to build a browser when they brought you in?
The focus was squarely on bringing ChatGPT to more people more readily and having it be just core to that experiencerealizing that in a browser traditionally you’re like Open tab, Go to ChatGPT.com. There’s just an extra clunkiness to that. The time’s right, you want a more streamlined experience, let’s go build it. Sam was super clear about that, which actually I really appreciate. This is a company that is rapidly putting out features. We’re often in the mode of “what can we do this month?” But this is an investment, because it’s not just what we’re going to do in Januaryit was what are we going to do in January to unlock what we could do in November? We spent all that time building a foundation and now we’re on a weekly cadence of putting out new features and new things and building on this foundation.
How did you approach testing and getting feedback during development?
We are an opinionated bunch, that’s for sure. But you want to validate your ideas. We had the internal population of OpenAI, which is not the most representative samplethese are really heavy tech folks. The kind of features that people are asking for internally would be things that we know from past experience might not be what everybody wants. We also brought in trusted testers. We brought in friends and family. There was this cohort of students and other cohortswe got feedback from different folks to help inform and understand just how people experience this. We had this guiding principle that people can only learn so many things differently. You’ve got to start out with the familiar.
What’s been the feedback since launch?
I think we’ve gotten an enormous amount of positive feedback. There’s general excitement around these agentic browsers. Maybe some degree of people wanting to just kick the tires and see what it’s all about and maybe some level of skepticism too, but also enthusiasm, generally . . . The feedback really hasn’t been surprising at all. For example, we know that it’s a lot to ask for people’s habits to change on anything. Bringing ChatGPT front and center in the experience is a big change actually. For many people, early tech adopters, this feels very natural and they actually remark at how comfortable it feels that they’re [the browser and the AI] side by side. But I think for most people, they’re still early on that journey to be honest.
What features are you working on for the future?
Every week we put out a new version addressing feedback. We’ve already addressed some of the top feedback that we got. There’s a lot of stuff that was in the hopper that we paired back because we didn’t want to just go outwe wanted to go out with as polished of an experience as we could. Adding a model picker in the side chat was onethey already added that. Vertical tabs is another feature that we’re getting a lot of requests for.
What was the biggest design challenge in Atlas?
Thematically, probably one of the biggest arguments was just, “Is this in or out? How do you keep it simple?” Pretty soon if you’re not careful, you have the kitchen sink, you have the Swiss Army knife. You’re trying to satisfy everybody, but you satisfy nobody. You don’t want to overwhelm at the start. You want it to be familiar, easy. They [users] can do things that maybe aren’t the most efficient, but that’s okay. Then they can start to learn how to leverage more efficient ways. As a user, it keeps you in control. When I want to use chat, it’s there for me. But if I don’t want to be using chat on a web page, I don’t have to. I think that’s very important. You should feel empowered.
How do you design a product that has a deep set of features but still looks simple?
There’s this idea of progressive disclosure in design. [We] have a new product that can do all these things and maybe you’re really eager to try to tell everybody about it, but if when they open the product the first time, it’s telling you about all the things you can do, suddenly you’re like, “I don’t know what to even do.” Progressive disclosure can mean that as you use the product it might advertise progressively different features, but I also think of it as there’s a bunch of Easter eggs for you to discover. What do they do? They give you superpowers and help you feel like you can do better, but they aren’t in your face so you still get a product that’s approachable.
Looking ahead, what excites you most about the future of Atlas?
This is the beginning of a journey. It’s going to continue evolving. I think it’s also going to continue evolving as ChatGPT itself evolves. All these things are being built in tandem by different teams at OpenAI. A lot of ChatGPT’s best features, including things like deep research and study modeall of those are in Atlas too. There’s all these modesmodel picker, tools that you can invoke. At some level, those are powerful toolsbut do you want to try them out? But over time, the model absorbs some of that. There’s a natural tension there. You give people a palette of things, but you also want to keep it simple. Ultimately, it’s just meant to be ask the model to do stuff for you.
Ikea’s new CEO Juvencio Maeztu is calling to tell me about the Ingka Group’s latest earnings (that’s the parent company behind Ikea). As it turns out, there are worse fates than a company making a little less money than it did last year.
In August, Ingka Group announced that its long-time CEO Jesper Brodin would be stepping down, as Maeztu took the role. An economist by training, Maeztu has worked at the company for more than 25 years, and brings a powerful international perspective to the positionhaving started as a store manager in Madrid, before eventually taking over as CEO of Ikea India. For the past seven years, hes served as deputy CEO and CFO under Brodin.
We spoke around the release of Ingkas 2025 financial earnings, which Maeztu characterizes to me as mostly flat. Revenue is down 0.9% (to 41.5 billion) as the company fights inflation to keep prices low. Tariffs have yet to fully enter the equation in these figuresbut Trumps 50% tariffs on furniture announced in September were significant enough that Ikea raised prices to help offset them.
On the brighter side, store traffic was up 1.3%, online sales were up 4.6%, and overall item sales grew 1.6%.
In our conversationrepresenting some of Maetzus first public comments since being appointed to the positionhe detailed his biggest priorities for the company, while addressing the challenges of operating a budget-friendly furniture business in a volatile global economy.
Now that youre officially CEO, what is your immediate focus for Ikea?
The announcement was made mid-August, and the last three months I have been traveling around many countries to learn about the reality from the shop floor, and then talking with consumers and colleagues and coworkers. And that has cemented three things that are quite important to deliver to the care vision (that caring for people and the planet is core to Ikea’s purpose). Because we will not change the care vision. We will not change the business idea.
I will keep putting a lot of focus on growth; not growth only in mature markets or more European-based growth, but many markets, U.S. included, and India and China. Growth is a way to be more present in homes. So growth is not connected with profit to the shareholder, its connected with affordability for the many people. You could say we can never achieve our vision if we don’t grow. So we have to substantially grow.
The second thing is to double down . . . on the need for cost transformation . . . and the need to keep costs low. Because the best frame of low price is a low cost. You cannot be a low-price company if you are not a low-cost company. And I will double down on the resilience of the company.
And then the third one is simplicity. So normally, big companies like us start to be bureaucratic, and from the leadership perspective, we have to learn how to lead the company in a more agile way, faster decision making, less layers, and at the same time, more agility in the decision making.
We have a good brand, we have a good omni channel capabilities today. We have amazing cultural values with high coworker engagement, super high right now. And then at the same time, we have a strong balance sheet. So you could say we have a lot of assets that allow us to really double down in the growth, in the cost transformation, and the simplicity.
Looking over your earnings, where is that revenue dip coming from?
We are selling more quantities at a lower price.
If I take one step back, we measure performance in four dimensions. So one of the four is a financial dimension, and I will comment on that. But the other three are the climate dimension (we call it better planet for all), the social dimension (better life for people), and the consumer dimension (better homes for the customer).
Today, as we release the financial result. Its almost flat revenue0.9% lower, almost flat, which is 41.5 billion (approximately $47.9 billion). However, whats happening is exactly what we wanted to happen, because our physical visitation is growing, our online visitation is growing, and our [sold] quantities are growing.
So basically, [revenue is down] because we have kept low prices. But then we are very happy [about] the underlying business.
For us, growth is not a mechanism to pay more dividends to the shareholder. Because we are owned by a foundation. So 85% of the profit remains in the company, and 15% is the dividend to support the charitable activities. . . . We normally say profit gives us resources to keep investing in the future and low price.
How are general inflation and other factors affecting your supply chain?
The overall supply chain is quite stabilized now. We came from many disruptions in the last year, and that disruption is still happening at the end of this fiscal year, but now it’s quite stable. So we are not increasing prices in general.
We constantly hear that physical retail is challenged, or on the brink of collapse. But I noticed Ingka centersyour malls, basicallyhad an influx of new foot traffic this year. I’m curious about your take on large-scale retail right now.
People still have the need to socialize. People still have the need to go out. That’s why it’s important that we call it a meeting placenot necessarily a shopping centerand when you visit our meeting place its a way to connect with the communities . . . to create traffic with engagement and food and events. So in a world that is omnichannel and online, people still have the need to socialize. So that’s why we keep seeing more visitors in the shopping center and more visitors in the Ikea physical store.
Then what is really important is that the visitor still finds a good value for money. That’s why we dont have too much in discount activity on Black Friday. We are more trying to have everyday low prices. And that’s why we keep investing in that. So somehow customers recognize that, you offer them a fun day out in the meeting place, shopping center, the Ikea store, and then you keep prices low. You know, cost of living is increasing, not only in U.S., but anywhere in the world.
The cost of housing is increasing all over the world, so [our] care visionbetter life at home by providing more affordable home furnishingsits not only timeless. Its even more relevant today than some years ago.
Now that theyve stabilized a bit, how do you see the impact of tariffs affecting Ikea?
I think the entry point is not only tariffs. The entry point is that companies who operate globally, like us, are living in a more complex world, in a more volatile world. Sometimes because of tariffs, sometimes because of currencies, sometimes because of the limitation in global trade or geopolitics. But we need to learn as a company, how can we build the resilience to keep navigating the circumstances?
And that’s why we distinguish what is the short term and the long term. And for us, the long term is to build the resilience in the company, and the low cost in the company, that can keep us in the low price agenda.
And then, of course, we always try to mitigate the impactnot necessarily when we have to increase prices because of tariffsnormally . . . we try to absorb the impact. But I would say it&8217;s not only tariffs in U.S. There are many reasons why global trade is a bit volatile, but in the long term, we will keep growing. In Europe, in the U.S., in China and India, all over the world.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Every year, the $463 billion global footwear industry make 20 billion pairs of shoes for just 8 billion humans. Since virtually none of them are recyclable, they will end up clogging up landfills around the world.
For decades now, the fashion industry has been on a mission to make products recyclable. But shoes have been a much harder puzzle to crack than clothing. While garments are made from just a handful of materials, shoes are far more complex objects.
A sneaker can be made of 50 different materials from foam insoles to leather exteriors to cotton laces, all glued together with adhesives. A handful of brands have prototyped one-off recyclable shoes, like Adidas’s Futurcraft Loop or Nike’s IPSA Link Axis. But the shoe industry is far from recycling at scale.
But change is on the horizon. A group of sustainability experts wants to make shoe recycling as widespread as recycling paper or aluminum. Their solution: Radical collaboration among the biggest shoe rivals in the world.
Yuly Fuentes-Medel, a fashion sustainability expert who runs MIT’s Climate Project, has just launched The Footwear Collective (TFC), a non-profit devoted to building circular solutions for the footwear industry. She’s convened eight founding shoe companiesincluding Brooks, On, New Balance, and Steve Maddenand is recruiting more. It has also partnered with Goodwill to collect large quantities of shoes at scale.
The sustainability teams within these organizations meet with each other on a regular basis to tackle a pipeline of 50 different projects with achievable goals, like working with industrial recyclers to develop the technology to recycle shoes and finding secondary markets for the resulting recycled materials.
“The shoe industry is competitive, and these brands are rivals,” says Fuentes-Medel. “But by sharing costs, data, and infrastructure, they can achieve the sustainability goals that have eluded them for years.”
[Photo: Footwear Collective]
Collaboration is Crucial
The fashion industry is one of the biggest polluters in the world. Over the past three decades, fast fashion has driven down the price of both clothing and shoes, allowing consumers to cycle through products quickly. Extracting large quantities of raw materials and shipping them to factories all over the world to turn them into products results in roughly 8% of global carbon emissions, accelerating climate change.
For years, the industry has realized that circularity is one solution. Recovering the materials in old shoes and clothes, then transforming them back into materials for the fashion industry would dramatically reduce both waste and carbon emissions. But to achieve this circular system, you need a lot of infrastructure. First, you need to build out large, high-tech factories that can process these materials, and then you need to develop ways of collecting old products from consumers.
In the world of clothing, companies like Circ have only just developed the technology to recycle polyester cotton blends, the most common material in the apparel industry, and is now building out factories around the world. But the shoe industry is much farther away from a similar solution.
Fuentes-Medel observed that the footwear industry was struggling with this challenge. So in 2023, she hosted a footwear circularity summit at MIT, and was surprised by how much interest there was: Sustainability experts from 45 different shoe brands showed up. As they discussed possible solutions, Fuentes-Medel wrote up a “Footwear Manifesto” that laid out the obstacles to circularity and how to overcome them, such as building markets for recycled materials and ways of collecting old shoes. But one thing was clear from this summit: None of this could happen without collaboration.
“This approach makes sense,” says Katherine Petrecca, GM of footwear innovation at New Balance. “We’re working together on pre-competitive spaces. All of us will win if we have the infrastructure to collect and recycle shoes.”
After the event, brands were clamoring to continue this work. So Fuentes-Medel launched The Footwear Collective, with eight founding brands who pay dues to fund the project. Sustainability teams within these organizations meet every week with one another, as well as with other companies, to work towards solutions across seven pathways, including getting more value from waste, designing for circularity, and influencing consumer behavior. And together, they have come up with projects to work on, including finding a use for a particular recycled material to creating marketing materials that get consumers excited about recycling shoes.
[Photo: Footwear Collective]
The Problem of Scale
Many footwear brands have been on a mission to become more sustainable. But when a brand is going at it alone, there are many hurdles to achieving goals. “Recycling can only work at scale,” says David Kemp, director of corporate responsibility at Brooks.
For one thing, it will require a lot of work to develop the technology to automate the disassembly of shoes at scale, then recover their component materials. “Shoes companies hire teams of engineers to design and develop their products,” says Fuentes-Medel. “You really can’t think of them in the same category as clothing. They have to live up to much higher technical performance standards.”
Kemp says that the recycling industry isnot incentivized to invest in developing this kind of high tech recycling facility because there isn’t a big market for the recycled materials that would come out of this process. For footwear brands, this would mean working with their factories to start using recycled foams, and leather, and hardware. “Recyclers are for-profit businesses,” he says. “Through the Collective, we can finally show recyclers that there’s business volume here worth investing in.”
A Pilot Program
Then, there’s the problem of how you collect large volumes of old shoes to recycle. Some brands, like Brooks, invite customers to bring back their old shoes once they’ve reached the end of their life. But Kemp says that participation in these programs is very low. “Historically, only around 3% of customers bring their shoes back to us,” he says. “This isn’t enough volume to bring to a factory to ask them to develop a recycling program for us.”
Again, Fuentes-Medel believes that the solution is to collect shoes from across many brands. And there’s already an organization that is doing this: Goodwill. TFW has decided to work with Goodwill’s California division, since the state has strong Extender Producer Responsibility (ERP) laws which mandate that companies fund and manage the collection, recycling, and reuse of their products. As a result, California can fund more sophisticated recycling operations.
With this new project, consumers are invited to drop off shoes from any brand at participating Goodwill locations in California. Shoes that cannot be resold will be sent to three recyclers, where they will be shredded. The shredded material will be separated by weight and density, so they can be sorted by material. (Rubber, foam, and cotton all have different densities.) Then the recycler can determine what materials can be recycled and sold. “We’re aligning with California, since we can help put their legislative policy into practice,” says Petrecca, of New Balance.
This is just one of many projects that TFC is working on right now. Other groups are working on changing the way brands design shoes to make them easier to disassemble, without losing any of their performance qualities. “We’re running two offenses,” Petrecca says. “We’re designing for what’s next, but we also need to figure out what to do with the billions of shoes that are already out there.”
For Fuentes-Medel, collecting data is crucial throughout all of these early pilots and tests. From all her years immersed in MIT’s quantitative approach to sustainability, she believes it is important to track exactly what happens so that they can measure impact. “We if don’t base our strategy on data, it’ll be just another greenwashing initiative that gets press but changes nothing,” she says.
But ultimately, Fuentes-Medel is optimistic that this small but committed collective is building a movement. So as TFW continues to grow and communicate with consumers, it wants to make circularity exciting and tangible, thanks to good storytelling. “Movements are built on joy,” she says. “Collective action depends on everyone feeling motivated to do their little bit, from sending in one pair of shoes to telling one friend.”
The newest plaza in Valencia, Spain, has everything one might expect from a public space in a temperate seaside Spanish city. Its five acres contain green space, a playground, ball courts, and walking paths, and the plaza connects to a new market hall, with restaurants and bars serving a wide range of local specialties.
Next to all thisand the real reason for any of it existing at allis Roig Arena, the new multipurpose stadium built for the men’s and women’s professional basketball teams of the Valencia Basket Club.
The basketball arena is hardly the second thought here, but it’s much more a piece of this broader civic space than the typical pro sports facility. Especially compared to the U.S., where the stadium is often the only element of such a project, Roig Arena and its public amenities offer a refreshing take on a form of urban development that favors the “development” over the “urban.”
[Photo: Hufton + Crow Photography]
Open since September, the project was designed by the international architecture firm Hok and Valencia-based Erre. With a fluid, scaly facade of precisely angled ceramic tiles, the arena has an unmistakable presence in a neighborhood just outside the center of the city. But because it was sunk down into the ground, the arena is actually much shorter than most of the surrounding neighborhood, softening the unavoidable intrusion of such a big building.
There’s room inside for more than 15,000 people during basketball games, and upwards of 20,000 when the venue is used for concerts, which, according to its business plan, represents a large chunk of its calendar. Even more significant is the market hall, which is open every day, even when there’s no basketball game or concert happening.
[Photo: Hufton + Crow Photography]
In contrast to stadiums in the U.S., Valencia’s was a relative bargain at 400 million, or about $461 million. (The Intuit Dome, the flashy new home of the NBA’s Los Angeles Clippers, for instance, cost more than $2 billion.) The project was financed entirely by Juan Roig, owner of the Valencia Basket Club and majority owner of Spain’s largest supermarket chain, Mercadona. It’s a unique financial arrangement in Spain, where most sports arenas are publicly financed.
The Valencia basketball arena’s design was led by Erre partner Amparo Roig, who also happens to be the daughter of Juan Roig. “He wanted to do something important for Valencia and for Spain,” she says. “It was very important to be sustainable economically.”
[Photo: Hufton + Crow Photography]
More than an arena
Making it financially sustainable required focusing on ways the arena could be more than just a sports venue. In the U.S., arenas typically host professional basketball and hockey teams as their anchor users, with concerts and performances as a substantial side business, and fine dining and other concessions adding to the bottom line during events.
[Photo: Hufton + Crow Photography]
In Spain, hockey is not part of the mix, which meant the arena had to be designed to make concerts and events sit on almost equal footing as basketball games, and have concessions that would actually draw more than just the captured audience of a sports game or concert. One sit-down restaurant in the complex specializes in paella and grilled fish. Another offers croquettes and Valencian flatbreads. “We’re not doing hot dogs here,” Amparo Roig says.
[Photo: Hufton + Crow Photography]
In other ways, the arena is a typical sports and concert venue, with priority given to spectators’ view lines, easy ingress and egress, and comfort inside the space. Roig took the designer’s prerogative and included more restrooms for women than men. Specially designed piping systems allow beer vendors to operate on the floor level during concerts. “Subtle things like that make sure that it is very much a party building when it’s in party mode,” says John Rhodes, director of sports and entertainment at Hok.
The venue also has its share of luxury lounges. But unlike the stuffy, windowless lounges inside most arenas, Roig Arena’s were designed to stretch to the exterior edge of the building, much of which is open to the usually warm air of Valencia.
“What we tried to do was actually ensure that the lounges were almost connected with the outside, with this beautiful climate,” Rhodes says.
[Photo: Hufton + Crow Photography]
An outdoor arrangement
That connection to the outside extends throughout the building. Its facade, made of 8,600 ceramic scales, was carefully configured to block the intensity of the sun while still allowing coastal breezes to enter the building. This partially cools the building, cutting down on its energy use. A rooftop solar array also reduces its energy demands.
[Photo: Hufton + Crow Photography]
The openness of the Valencia basketball arena’s facade raised some concerns from locals. This, after all, is an existing neighborhood; a local school was relocated to create room for the project. As such, the designers focused heavily on community outreach, and on addressing issues that residents raised. The big one was noisea challenge that forced Madrid’s main stadium to cancel concerts after the roar of a Taylor Swift concert spilled out across the surrounding neighborhood. “We made a lot of effort that the sound didn’t go outside, not through the roof and not through the facade,” Roig says.
It’s part of the project’s civic gesture. In the end, it’s still a big event venue that will always stick out a bit in a city with thousands of years of history. But among the sports stadiums being built around the world, it does at least try to soften the impact, and possibly add more than it takes. “As a designer, it’s very, very rare that you get to introduce such significant public realm into a heritage city,” Rhodes says.
Affordable housing has gone in search of collaborations. Across the country, developers and cities have found a solution in pairing housing with unexpected projects to save money and build more vibrant communities.
[Photo: Juan Tallo]
A wave of libraries, fire stations, and even Costco stores have been built below or adjacent to much-needed, lower-cost apartments. Now a new development in the Southern California city of San Juan Capistrano is sharing a lot with City Hall.
Salida del Sol, a $31 million, 49-unit supportive housing development by Jamboree Housing Corp., opened this past July on a 2.2-acre site downtown. At a time when federal support for homeless services is wavering and cities in California and elsewhere have taken more conservative approaches to unhoused communities, San Juan Capistranos decision to place housing next to the seat of city government sends a strong message.
According to Mayor Troy Bourne, it was a perfect opportunity to marry strategic development and attack a growing problem in the city and region, all while avoiding the typical pushback such developments often provoke. Supportive housingwhich combines accessible, affordable homes with a suite of social services to help individuals navigate challenges such as chronic homelessnesstends to attract significant angst from nearby neighbors.
[Photo: Juan Tallo]
This says to the community, Well go first, we trust this to go well, Bourne says. These developments arent going to be universally popular in a community. People want this problem figured out far away from their front door. Putting this next to City Hall says not only are we supportive, but were putting it on our front porch.
Jamboree, which manages approximately 11,000 units across Southern California, has never seen a project utilize government land and pair up with such a symbolic civic building, says CEO Laura Archuleta. The city was able to both provide land at a competitive rate and help finance the construction via a municipal fund to support affordable housing. The old City Hall building had been deteriorating for decades and needed a refresh, which coincided with the citys push to add more supportive housing.
[Photo: Juan Tallo]
More importantly, Archuleta says, the potential for interaction, observation, and understanding at the new site provides immense social value, giving lawmakers and local residents a more realistic impression of the challenges of rehabilitation, and the difference such housing projects can make. Law enforcement and local officials will get a more accurate sense of the challenges and lives of the unhoused, while those living at Salida del Sol may gain more trust of local police.
I see compassion and learning taking place on both sides, Archuleta says. Thats an added benefit.
[Photo: Juan Tallo]
She says theres already interest from other communities in California, including discussions around another co-development on a city hall campus in East Los Angeles County, and plans to build another building on a senior center campus.
The challenge in building this kind of deeply affordable housing includes combining a variety of funding sourcesSalida del Sol utilizes state and local subsidies as well as housing voucher funding from the federal governmentand finding a site.
Especially in a wealthier community like San Juan Capistrano, finding land that isnt prohibitively expensive remains a challenge, as well as persevering through neighborhood pushback. There were some local business owners wary of the residents hanging out near their storefronts, Archuleta says, but Jamboree mitigated that with community outreach and education and didnt face widespread opposition.
[Photo: Juan Tallo]
Jamboree and other supportive housing providers passionately believe in the value of a housing-first approach to giving the unhoused a place to recover and access social services; a 2017 study completed with researchers at nearby University of California, Irvine, found it was more cost-effective for cities to provide housing to the homeless, as opposed to the various costs associated with medical and criminal issues that come from not having a permanent home.
[Photo: Juan Tallo]
Once the city and developers decided on a location for Salida del Sol, the design went through a few iterations. For one version, the housing would have been on the second floor above City Hall. At another point, it became clear the supportive housing wouldnt fit on the lot with a building that contained a full city council chambers. To make room, local leaders converted a nearby community center so it could double as a chamber room when needed. The final layout placed the resident entrance on the opposite side of the lot from the City Hall entrance.
[Photo: Juan Tallo]
Archuleta says the project includes full wraparound services such as access to social managers and other support for the residents. Its a big deal to know the city manager works next door and can simply pick up the phone and call her if he sees a resident having a hard time. According to Bourne, placing unhoused people near city services, as well as in the middle of downtown near transit and jobs, offers the connection and assistance they need to get back on their feet.
You cant throw money or a building at a problem. At the end of the day you need human capital, he says. Were providing access to jobs, a train station, and support. Presenting someone with that I think is a real solution.
Bourne adds: We would do it again in a heartbeat. This has been a huge win.
One of the many ways Americans practice gratitude in the month of November is by honoring those who have served in the U.S. military. This federal holiday is always observed on November 11even if that falls on a weekday, as is the case this year.
Many federal services take the day off to give workers time to observe Veterans Day. It can get a bit confusing to know how this impacts whats open and closed.
The ongoing federal government shutdown adds another layer of uncertainty. Before we clear all that up, lets take a look at the history of the day.
A brief history of Veterans Day
World War I was supposed to be the war that ended all wars. On November 11, 1918, a temporary armistice went into effect at 11 a.m., which ended fighting between the Allied nations and Germany.
This halting of hostilities became permanent on June 28, 1919, when the Treaty of Versailles was signed, but the November 11 ceasefire would have a historical stronghold and continue to be celebrated.
The following year, President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed November 11 Armistice Day. Congress followed suit eight years later with a concurrent resolution.
Unfortunately, as we are all too aware, WWI did not end all wars. The United States went on to fight in World War II and get entangled in conflicts in Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq, to name just a few.
The holiday evolved to honor not just those soldiers who served in WWI but in any of the conflicts that came after. In 1954, Congress officially amended the Act of 1938 to include all veterans.
The Uniform Holiday Bill of 1968 moved the observance to Monday, October 25, 1971. People did not love this change, so President Gerald R. Ford reversed the decision in 1975, which took effect in 1978.
Are banks open on Veterans Day?
No. Veterans Day is a federal holiday, so most major banks are closed. You can turn to online banking in a pinch. Also, most ATMs are operational on Veterans Day.
What about the post office?
No. The United States Postal Service is closed on Veterans Day.
Is mail delivered on Veterans Day?
No. You will get a day off from bills and junk mail. The exception is USPS Priority Mail Express, a premium service that guarantees delivery even on federal holidays.
Are FedEx and UPS open?
Yes. FedEx locations are open, and most services will run as normal. Some delivery and pickup times for standard FedEx Express/ground services are modified because of the holiday.
UPS stores are also open for business. Most pickup and delivery services will run as usual, but UPS Ground Saver and UPS Mail Innovations will need an additional day for deliveries.
Is the stock market open on Veterans Day?
Yes. The New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq are open for trading.
What about schools?
No. Most schools are not in session on Veterans Day. Some districts even took November 10 off to give everyone a four-day weekend.
Are retail stores and restaurants open on Veterans Day?
Yes. Most major retail stores and eateries are open for business. Some businesses even offer discounts or deals for service members.
Applebees, California Pizza Kitchen, and Red Robin are all offering a free entrée. Knotts Berry Farm in Buena Park, California, is offering veterans and their families discounted tickets.
The Nashville Zoo is offering free admission for veterans and their immediate family members. Heres a full list of deals and discounts compiled by the American Legion.
What about pharmacies?
Most pharmacies are open, including major chains like Walgreens and CVS, but some locations may observe different hours in the pharmacy section, so it’s best to check with your local store if you need medication.
When you think of leaders you admire, you likely imagine them as authentic, at least in the sense of seeming genuine, real, and trustworthy.
Science confirms this is usually the case.
For example, data tells us that trustworthy leaders stand out for their no thrills patterns of behavior: They are, in other words, predictable, reliable, and unlikely to shock their employees or followers with erratic or excitable behavior that freaks them out.
{"blockType":"mv-promo-block","data":{"imageDesktopUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/10\/tcp-photo-syndey-16X9.jpg","imageMobileUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/10\/tcp-photo-syndey-1x1-2.jpg","eyebrow":"","headline":"Get more insights from Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic","dek":"Dr. Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic is a professor of organizational psychology at UCL and Columbia University, and the co-founder of DeeperSignals. He has authored 15 books and over 250 scientific articles on the psychology of talent, leadership, AI, and entrepreneurship. ","subhed":"","description":"","ctaText":"Learn More","ctaUrl":"https:\/\/drtomas.com\/intro\/","theme":{"bg":"#2b2d30","text":"#ffffff","eyebrow":"#9aa2aa","subhed":"#ffffff","buttonBg":"#3b3f46","buttonHoverBg":"#3b3f46","buttonText":"#ffffff"},"imageDesktopId":91424798,"imageMobileId":91424800,"shareable":false,"slug":""}}
Furthermore, the best meta-analysis (quantitative review of hundreds of independent top studies) on personality and leadership tells us that one of the most consistent predictors of whether someone emerges as a leader, and is in turn actually effective in that role, is conscientiousnessa trait embodied by people who are methodical, disciplined, gritty, and who excel at self-control and resisting temptations (in other words, the opposite personality to Charlie Sheen, though his current self has no doubt become more conscientious!).
Unsurprisingly, leaders with this profile also tend to create higher levels of psychological safety, which as my colleague Amy Edmondson and I have recently illustrated is likely to create the conditions that enable teams to experiment, take healthy risks, fail smart, and speak up without fear of being reprimanded. Ironically, then, the more leaders can edit themselves, the less pressure their teams will feel to edit themselves. In other words, if you want people to feel safe and included, focus on being your best rather than your real or natural self.
Works in progress
More importantly, every leader is a work in progress. That is, the growing complexities and uncertainties underpinning each and every one of the new challenges leaders must face (e.g., navigating the human-AI age, coming to terms with global geopolitical conflicts, managing shareholder and stakeholder value, having a voice on polarizing matters without alienating or antagonizing or acting like a cult leader), make it imperative that leaders improve, evolve, and develop. This requires being coachable, and having the necessary curiosity, humility, and motivation to not just be yourselfto not be limited by your past and present self.
As my colleague Herminia Ibarra noted, the evolution of the self always consists of going beyond who you already are and finding ways to broaden or enrich your identity. Inevitably, this means resisting the temptation to stay within your comfort zone, playing it safe or playing it to your strengths, and mastering new behaviors and adaptations.
Simple example: A naturally extraverted leader will probably have a tendency to dominate meetings, making it hard to let other people speak. However, if they were interested in becoming better and evolving as a leader, they could develop the micro-skills needed to shut up and listen! By the same token, a naturally creative and innovative leader may have a tendency to jump from one idea to the next, getting easily bored with executional details or tactical operational road maps. However, if they were interested in being more effective and becoming a more complete version of themselves, they would benefit from cultivating some patience and interest for these details, and so on.
Broadening skills
So, as it turns out, self-editing is not just helpful when it comes to making leaders understand that their obligation to others generally eclipses their right to be themselves, but also broadening the skills and behavioral repertoire leaders must possess to manage in complex times. Indeed, even if you think you are effectiveperhaps even talentedas a leader, the only way to get better is by not simply applying your current skills, but learning new adaptations.
This means decoupling the trigger-response connection to allow for a wider range of possibilities, responses, and behaviors, turning you into a more diverse and broader version of yourself, a kind of personal enrichment that expands your potential and gives you more choices to respond appropriately to each situation. Because lets not forget: Every situation benefits from the right response, rather than the first or most natural thing that comes to mind. In that sense, acting spontaneously and without much consideration or concern for what others think of you may make you feel more authentic, but also be less effective in the eyes of others.
With that, here are eight simple tips for being better at self-editing.
Eight practical ways to master the art of self-editing
Dont believe your own hype.The moment you start inhaling your own PR, your learning curve flattens. Confidence is useful; self-delusion is not. Good leaders act like their reputation is a rumor they still need to verify.
Remember: Its not how good you think you areits how good others think you are.Decades of psychological research show that self-ratings of talent or performance barely correlate (and often correlate negatively) with actual performance. Self-perception is comforting fiction; reputation is data.
Pause before you react.The gap between impulse and action is where leadership lives. Emotional self-regulationthinking twice before sending that late-night emailis often the difference between credibility and regret.
Curate what you share.Transparency doesnt mean oversharing. The best leaders disclose enough to build trust but not so much that it burdens others. Edit for relevance, not confession.
Seek out editors.Every great writer has an editor; every great leader should too. Surround yourself with people who challenge, critique, and occasionally deflate you. If everyone around you nods, youre in an echo chamber, not a team.
Balance passion with predictability.Enthusiasm is energizing, but mood swings are exhausting. Your team shouldnt need to forecast your emotional weather. Reliability is charismas less exciting but more mature (and employable) sibling.
Audit your habits.What you do repeatedlyhow you listen, decide, interrupt, and delegateforms your leadership brand. Record yourself in meetings, solicit feedback, or keep a behavior log. Then rewrite the bad sentences.
Edit forward.View your leadership style as a draft in progress. Ask: What part of me needs less airtime now? What version of me do my team and context need next? Continuous revision is how leaders evolve rather than ossify.
In short, leadership maturity is less about finding yourself than about refining yourself. The best leaders dont broadcast every thought or impulse, they run an internal editorial process that filters noise, amplifies value, and leaves others with clarity rather than confusion.
{"blockType":"mv-promo-block","data":{"imageDesktopUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/10\/tcp-photo-syndey-16X9.jpg","imageMobileUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/10\/tcp-photo-syndey-1x1-2.jpg","eyebrow":"","headline":"Get more insights from Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic","dek":"Dr. Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic is a professor of organizational psychology at UCL and Columbia University, and the co-founder of DeeperSignals. He has authored 15 books and over 250 scientific articles on the psychology of talent, leadership, AI, and entrepreneurship. ","subhed":"","description":"","ctaText":"Learn More","ctaUrl":"https:\/\/drtomas.com\/intro\/","theme":{"bg":"#2b2d30","text":"#ffffff","eyebrow":"#9aa2aa","subhed":"#ffffff","buttonBg":"#3b3f46","buttonHoverBg":"#3b3f46","buttonText":"#ffffff"},"imageDesktopId":91424798,"imageMobileId":91424800,"shareable":false,"slug":""}}
A few months ago, I was lying in bed, lightly clutching my phone, when Instagram Reels presented me with a brief video that promised an impossible soap opera: There were animated catswith feline faces but unmistakable human bodiesliving seemingly human lives, including in a human-seeming house and also, for some totally unclear reason, at a seemingly human construction site. There was drama: A female cat appeared to have been knocked up. There was also, somehow, a related love triangle involving two far more muscle-y male cats vying for her affection. None of the cats actually spoke. Yet somehow the plot proceeded, with one cat winning the heroines heart. It was well rendered. It was brain-meltingly inane.
AI slop is now our collective shorthand for short-form digital garbage. Specifically, the term slop evokes liquidy, wasteful goo, threatening to gush over everything. We use this description because the content AI is manufacturing is often low-quality, vulgar, stupid, even nihilist. What decent defense can be mounted for the video I just described, at least to the best of my internet-corroded memory? This output is gross, indeed, sloppy. And its getting everywhere.
AI slop did not emerge from artificial intelligence, generally. (Artificial intelligence has a broad scope, but the term has been around for a few decades and is often associated with machine learning.) Specifically, the term was birthed around 2023 in the aftermath of generative AI, when platforms like ChatGPT and Dall-E became publicly available, according to Google Trends. All of a sudden, everyday internet users could generate all sorts of stuff.
While AI companies sort out a business modeltheyre working on it!the internet public has been left to navigate a subsidized AI free-for-all, where we can render slop into existence with merely some keyword cues and a chatbot. Of course, with mass production comes surplus and, then, refuse. We containerize actual trash because otherwise debris gets on everything else and makes everything less good. AI is, arguably, doing the same on the internet. Its clear we think of a lot of AI as trash, though were not doing much to clean it up.
There are already clear signs of contamination. The arrival of low-cost AI generated content has obviated a certain category of digital parachute journalism: stumbling upon a wacky or concerning online trend, then quickly writing it up without any form of verification. Fox News recently published an attempt at such internet stenographyduring the shutdown, designed to denigrate Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) beneficiariesonly to later issue a clarification after the outlet learned the videos were created by AI. The confusion goes the other way, too: While reading a clue, Jeopardy! host Ken Jennings recently caught heat for describing something as AI generated when, in fact, it wasnt.
The quagmire has even gotten the billionaires. In the aftermath of Zohran Mamdanis victory in New York Citys mayoral election, financier Bill Ackman shared a video of Elon Musk talking about the mayor-elect. Musk is the spokesperson. He is brilliant, incredibly articulate, and spot on, said Ackman of the video, only for the community notes section of X to confirm that the video of Musk was AI. The Notes entry pointed to the videos producers, who note their channel isnt actually affiliated with the SpaceX executive.
Deni Ellis Béchard, a senior technology writer at Scientific American, recently cautioned that the challenge of mass-produced cultural content, of course, isnt new: Innovative technologies always spur new forms of art, but also a largess of worthless bleh. This was also the case with the printing press, the internet, and cinema, he explains. In all of these situations, the point wasnt to forge masterpieces; it was to create rapidly and cheaply, he writes. But the production of new types of slop widens the onramps, allowing more people to participatejust as the Internet and social media birthed bunk but also new kinds of creators. Perhaps because much of massmade culture has been forgettable, original work stands out even clearer against the backdrop of sameness, and audiences begin to demand more of it.
Indeed, the world of mass AI creation will inevitably feature some true gems. AI masterpieces, even. But there are real, unfortunate consequences of the real getting all mixed up with the fake, even more than it already was. Sure, there are reasons to think that the search for an objective truth is futile. But the alternative is corrosiveand structuralconfusion. The risk isnt that well miss the AI jewels hidden under slop, but that we, ourselves, will drown in it.
We might even be fogging up the digital panopticon. Its become totally normal to know quite a lot about someones life from their social media. But today, my Instagram Reels, at least, is clogged with bizarrethough, it pains me to admit, engrossingAI videos. These videos are certainly less common on the platforms classic photo grid, but the platform is pushing us to short-form video, anyway, where this slop flourishes.
Eventually, well reach a tipping point where AI overruns organic human activity on the internet. As Axios observed, the web will shift into a bot-to-bot, rather than person-to-person, platform. This, of course, is hard to measure: The whole point is that bots are trying to impersonate humans.
Still, one cybersecurity firm recently found that 51% of the internet is now generated by bots. Last year, an analysis published by Wired found, over a multiweek period, that 47% of Medium posts appeared to be generated by AI. The companys leadership seemed totally fine with this, as long as people werent reading the stuff.
But even if we arent reading the trash, its still introducing a new source of duplicity to our collective online knowledge. Eventually, also, the same confusion will come for the machines. A study in Nature published earlier this month found that AI can struggle with significant attribution bias. Even worse:
We also find that, while recent models show competence in recursive knowledge tasks, they still rely on inconsistent reasoning strategies, suggesting superficial pattern matching rather than robust epistemic understanding. Most models lack a robust understanding of the factive nature of knowledge, that knowledge inherently requires truth. These limitations necessitate urgent improvements before deploying LMs in high-stakes dmains where epistemic distinctions are crucial.
Companies have built powerful facial recognition by slurping up images of faces posted on social media to train detection algorithms. AI faces might complicate this methodology, though. A few months ago, FedScoop reported that Clearview AI, a dystopian operation that scraped hundreds of millions of images from social media to build a highly accurate facial recognition model and then sell that technology to the governmentwas hoping to build a deepfake detector.
LinkedIn recently announced that its now using data from its site for improving Microsofts generative AI models, though much of the site already sounds like an AI bot (Is it? We dont have a way to measure!). AI companies have explored using synthetic data to train AI systemsa reasonable strategy? Perhaps, in some contexts. But it also seems like a bad idea.
In fact, there are tons of concerns about AI contaminating itself. Theres serious worry about a phenomenon called model collapse, for instance. Another Nature study last year found that indiscriminate use of model-generated content in training causes irreversible defects in the resulting models. Theres the possibility of creating an AI feedback loop, corrupting the very real and very true human data that was supposed to, in aggregate, make the technology so powerful. Amid the unctuous praise lobbied toward AI firms, slop seems like a problem for them, too.
The nightmare scenario is something like the Kessler Syndrome, a fancy coinage to describe how humanity is polluting outer space. In low-Earth orbit, space trash (including a lot of dead satellites) frequently hits other trash, powerful collisions that then produce even more space trash, making the entire place cloudier and much harder to navigate and use. A similar future could await artificial intelligence: a whack-a-mole hodgepodge of AI creations and AI detections, all trained on increasingly AI-polluted data.
When you get sloppy, you blur your words and start to stumble. AI may be similarly fallible.
There are a lot of words marketers cant seem to quit. Unique. Authentic. Real. But these are threadbare clichés, which have all but become nullified due to the erosion of their meaning, a dilution fueled by the desire for brands to be generally, yet specifically, for everyone. But everyone is not a target audience. Its a comfortable void. What brands really need right now isnt another lap around the buzzword block. Its courage. Courage to lean into the one trait that could cut through in a world of algorithms, sameness, and mediocrity. Marketers need to be weirder.
If you want a sociological anecdote of how weird wins, look no further than online dating. Dating apps have shown us that people dont actually want the most normal partner. They want quirks that stand out. Hinge data shows that profiles mentioning a niche interestlike a specific video game or obscure hobbyare more likely to get matches than generic I like to travel statements.
Marketing works the same way. Generic quality service or trusted partner claims are the equivalent of I love long walks on the beach. Tepid is a turnoff. While being good-looking can get you plenty far, to really connect, you need quirks. Mass marketing, like mass dating, creates fatigue. Precision, passion, and personalizationthe pillars of weirdcreate chemistry. When a brand flies its freak flag high, it shows the right customers: Yes, were your people.
The Crocs case
Take Crocs. Once the fashion worlds punchline, they leaned into their weirdness with bold collabsfrom KFC bucket Crocs to Balenciaga platform Crocs. Instead of pretending to be a lifestyle brand, they became a cameo brand: something you add to your life in a flash of bold comfort. Their revenue hit $3.96 billion in 2023, up nearly 12% from the year before. Thats what I call laughing all the way to the bank.
Weird is always the evolutionary advantage, the bright feather on a dull bird. Yes, it may feel like a risk to shake off the camouflage, but if your biggest problem becomes being too visible, wouldnt that be a happy day. Weve all heard the phrase unprecedented times so much its basically become elevator music, but unprecedented times are exactly when evolution has the most fun. Charles Darwin called it adaptive radiationspecies diversifying into weird little niches that thrive when old systems collapse. Marketing is in its own adaptive radiation moment. Large language models (LLMs) and Generative AI are both collapsing the funnel and flooding the market with mediocrity and brand doppelgängers. Now more than ever, the average of averages is going to fail to thrive.
Grow a horn
So, whats a brand to do in this mush of mid? Grow a horn. Sprout a freaky little tail. If everyone else is cranking out the same optimized content marketing thought leadership, weird is the mutation that keeps you from extinction. Just ask Duolingo. Their TikTok presenceanchored by a giant green owl who is somehow equal parts threatening and adorablehas over 10 million followers. Its unhinged, its absurd, and its working. Weird didnt just help them survive. It helped them dominate the landscape and now anyone who tries to emulate that success is just doing a bad Duolingo impression.
Now, absurdism isnt newits just having another renaissance. Whenever people face the unknown or the unbearable, weirdness bubbles up as both coping mechanism and cultural shorthand. Marketers should look to what is breaking though the anxieties of the moment and connecting and why. A giant owl twerking on TikTok, a water brand calling itself Liquid Death, a fast-food chain tweeting in all caps about sauce shortages. These are signals that brands are fluent in the absurdist yet timely language their audiences are already speaking.
In an era where sameness is free, weird is priceless. Weird is precision. Weird is passion. Weird is personal. Some call it cringe. I call it survival. And if you want your brand to not just survive but thrive in 2025 and beyond, its time to get a little freaky.
When it comes to inquiring aboutahemcertain products, shoppers prefer the inhuman touch.
That is what we found in a study of consumer habits when it comes to products that traditionally have come with a degree of embarrassmentthink acne cream, diarrhea medication, adult sex toys, or personal lubricant.
While brands may assume consumers hate chatbots, our series of studies involving more than 6,000 participants found a clear pattern: When it comes to purchases that make people feel embarrassed, consumers prefer chatbots over human service reps.
In one experiment, we asked participants to imagine shopping for medications for diarrhea and hay fever. They were offered two online pharmacies, one with a human pharmacist and the other with a chatbot pharmacist.
The medications were packaged identically, with the only difference being their labels for diarrhea or hay fever. More than 80% of consumers looking for diarrhea treatment preferred a store with a clearly nonhuman chatbot. In comparison, just 9% of those shopping for hay fever medication preferred nonhuman chatbots.
This is because, participants told us, they did not think chatbots have mindsthat is, the ability to judge or feel.
In fact, when it comes to selling embarrassing products, making chatbots look or sound human can actually backfire. In another study, we asked 1,500 people to imagine buying diarrhea pills online. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: an online drugstore with a human service rep, the same store with a humanlike chatbot with a profile photo and name, or the same store with a chatbot that was clearly botlike in both its name and icon.
We then asked participants how likely they would be to seek help from the service agent. The results were clear: Willingness to interact dropped as the agent seemed more human. Interest peaked with the clearly machine-like chatbot and hit its lowest point with the human service rep.
Why it matters
As a scholar of marketing and consumer behavior, I know chatbots play an increasingly large part in e-retail. In fact, one report found 80% of retail and e-commerce business use AI chatbots or plan to use them in the near future.
Companies need to answer two questions: When should they deploy chatbots? And how should the chatbots be designed?
Many companies may assume the best strategy is to make bots look and sound more human, intuiting that consumers dont want to talk to machines.
But our findings show the opposite can be true. In moments when embarrassment looms large, humanlike chatbots can backfire.
The practical takeaway is that brands should not default to humanizing their chatbots. Sometimes the most effective bot is the one that looks and sounds like a machine.
What still isnt known
So far, weve looked at everyday purchases where embarrassment is easy to imagine, such as hemorrhoid cream, anti-wrinkle cream, personal lubricant, and adult toys.
However, we believe the insights extend more broadly. For example, women getting a quote for car repair may be more self-conscious, as this is a purchase context where women have been traditionally more stigmatized. Similarly, men shopping for cosmetic products may feel judged in a category that has traditionally been marketed to women.
In contexts like these, companies could deploy chatbotsespecially ones that clearly sound machine-liketo reduce discomfort and provide a better service. But more work is needed to test that hypothesis.
The Research Brief is a short take on interesting academic work.
Jianna Jin is an assistant professor of marketing at the University of Notre Dames Mendoza College of Business.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
