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For the first time in Dr Peppers 140-year history, the brand is the second-most-popular soda in America. And now, it has a shiny new jingle to match. In late December, TikTok creator Romeo Bingham, 25, posted a little ditty she had made up for Dr Pepper. Dr Pepper, baby. Its good and nice. Doo. Doo. Doo, the tune went. In her caption, she tagged the company and noted: Please get back to me with a proposition. We can make thousands together. The original post has garnered almost 54 million views, 6.4 million likes, and almost 500,000 bookmarks at the time of this writing. One month later, Binghams dreams were realized. Dr Pepper licensed the song and folded it into an NCAA football commercial. TikTok creators capitalizing on viral moments is not unusual. Influencers have long been tagging brands in content in the hopes of landing freebies or a lucrative brand deal, as the booming influencer-marketing industry becomes ever-more saturated. Here, the success of Binghams overt brand baiting may signal a subtle shift in power dynamics as creators compete for brands’ attention and marketing budgets. Once the jingle became viral, Binghams comments section was inundated with requests from national brands. Me next bb i beg, wrote Dennys Diner. Yea imma need one of these theme songs right now, added Buffalo Wild Wings. GET HER ON THE PHONE NOW!! Popeyes chimed in. Not to be pick me, but US NEXT, commented Welchs Fruit Snacks. Bingham has since gone on to make jingles for Hyundai and Vita Coca, fully realizing the new American dream of overnight viral success. Brands showing up in the comments sections on TikTok and Instagram, whether the post is about them or not, isnt new. The top comments on a trending TikTok video often garner hundreds of thousands of likes, gaining brands the type of attention they could only dream of on their own channels. But overnight, a new batch of POV: Trying to make a jingle so I can quit my job type videos have been cropping up across social media platforms. Some of the most popular of these jingle videos show brands actually replying to the creators in their comments sectionspossibly as a shoot-for-the-moon attempt to replicate Dr Pepper’s hype. With these public auditions in pursuit of 10 seconds of fame, brands might appear like the real winners, receiving massive amounts of unpaid creative laborsometimes even full commercialscomplete with engagement metrics and audience-testing in real time. If brands reward the noisiest creators with paid partnerships, this could lead to creators shilling spec work ads as a new content pillar, Dayna Castillo, founder of the digital culture newsletter Silence, Brand!, told Fast Company. And yet, brand baiting is normalizing unpaid promotional labor from creators, and long term, this practice risks burning out both audiences, brands, and creators. As she noted in a recent Substack post: We no longer skip the ads. We consume the ads our peers made in hopes The Capitalism will notice. The warp speed with which the internet moves means that trying to re-create anothers recipe for viral success is unlikely to ever deliver the same results. As the saying goes: Lightning never strikes twice. Instead, all thats left to gain is further muddying the shared waters of the internet with subpar unpaid spon-con. (Binghams jingle was at least catchy!)
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E-Commerce
This week, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission rescinded its guidance on workplace harassment, in a move that could significantly undermine protections for all workers, but especially those who identify as LGBTQ+. The agency, which plays a crucial role as the federal watchdog that enforces anti-discrimination laws governing the workplace, voted on Thursday to strike down guidance that had been codified in 2024, during the Biden administration. Across nearly 200 pages, the document offered an important update to the EEOCs language on harassmentwhich had not been updated in over two decadesand also incorporated a key Supreme Court ruling in 2020 that extended anti-discrimination protections to LGBTQ+ workers. The guidance included over 70 examples of workplace discrimination that employees might encounter, with a section dedicated to sexual orientation and gender identity. Before releasing the final version back in 2024, there was a customary notice and comment process on the proposed document, during which the agency fielded over 38,000 comments from the public. All that guidance has now been scrapped, with no room for public comment on the decision. (The harassment document has since been taken down and is no longer accessible to the public.) EEOC chair Andrea Lucas suggested that this would not change how the agency approached harassment claims. “Let me be perfectly clear: The EEOC will not tolerate unlawful harassment, as was the case before the guidance document was issued and will remain so even after the guidance document is rescinded,” she said during an open meeting on Thursday. Still, this reversal is a big loss for workers, who remain protected by federal anti-discrimination laws but rely heavily on the agency when they encounter harassment in the workplace. People who experience workplace discrimination typically have to file a complaint with the agency before taking any kind of legal action. By rescinding this guidance, the EEOC has stripped away an important resource for workers (and employers) who are trying to understand what constitutes workplace harassmentand what they can do about it. This decision also cements a seismic shift in the agencys priorities since Lucas took the helm. Under the Trump administration, the EEOC has undergone changes that experts believe have compromised its mission to protect workers rights. After assuming office, Trump immediately fired two EEOC commissionersJocelyn Samuels and Charlotte Burrowsbefore their term limits were up, breaking with precedent and eliminating the Democratic majority. (Commissioners of federal agencies are usually allowed to serve out their terms, regardless of political affiliation.) He later nominated Brittany Panuccio to join the commission; her confirmation in October secured a Republican majority and restored the three-person quorum required for the agency to revise guidance or pursue certain types of litigation. Over the last year, the Trump administrations attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workplace have reshaped the agencys priorities. Lucas has explicitly stated that the agency would focus on rooting out unlawful DEI-motivated race and sex discrimination in accordance with Trumps executive orders targeting DEI programs. Back in December, Lucas even put out a call for white men to report workplace discrimination and potentially recover damages. (This took the form of a video on X, in which Lucas asked: “Are you a white male who has experienced discrimination at work based on your race or sex?”) Revoking the harassment guidance, however, seems to align with a broader agenda to curtail protections for LGBTQ+ and trans workers. A federal ruling last year struck down the section of the EEOCs harassment document that applied to transgender and gender-nonconforming workers, claiming the agency did not have the authority to impose those guidelines on employers; the section stated, for example, that misgendering employees or denying them access to bathrooms in line with their gender identity qualified as workplace harassment. Last year, the EEOC also dropped six cases that involved allegations of discrimination from trans or gender-nonconforming workers. Even prior to the Trump administrations directives, however, Lucas was a dissenting voice on the commission. When the harassment guidance was finalized in 2024, Lucas had taken issue with the section that outlined protections for trans and gender-nonconforming workers and ultimately voted against it, under the guise of protecting womens rights in the workplace. Lucas echoed anti-trans sentiment by noting biological sex is real and binary, suggesting that women would be harmed by the updated guidance. Womens sex-based rights in the workplace are under attackand from the EEOC, the very federal agency charged with protecting women from sexual harassment and sex-based discrimination at work, she wrote in a statement at the time. Women in the workplace will pay the price for the Commissions egregious error. By rescinding the harassment guidance outright, however, Lucas has effectively weakened anti-discrimination protections for all kinds of workerswomen included.
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E-Commerce
The U.S. is no longer part of the World Health Organization. After the Trump administration declared its intention to pull the country out of the global public health agency one year ago, on Thursday it formally followed through, ending its commitment to the organization after 78 years. Withdrawing the U.S. from the WHO was one of President Donald Trumps day-one priorities. He signed an executive order on January 20, 2025, declaring that the U.S. would be departing due to its criticisms of the agencys response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, after the required one-year notice period, the deed is done. Following its withdrawal from the WHO, the United States will continue to lead global health efforts independentlyengaging partners directly, deploying resources efficiently, and ensuring accountability to the American people outside of WHO structures, a fact sheet on the U.S. Health and Human Services website reads. In an unusual joint statement issued by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the U.S. government aired a series of grievances about the agency, which it accused of working against American interests. From our days as its primary founder, primary financial backer, and primary champion until now, our final day, the insults to America continue, Kennedy and Rubio wrote. On a practical level, the U.S. will no longer send any funding or staff for WHO initiatives. All federal employees working at its main Geneva location or in other global offices have been recalled. Next month, the WHO will meet to determine which strain of the flu virus to target in the next flu vaccinea consequential public health decision the U.S. looks ready to sit out. Nearly all of the countries in the world are members of the WHO, but the U.S. has been one of the agencys most prominent members and its largest financial backer for decades. A board session scheduled for early February will be the organizations first without the U.S. since its founding. Fear for the future of global health The Trump administrations decision to walk away from the WHO has had a year to sink in, but its impact is still resonating. When the decision to withdraw was first announced, the American Academy of Pediatrics called on Congress to intervene, warning that WHO membership provides the U.S. a vital perspective into the global health landscape. For more than 70 years, the WHO has played a leading role in protecting, supporting, and promoting public health in the United States and around the world, the professional organization of pediatricians wrote. Withdrawing from the WHO will hamper our countrys ability to predict and respond to major public health emergencies and limit access, communication, and information sharing to a global network of health professionals. Dr. Ronald G. Nahass, president of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, called the decision scientifically reckless and warned that the U.S. will be less equipped to fight illnesses like the flu moving forward. The U.S. withdrawal from the World Health Organization is a shortsighted and misguided abandonment of our global health commitments, Nahass said. Global cooperation and communication are critical to keep our own citizens protected because germs do not respect borders. Dr. Thomas Frieden, the former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who served under the Obama administration, issued his own dire warning about the U.S. withdrawal on X. Well look back on this as a grave error. Health threats do not respect borders, and weakening global cooperation makes Americans less safe, Frieden said. WHO isn’t perfect, but it is irreplaceable to detect outbreaks early and coordinate emergency responses before they become global crises. Trump has openly expressed his contempt for long-standing alliances that have shaped the modern global orderand he hasnt been shy to end them. The president capped off a tense week, defined by global worries over his threat to invade Greenland, with one more insult for U.S. allies by claiming that NATO soldiers stayed “a little off the front lines during the war in Afghanistan. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer called the remarks frankly appalling.
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