Digital Culture Review: When we go looking for things that can’t be faked
Thought Leadership
2026 comes with a sheen of incredibility.
Who would have thought that the poster child of the looksmaxxing community, Clavicular, will take the stage during New York Fashion Week, or that countries would reignite discussions over social media bans following the landmark social media addiction trial, or that brands will turn away from the classic velvet rope strategy to bare it all?
Everything we used to know seems to be unravelling all at once. And the only thing that’s for sure is that certainty has been thrown out the window. So the provocation for this quarter’s Digital Culture Review was this: what happens to people when the systems they trusted stop making sense?
Our answer: they go looking for things that can’t be faked.
Agalia Tan, our Global Social Intelligence Associate Director, explores three signals that embody this shift: how the self became the only reliable investment worth making, how community found its way back outside, and why provenance is the new cultural undercurrent to watch.
INDIVIDUAL
The self becomes our way to find some semblance of control.
In an age where almost everything can be optimised, we’ve fixated on the most ‘analogue’ medium to do so: the body.
Our body has become our investment vehicle of choice, where it is stable in spite of external flux, and crucially, your gains are commensurate with effort. That’s what makes it so alluring: there’s no other way to get it besides consistent effort. It can neither be faked nor replicated by the performative crowd, or AI.
Witness the burgeoning popularity of HYROX globally, with its host cities seeing a 118% increase in participation over the past 2 years. Or how creatine, once a niche bodybuilding supplement, has become the latest ‘must-have’ in one’s supplement stack to look more toned and gain more energy.
And it’s not just brawn we are into.
The personal curriculum trend carries through to 2026, spearheaded by a new echelon of intellectual influencers like @etymologynerd and @classicallyclare who share effusively about academic theory and the classics in hopes to impart knowledge and revive critical thinking on the internet. Fable, a book tracking app, reports a +300% year-on-year increase in average reading streaks hit 29 days and over 820,000 readers joining a book club this year.
Thank you to @Elizabeth Jean for the inspiration! If you can’t dedicate even an hour a week to something that lights you up, then maybe it’s time to rethink your priorities 👀 #personalcurriculum#learnontiktok#curriculum
We rally around tangible controllable domains – especially the body, personal growth and demonstrable skills – as anchors for meaning, status and authenticity amidst performativity and misinformation.
A muscular physique can’t be faked – only sculpted through consistent reps and hard work. Carefreeness on the ice can’t be generated, only honed through years of training that make it second nature.
Brands who wish to cultivate an aspirational, premium image can look towards these codes of athleticism, craft mastery and physical dexterity – be it leveraging them within brand communications or partnering with the creators who embody these traits. But here’s a note of caution: brands need to earn the rights to borrow these codes or risk coming off opportunistic.
COMMUNITY
We’re taking ourselves for a little whirl around new offline playgrounds
Cyberethnographer Ruby Justice Thelot had made a prediction early in the year: “Our oral-first world will push us to share more physical space with one another, as we lose trust in all things digital. I expect culture to be more tribal and more physical-first.”
According to our latest Global Digital Report, the average internet user spends approximately 33.5h per week consuming online media; that’s roughly 72 days a year glued to their phone. It’s no wonder the phrase on everyone’s lips in the past 6 months has been ‘the analogue renaissance’.
People are trying to free themselves from their screens, from setting time limits and using greyscale mode on the iPhone to more high-stakes commitment like bricking one’s phone, finding phone-free spaces via programmes like Yondr, or switching to dumb phones.
But let’s not be misled into thinking that this is a harbinger of a screen-free world.
Rather, it signals the increasing intentionality that we approach screen time with. One of the ways in which we are seeing screen time increasingly used is to seek out new mediums of connection.
Whereas 2025 saw the proliferation of run clubs, philosophy clubs, and founder houses that served as a space that enabled mingling without posturing, today we observe the rise of a new type of community centred around whimsy and play.
One of the hottest organisers in the space is Grownkid, a New York based social club for 18-24-year-olds hosting weekly play-based gatherings. They are the ones behind the viral singles wrestling event, and have since hosted other events embodying the same spirit of play such as ‘fight your evil situationship boxing rave’, and a protein slop potluck. These events sit alongside others like longevity raves in Honduras, coffee raves in Paris, food-themed raves in Mumbai where noodle-pulling is set to EDM beats, and free dance parties at the Barbican.
When community events start getting a little wacky, it’s clear that the activity is merely the excuse, and presence is the point. That’s why even simple ‘walk and talk’ events are gaining traction from London to Singapore.
WHAT THIS MEANS
As social moulds itself around our new desire to get off our screens and touch grass with others, social should not just be perceived as a space, but also a funnel.
Winning brands are pairing a strong social presence with experiential events that are tactile and community-first. Social could be the first place to tease a campaign that happens IRL, and these IRL moments are captured and amplified on social as sustenance content to draw more intrigue from new followers, and extend the conversation.
Take for example, luxury Korean eyewear brand Gentle Monster creates surreal campaign films and social content that gives social audiences a glimpse into their bizarre, entrancing immersive world – which their experiential activations such as their High School ID store takeover brings to life.
Even digital-native brands like Anthropic are engaging in the interplay of experiential and social in their campaigns. Their ‘Keep Thinking with Claude’ campaign back in 2025 was promoted on social with a brand film, and later extended via a pop-up in New York’s West Village where they turned an Air Mail newsstand into a space for quiet contemplation – or what they otherwise termed as a ‘zero-slop zone’.
SOCIETY
Driven by our desire for provenance, we are returning to source material and basking in its depth.
On the individual level, our collective distrust of the performative has made what’s demonstrable (i.e. the body, personal growth and tangible skills) become the new anchors for meaning and status.
On the community level, being online no longer cuts it; we now seek out playful, ritualistic IRL events to supplant digital mediation as the primary form of connection.
A cursory reading of these two trends may draw one to the conclusion that we crave for tactility and tangibility. But there is a stronger cultural force at play here.
Think about the happenings that held our collective attention and fascination over the past quarter.
Maison Margiela released their house archives on Dropbox, lifting the veil on their creation process; and fans loved that this transparency offered them a new way to interact with the brand – as it unfolds.
Anthropic’s in-house philosopher Amanda Askell stepped into the media spotlight to chat about Claude’s 80-page ‘soul doc’, which shapes the chatbot’s sense of ethics. The hour-long interview on Hard Fork received over 26,000 views and had listeners showing their appreciation for the thought and effort that goes into training an LLM.
And of course, Banksy’s unmasking. Reuters published their investigation report documenting the series of revelations that led them to figure out the elusive artist’s true identity. Within 24 hours since the news broke, Google searches for ‘Banksy true identity’ have skyrocketed by +300%.
WHAT THIS MEANS
If the past decade was ‘pics or it didn’t happen’, 2026 heralds a shift towards ‘show me your workings or it isn’t real’. Whether it’s us knowledge-maxxing by re-reading the classics, tracking our muscle gains, or getting curious about the source material for our LLMs, artists, and brands alike, our behaviours point towards a desire to return to provenance.
Brands are already changing their playbook. Following in the footsteps of Maison Margiela, Playboy and Saie’s are using Substack to give exclusive access to the inner workings of the brand. Within the music and entertainment scene, BTS – a band that needs no introduction – has released an innovative teaser campaign ahead of their much anticipated ARIRANG album launch, taking fans on a scavenger hunt to find 7 ‘fragments’ that unlock an intimate recording by each member of the boyband. And as you’ll expect from their loyal ARMYs, the global fandom has been abuzz, sharing tips and tutorials on how to find these elusive fragments, and what they’ve gleaned about the new tracks to come.
A note of optimism concludes this quarter’s Digital Culture Review.
While it’s true that the world is becoming increasingly characterised by engineered truths and generated realities, it’s equally true that we are equipped with the ability to change and adapt to our circumstances.
To play the game today, the best strategy might just be to lay all our cards down. We are coming to the table with sleeves rolled up, ready to excavate and find out.
Thought Leadership
