Action Figures and Ghibli: We've Traded Brand Creativity for Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V Culture

Generative AI has turned brand social media into digital suburbs—every street lined with the same Quiet Luxury Beige houses, LEGO lawns, and IG-identical porch setups. Welcome to the days of Ghibli-Land and GI Joe AI Action Figure Clones. Where every marketer with Wi-Fi and an hour to kill tries to turn their brand into a pixel-perfect copy of the latest gen-AI viral sensation. Except now, everyone—even your dad who still sends texts in full sentences—is invited to the party. But when everyone's invited, the party’s kind of doomed to suck, right?

The P.R. appeal of gen-AI is its democratic promise: "You too can be effortlessly brilliant!" But effortless creativity destroys itself the moment it hits Peak Cringe—the exact instant novelty dies. Creativity hasn't just died; it's aggressively decomposing with every lazy prompt.

If your job involves "going viral," you feel this existential dread. Your carefully crafted brand voice is systematically erased by algos craving uniformity. Brands used to master personas—"quirky yet approachable" (old skool Oatly), "unhinged but relatable” (Wendy’s Twitter), or even the cursed "horny but sophisticated" (remember Diesel?) But gen-AI has flattened every personality into the same bland extruded pancake of vaguely relatable cringe. Brands now post identical content, racing towards a finish line nobody actually wants to cross.

We didn't get here overnight. It's been a slow descent accelerated by TikTok rewarding & ruthlessly standardizing trends. 5 years ago, we mocked brands awkwardly appropriating youth slang; today, we nostalgically pine for that cringe. At least people once tried—even if they were uncool. Now even minimal creative friction is erased.

The nu-monotony of brand social isn’t a fad—it’s the logical outcome of algos dictating content. When virality is a d*ctator, nuance & individuality become liabilities. Sameness is predictable, and predictability equals monetization. Uninspired brands love this formula: snag a trending AI prompt, slap a logo on it & boom—instant engagement.

But engagement isn’t meaningful connection. Comment sections quickly turn hostile, people easily spotting lazy attempts at relevance. Authenticity is hollowed out, replaced by endless loops of algorithm-friendly nonsense. How can your brand stand out when it looks identical to every other brand playing this stale game?

Occasionally, exceptional outliers defy algorithmic demands with refreshingly original content (Chili’s just launched “Fast Food Financing” in NYC). But they’re exceptions precisely because they refuse conformity. Marketers leashed by deadlines and KPIs, lack the luxury—or courage—to resist.

So we're temporarily trapped in a loop where the lowest-hanging fruit dictates creativity. In making creativity accessible, we've diluted its essence. Once vibrant and chaotic, digital now wades in gen-mediocrity.

Brands will chase hollow virality until they realize we've sacrificed the authenticity that made social media exciting. Until then it’s gen-AI brand I.D. land, where nothing stands out because everything looks the same.