No Gatekeeping... #20
When friction becomes the feature - the radical acts of 2025
AUGUST 17, 2025
Back after four weeks away, and the cultural rebellion that was brewing did not take a summer break!.
Are Gen Z about to make flip phones cool again by weaponising obsolete technology against surveillance capitalism?
Is Kodak facing bankruptcy when there’s a rise in the popularity of film photography?
Is social media behaviour pivoting from viral lottery to vibe cultivation?
Are we choosing friction over efficiency, depth over reach, and authentic limitation over artificial abundance?
Let’s get stuck in!
Digital Detox: When Flip Phones Become Freedom Fighters
There is evidence that Gen Z's average social media time has decreased since 2021, with one in five attempting digital detox, despite nearly half of teenagers reporting being online "almost constantly."
Their solution? Classic candy-bar phones, e-ink devices without social media, and flip phones with week-long battery life.
What started as Y2K aesthetics has evolved into deliberate embrace of simpler tools to reclaim focus, mental clarity, and privacy from surveillance capitalism.
Gen Z treats friction as tactical advantage when fighting platforms designed for addiction. Their strategy weaponises technological regression against digital colonisation.
The brilliance lies in using obsolescence as armour. You can't doom-scroll on a flip phone. You can't get lost in algorithmic rabbit holes on e-ink. By choosing devices that literally can't run the attention economy's extraction tools, they've found the only real opt-out: incompatibility.
Sources: Rude Baguette (August 2025)
Film's False Victory: Kodak's Boom-Bust Paradox
Kodak indicated it may need to file for bankruptcy, this despite CEO Jim Continenza reporting such high demand for film they're upgrading their Rochester factory. The Global Wellness Institute named "analog wellness" including pre-digital technology its top trend for 2025.
A 21-year-old photography student explains film "teaches you how to slow down, how to look at things more carefully and how to choose your shots more wisely."
Fortune Business Insights projects the cinema camera market will reach $535 million by 2032. Cultural relevance, however, doesn't pay corporate bills.
Gen Z's aesthetic rebellion demonstrates how cultural influence and corporate survival have become disconnected. They're passionate about film photography and willing to pay premium prices for it, yet this enthusiasm arrives too late to reverse decades of corporate decline.
This generation engages with products on their own terms—embracing what resonates culturally while remaining detached from the corporate structures behind them.
Sources: CNBC (August 2025)
Vibe Over Viral: Social Media's Maturity Moment
Industry research confirms over 60% of brand content now prioritizes entertainment, education, or information over direct sales, with platforms becoming entertainment destinations where traditional advertising increasingly fails to connect. Hootsuite's 2025 report confirms "conversations around 'going viral' have become increasingly negative over the last year."
Brands are striving for "smaller-scale, audience-focused virality" using real-time social listening to understand cultural resonance over reach metrics.
This shift from viral lottery to vibe cultivation represents social media's maturity moment. Brands finally understand that one million shallow impressions mean less than ten thousand engaged fans.
The death of "going viral" as a strategy marks the end of social media's adolescence. Companies are choosing sustained cultural presence over algorithmic lightning strikes. Depth beats reach. Community beats metrics. Vibe beats viral.
Sources: Hootsuite, Deloitte, SproutSocial
The Thread That Connects It All
These stories map a collective exhaustion with optimisation culture. Gen Z chooses flip phones that do less. Film photographers wait days for development. Brands abandon viral ambitions for slower community building. We're systematically rejecting the promise that faster, easier, and more connected equals better.
What I'm seeing is the revenge of friction. Every efficiency we were sold—instant communication, instant photos, instant fame—has become a trap we're deliberately escaping.
The most radical act in 2025 involves refusing new technology. Choosing the phone that can't run apps. The camera that makes you wait. The social strategy that ignores the algorithm.
Friction has become the solution to problems efficiency created.
#AnalogRebellion #FrictionAsFeature #VibeOverViral #DigitalDetox #SlowTech
I do not mind a little of both worlds… but then I’m a 1981’er!