Welcome back to all 1,400+ of you. It's a privilege to make your week a little less boring.

As a quick reminder (since avg. attention span is about 0.3 seconds these days), I curate internet memes, keep you up to speed with trends, interview growing creators, and write about why shitposting works. This newsletter is free! If you enjoy it, share it with friends and help it grow.

How did Soren, Soar? A chat with the man himself. 

People spend months growing a following. Soren did it in 30 days.

Soren is a designer based in California. If you've spent 5 minutes on Twitter in the past few weeks, you've heard of him. He's the pioneer behind the latest trend to take existing products and add an unexpected twist. My personal favorite:

"Split a Seat."

Chatting with Soren. His answers:

What made you start creating these concepts?

Product design is my job so I’ve been creating “concepts” for years, just not on Twitter.

Recently I noticed a bunch of apps were putting a year-in-review experience similar to Spotify Wrapped in their products. 

I decided to parody this for stuff with fake versions for Google Maps and Starbucks. People got a kick out of those and then about a week later I had the idea for “shared alarms” where every person on the alarm would need to wake up to turn it off. That blew up. 

From there the way I was thinking about it was, “what if a product manager knew Figma really well and gave into their most intrusive thoughts?” There was also some purely unhinged stuff, but I try to keep it weird but not too heavy-handed.

Since then I’ve just been pulling on the thread, trying to make stuff I find thought-provoking or funny.

What's your creative process?

As far as sourcing the ideas it’s all over the place. I have a running list in my notes, but people also DM me ideas, or I’ll riff on an idea with a friend. 

At this point a concept usually goes through a couple rounds of feedback before the final version is ready.

Most stuff is designed in Figma, but sometimes I have to crack open Photoshop like for the Hinge AR preview concept.

Why do you think these posts are successful?

My guess would be two reasons. 

1. I haven’t seen anyone do comedy through the lens of digital product design before at high fidelity. 

2. The ideas are close enough to reality and the presentation is ambiguous so people are like wait, is United ACTUALLY offering half seats? That’s why mirroring the visual language of whatever app I’m working on is so important.

Some hit, but others don’t. Can’t all be bangers.

Who are your favorite creators?

Business-y stuff: Not Boring by Packy McCormick. 

Design related: Anthony Hobday’s website. He figured out how to talk simply and clearly about visual design

Non-design: North of the Border. YouTube channel where a guy makes hyper-realistic clay models of cartoons. He did a Stitch one that was incredible.

Podcast: Comedy Bang-Bang, some insane improv but always funny.

New ideas daily: Simple, yet effective.

Soren is growing at a fast clip for a few reasons:

1. The design goes beyond the idea. Ideas are easy - You can probably come up with 10 of these in the next 5 minutes. What's hard is making it simple to quickly understand for the reader, visually through the design. People are lazy, they won't want to spend much time about the joke. It needs to hit in <10 seconds.

2. His ideas surprise you. If it's obvious, it might get a nose exhale out of you, but not a strong emotional reaction. Soren's ideas get people to reply and retweet because they want to share the feeling of surprise to their friends.

3. The ideas hit a nerve. Ideas like "Split a Seat" work because we've all experienced a bad flight seating in the middle of two people who aren't willing to give up the arm rests, and we're also all aware that airlines are constantly trying to squeeze another dollar out of people.

4. He is growing a brand. You see his tweet go viral once.. twice.. on the third time? You follow. His profile couldn't be clearer: "New ideas daily." Doesn't take much explaining. You already understood what's coming next.

5. He is consistent. Soren comes back every day with a fresh take on your favorite products. He stays top of mind, and continues to give you a laugh when you sign onto Twitter in the morning.

If you haven't yet, you should subscribe to Soren's newsletter:

Shitposting can't please everyone.

I love watching the other side of any rising trend, especially in shitposting. People tend to immediately jump to "this is low-effort" — but mostly miss the point: It's about making people think creatively and critically. A trend like the one Soren has started is forcing creators to take their thinking beyond slapping text on a meme image. 

5 Tweets of the Week

RIP Good Times

Being a Founder is no easy job, but you shouldn't overlook the hard life of a VC, either. 

It's hard to be right twice

Poor Michael Burry, still trying to make calls. I would delete my account too. For the uninitiated, Michael Burry who historically called the "big short" in 2008 during the subprime mortgage crisis.

The fall of BigTechTM

Is working in Finance hot again?

The "Stealth Startup" Trick

Look, there's a reason "Stealth Startup" has 11K+ "employees" on Linkedin. It's tech's best kept secret. 

The Chinese Spy Balloon that went "pop"

Twitter was back to being wholesome for a whole 24 hours. It was nice while it lasted. Also, I just love Ramp's tweets: 

That's it, for now - See you next Wednesday, probably.

Drop me a reply, or your favorite shitpost in the last few days!

Don't be shy, reply. I want to get to know readers of this newsletter, and continue to tailor the content in a way that will keep you entertained on the next one.

If you enjoyed this edition, share it with a friend - every forward and link counts to help me grow and keep posting!

Keep on Shitposting,

– Gaut