Zero-click Hulking.

Down with the flu, I finally have time to catch up on what’s been happening in the world.

Man, that was some landslide victory.
The other party fumbled so badly.

Five Grammy wins.

What? What were you talking about?

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I started the above two months ago.

But as you could see, it could’ve been anything.

The election, tariffs, Canada, Australia, those female astronauts... Lamar v Drake was a 2024 flash in the pan, then pan-fried again at the Super Bowl.

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Back in my advertising days, sex sold.

Now the industry has found a bigger silver bullet, the silver bullet that outperforms sex.

Rage.

Everything in the media at the moment is about causing or facilitating beefs¹. It’s shade, ultimatums, clashes, showdowns, takedowns, smackdowns. Us vs. them. Red vs. blue. Meat vs. vegan. Coffee vs. matcha. Hard-boiled vs. onsen egg.

Remember the UK chef who denounced his stars? Rage-bait. The Melbourne chef dissing his hats? Imitation rage-bait. Your relatives meddling at reunion dinner? Classic. That parent who asks about how much everyone is spending on their kid’s curriculum activities at every gathering, how much they are allocating their salary to fund private education, who went AWOL to their home country, only to DM you to push MLM products? Oddly specific, but bait nonetheless.

Rage generates headlines, eyeballs, sales.

Every time an Asian chef yells, “Why is $30 pasta okay, but $30 pho isn’t?!” both sides get triggered. Supporters will pay $30.25 for pho; more will pay $45 for pasta out of spite².

Upset people spend more, eat more, doomscroll more, probably medicate more. Cue separations, family breakdowns, surging rental demand, new furniture, new debt. Then they meet someone on a rage forum, remarry, start another family, third mortgage, fourth pre-nup.

Contented people don't binge-buy.
The market can’t have that.

(“Are you sure you’ve resolved that childhood trauma? Maybe ‘contentment’ is a patriarchal, toxic-masculine, Asian-parenting-fail construct.”)

My biggest fear is dementia, but sometimes I think we're already there, collectively forgetting why we're even mad about caramel slice and baklava while we let rendang slide in 2021. No, not that rendang, the other rendang.

When my daughter Hana was four, meal times were a battle.
Weeks of her dawdling, us getting pushy³, her getting upset. We tried a new tactic: don’t want to eat? Fine. Plate in the sink, walk away.
The first time, she was confused. Then she started fights – who touched her toys, her blanket, who rotated her origami crane 90 degrees. Her body was used to getting worked up at 9 am; it became a routine, a KPI her CMO brain was trying achieve.

We forget the reason, but we're addicted to the emotion.
Dopamine by rage is the next cheapest (free!) hit after caffeine, sponsored by the dollar.

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But, but... competition can breed improvement. No Kakilang without Lulu's. Think of all those Mak’s wonton noodle joints in Hong Kong. It also gave us arguably the best diss track in history: