I read about gamified novels, LitRPG (literary role-playing games) and instantly fell down a deep rabbithole. LitRPG weaves the mechanics of video games or tabletop games like Dungeons & Dragons into a novel. The protagonist can see their stats or their character sheets, they can interact with them and they can level up.

One of the most successful LitRPG novels is the Matt Dinniman’s Dungeon Crawler Carl. My library had 168 digital editions of it, so I did not have to wait a single second before I could borrow it. It follows a protagonist who is forced into a game-like reality controlled by an alien race.

Then I pulled data from YouScan Social Listening ✨to see what the conversations actually look like and who the loudest voices in the fandom are.

There's a rumour that Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce will get married at Madison Square Garden. True or not, it's a signal that weddings are being optimised for the feed. Because somewhere, a woman who isn't famous, will feel the same pressure for her wedding to get that reach.

YouScan social listening data tells you how far branded weddings have gone: "content creator" now appears as a standalone vendor category in wedding planning conversations. Couples are not just hiring someone to document the day, they are hiring someone to produce it. And brands to sponsor it.

I wrote about what that means, where it comes from, and what gets lost.