Friction-Forward

Every six months we take a moment to contextualise and analyse all the SEEDS we’ve sown in order try and understand what’s changed, what’s coming and what, if anything, we should do about it.

These are the two most important dates in our annual calendar and intentionally designed to coincide with the equinoxes – as a celestial reminder of the shift in seasons and symbols of equilibrium, renewal and the planting and harvesting of physical and metaphorical SEEDS.

Building on the compost and chaordic of our previous BRAND BRIEFINGS, the vibe shift in 2026 isn’t toward more speed, more polish, more seamlessness. It’s the opposite. Culture is craving friction. We’re talking about ambiguity, mystery, boredom, nuance, inconvenience. The good parts. The human parts. The parts where meaning sticks. 

For years, the tech-industrial promise was clear: eliminate effort, eliminate time, eliminate uncertainty. Life, but optimised. Now that AI has made perfection effectively instantaneous, the cracks in that promise are starting to show. When everything is smooth, nothing feels real. When everything works, nothing feels earned.

You can see the panic flickering across culture. AI can now generate flawless campaigns in seconds – and so the new race is to make things look imperfect, human, real. Grain is back. Flash is back. Awkward cropping is back. Some brands are even instructing machines to simulate the very human flaws automation was meant to erase. The analogue revival began as a rebellion against AI; now AI is trying to cosplay analogue back. 

Because beneath the aesthetic shift is a bigger behavioural shift: people are starting to value effort, texture and imperfection again. Friction, in other words, is becoming cultural currency. 

As Kathryn Jezer-Morton explains in her friction-maxxing piece:

It’s not simply a matter of reducing your screen time, or whatever. It’s the process of building up tolerance for “inconvenience” (which is usually not inconvenience at all but just the vagaries of being a person living with other people in spaces that are impossible to completely control) – and then reaching even toward enjoyment.

The deeper question sits underneath all this, is what happens to identity, taste and desire when resistance disappears?

The cultural creator/commentator Kyla Scanlon sharpens the warning in her Substack article:

That when apps load faster, papers write themselves, aesthetics flatten and even identity becomes an efficiency layer. This is what a frictionless world looks like. Everything accelerates, until you forget what it means to try.

In that landscape, friction isn’t failure. It’s differentiation. If the 2010s were about what Matt Klein calls “Dashboard Culture” – metrics, optimisation, visibility – the emerging mood is closer to what he describes as “Camouflage Culture”. Think: the dinner party you’re not invited to. Gatekeeping. Three-hour podcasts. Printed zines. IYKYK memes.

Friction creates edges. Edges create belonging. It also creates desire. When access isn’t instant, attention deepens. When meaning isn’t obvious, audiences lean in. When something takes effort, it feels earned – a principle marketers actually learned decades ago via the so-called Betty Crocker or IKEA effect.

The Power of Unfiltered Reality

The clearest example of friction-as-strategy comes from Dove’s recent “r/eal reviews” push. Instead of polishing testimonials, the brand fly-posted negative Reddit reviews across New York City, building the campaign entirely from unfiltered commentary about its Intensive Repair 10-in-1 Serum Mask. The first 50 consumer reviews – positive, negative, neutral – appeared exactly as written. No sentiment steering. No brand gloss.

It’s a sharp read of where trust now lives. With more than 100,000 communities and over 116 million daily active users, Reddit has become the internet’s unofficial truth serum. Consumers increasingly seek unvarnished opinions there before they buy. Dove didn’t just advertise on Reddit. It adopted Reddit’s logic: anonymity, messiness, mixed sentiment. Oversized posters across New York displayed raw reviews alongside product sampling.

The move signals a broader shift:

• Review culture is moving from brand-controlled testimonials to open community commentary
• Consumers are actively seeking friction – conflicting opinions, rough edges, unresolved takes
• Brands are learning they must participate inside ecosystems, not just broadcast into them
• In a world drowning in synthetic polish, credibility now comes from visible imperfection.

This is just a taster of what’s to come at our next BRAND BRIEFING, so if it resonates, you should become a MEMBER today.