THE O.K. LIST #16 | It is no secret nobody wants your boba, Victoria!

I was looking for a cozy, feel-good show to watch in between the fantastic Agatha All Along weekly episodes, but I didn't feel emotionally ready to watch the new season of Heartstopper just yet. After carefully consulting my advisors (coughs in TikTok), I settled on Nobody Wants This, a romantic comedy series in which Kristen Bell plays a professional podcaster à la Call Her Daddy, and Adam Brody plays a (very) hot rabbi. Boy, was it the wrong decision! This show ripped me apart emotionally, and now I fully get the title! Nobody really wants to see a realistic healthy, relationship on screen, when their own are full of the same traumas Kristen's character carries with her. Still, I highly recommend it, whether for the emotionally strong or for the emotional masochists like me... it is a great show, especially for how they include modern professions and content creators that feel at the same time realistic and aspirational.

Speaking of TV shows, the 50th season of SNL just kicked off a few weeks ago. And this week, the messy world of TikTok, and influencer characters like Nara Smith, were the target of one of their skits, and the result was... surreally accurate.

But why watch TV when the real world can be so much more entertaining? Get ready to deep dive into the Boba Wars, the leak of the McRib, and the failed return of the Victoria's Secret fashion show!

DON'T BOB(A) AROUND WITH CULTURAL APPROPRIATION

Last week was a great week for Boba, but not so much for Bobba, and if you don't know the difference, you clearly haven't been following the tea that was spilled on social media.

To set the record straight: Bobba is a Quebec-based brand that specializes in making ready-to-drink supermarket boba, commonly known as bubble tea, the famous Taiwanese global cultural export in the form of ice tea and tapioca pearls.

Bobba, the brand has been in the market for some time now, but last week they were featured on Dragon's Den, the Canadian version of Shark Tank, seeking a $1 million investment in exchange for 18% of their business. However, founders Sebastian Fiset and Jessica Frenette made a couple of faux pas that dragged them into cultural appropriation and racist territory.

Instead of calling out the Asian heritage as inspiration for their product, which they claim is healthier and more convenient, they professed that boba "is not an ethnical product anymore", following up by saying "you are never quite sure of its contents", raising suspicions about the "trendy sugary drink people queue for."

Tough luck for them, because Simu Liu was one of the investors in the panel, and a heated discussion ensued when he tried calling them out for cultural appropriation, eventually passing on the investment by saying:

"This idea of disrupting or disturbing bubble tea, taking something that is very distinctly Asian in its identity and, quote-unquote, 'making it better. I want to be a part of bringing boba to the masses, but not like this."

TikTok creator Soogia was one of the first to raise awareness on the issue, with a 4-part series that deep dives into the racial issues of the entrepreneurs' statements, including their distribution, since Costco, their main wholesaler, is 81% more likely to have Asian customers than any other US warehouse.

Although Simu passed on it, Manjit Minhas took on the investment, only for this week to issue an icy apology, announcing she was pulling out. Yikes. Someone please give her media training, because the video didn't convince anyone.

Bobba's own apology came in the form of an Instagram statement, and you can definitely see a PR crisis expert was not involved in drafting its content.

This should stand as a lesson for any business that is created on the principle of, or inspired by a cultural product. Reference the origins, make sure you work with people familiar with the culture, and for crying out loud, don't act as the colonizer, and make your brand sound original when it is not.

Most recently another Western business went under boycott for the very same reasons. UK Vietnamese food restaurant Pho trademarked the word Pho in the country and is allegedly suing smaller, Vietnamese-run businesses, for using the word. Other than the avalanche of negative engagement on their TikTok videos, one creator has garnered enough support to submit an invalidation form to challenge the trademark with the Intellectual Property Office, even though the brand just issued a short statement claiming there is no veracity to the story.

If this is a topic that interests you, Soogia , referenced above, is one of the leading creators fighting cultural appropriation. Make sure to give her a follow.

CALLING BS ON THE VS FASHION SHOW

Back in 2019, Victoria's Secret killed their uber-famous fashion shows, claiming it was needed to evolve their brand messaging. The move came after top executives made transphobic comments and stated there was no space for plus-size models in the illusion created by the brand.

But what followed the hole left by the shows was failure after failure, including the big pivot in 2021 with the Collective campaign , and the Prime Video documentary Tour'23. The brand has struggled in the last five years to find a voice that is authentically theirs and not a copy of Fenty.

But last May they finally announced something big was coming:

"We’ve read the comments and heard you. The Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show is BACK and will reflect who we are today, plus everything you know and love – the glamour, runway, wings, musical entertainment, and more!"

And then we got last week's VS Fashion Show. And it was BLAAAAND! Not only it was missing the glitz and glamour of the previous decade, but the changes in diversity were barely noticeable, aside from having two transgender models, Valentina Sampaio and Alex Consani, take the runway for the first time.

Still, the show sparked a social media debate on why plus-sized models Tyra Banks, Ashley Graham, and Paloma Elsesser had to dress more conservatively than the skinnier models.

VS is one of those brands that struggle to be creative when they are in their own element as if they can't connect their wings to different body types. They are trapped in their own illusion, drinking from the Kool-Aid that still connects sexy to heteronormative, male-gaze standards.

It is a wake-up call for the brand to snap out of their illusion. You can have the pink, the wings, the glitter, and still be inclusive.

AI GOES MUSICAL

AI is just as scary as it is fun to play with. I have just come across Suno AI, which is basically a tool that lets you create music from literally anything! Want a hotdog-themed musical? You got it.

Time to get your high school poetry notebook out and become a musical legend! Here's a quick tutorial on how:

CULTURE BULLET POINTS

... or things to talk about instead of "following up".

• Last week, Lady Gaga did a Taylor Swift and changed some of the songs in her Spotify playlist to start with a lowercase, prompting fans to work around the clock to figure out it was a clue: an acronym that spelled "Disease". Today, Gaga has announced the opening single for the LG7 era will drop this Friday, and we're all so excited.

• In what reads as an attempt to fight the scandal that was the frivolous Met Gala this year, Anna Wintour has just announced 2025's gala theme: "Superfine: Tailoring Black Style". It is the first time the Met will highlight designers of color, especially with a focus on male fashion, as the exhibit will tell the history of the “Black dandy,” a term that refers to the stylish fashion trends among Black men. The Ball will be hosted Anna, as usual, and co-chairs ASAP Rocky, Colman Domingo, Lewis Hamilton, and Pharrell Williams. Lebron James has also been named an honorary chair member.

• Shakira apparently forgot she was Shakira, and was forced to postpone her tour dates in the US. The original tour was meant to travel across the country's largest arenas, but not even those were enough for the high demand for tickets! The legend is now setting up for stadiums, so more fans can come and enjoy her on stage, living her best post-Piqué life.

• Elon Musk is at it again! Now he might be facing prosecution for breaking US election law. Last week he gave a $1 million check to an audience member at a rally in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and promised to continue awarding the same amount to one random voter per day until the Presidential election on November 5th. Maybe he does believe Trump will come to his aid with a pardon when he wins, but I don't know about those odds.

• Mariah Carey was a guest on the latest Las Culturalistas podcast, and as it turns out, she recorded a grunge album at the same time she was recording Butterfly in the 90s. Are we all dying to hear what it sounds like? Where do we sign this petition?

BRANDS DOING IT

• How do you drink your tea? Leave it to the quintessentially British brand Burberry , and the cast of their new campaign #ItsAlwaysBurberryWeather to show it to you. The TikTok campaign showcases the likes of Olivia Colman and Barry Keoghan in a relaxed moment, creating their perfect cup of tea, from choosing the best mug to answering the age-old question: milk first? The videos sit around the 30-second length mark and successfully steal a page from Vogue and Variety's social media content playbook, creating some of the most enjoyable videos I've seen posted on the platforms this week

• The leak is such a modern way of communicating a launch, and 麦当劳 UK jumped at the opportunity to use it when it was time to announce the return of McRib. Test notifications were sent to thousands of app users, and posters and ads ran with broken files, offline copy, and watermarked audio, giving the illusion of a true leak. The campaign comes from Leo Burnett UK , and is the work of ECDs Andrew Long and James Millers .

• @MOSCHINO has done it again. After years of perfecting the food bag, and making a splash last year with the baguette, the trend now is the celery bag. TikTok is quite wild after it. I personally love a bag with character, but I don't know about this one.

• Did you know a phone is snatched in London every 6 minutes? JOAN Creative developed the Unsnatachable Phone covers to fight mobile phone robbery in the UK. I definitely want one! The campaign is signed by creatives Thorbj?rn Kragh Liljegren and Christine Jensen .

THE PLAYLIST

JADE is here to save British pop music and we love that Bruno is working around the clock to pay his debt because his new collabs are just fire.

Get into the fresh sounds of the week, and tell HR this accounts as a learning opportunity!

Don't forget to save the playlist on Spotify to get the updates every Friday.

Would you like to submit ideas and projects for consideration to be featured in one of the lists? Drop me a message :) I am always hunting for cool new things to talk about.