u/D_marketing_

I love my mom, but every interaction with her feels entering an emotional black hole.

For literally decades, everything has been a crisis. Every phone call becomes drama, guilt, illness, conflict, or some catastrophic situation where I’m expected to emotionally carry her. Growing up, I constantly felt responsible for her mood and wellbeing.

Now I’m an adult with my own family, wife, responsibilities, and a child on the way, and I’ve started distancing myself because I simply can’t absorb it anymore.

The hardest part is that she’s not actually dying. She has been “seriously sick” for as long as I can remember, yet somehow survives every apocalypse she predicts. At some point I realized I’ve spent half my life emotionally preparing for the end of the world every single week.

And honestly? It drains the life out of me.

I feel guilty even writing this because I do love her. But I’m tired of feeling like protecting my own peace makes me a bad person.

Not talking about stereotypes or jokes.
I mean habits, behaviors or little things people do that instantly make you think:
“Yeah… they probably didn’t grow up with much.”
For me it’s things like:
never wasting food
keeping boxes, bags and cables “just in case”
feeling guilty spending money on themselves checking prices automatically even when they can afford it now
Curious what others noticed from themselves or people around them.

Every recommendation online looks like two people trying to build IKEA furniture without instructions.
I need realistic advice, not Cirque du Soleil auditions.

A few years ago everything was about curves, “healthy bodies” and body positivity.

Now Cannes and Hollywood suddenly look straight out of a late 90s fashion campaign again. Ultra skinny, hollow cheeks, oversized sunglasses, cigarettes, “effortless” luxury vibe.

It feels like beauty standards did a complete U-turn in like 18 months.

Are we actually back to heroin chic again, just with better skincare and Ozempic?

This season I saw the slope freshly groomed at the evening and empty and thought:

“Tomorrow I’ll hike up and ski down. Great idea.”

For context, I’m not some hardcore skier. Just a guy with confidence levels far above actual skill.

So tonight I start hiking uphill while my kids are down below playing around. Everything is fine at first because the slope lights are on.

Then I get halfway up…

…and they TURN THE LIGHTS OFF.

Pitch black.

Suddenly I can’t see anything, I’m alone on the mountain, and somewhere below me I hear the grooming machine starting up again like a horror movie soundtrack.

At this point I’m too far up to go down without looking defeated, so obviously I continue climbing in complete darkness pretending this was all part of the adventure.

Honestly felt like the mountain itself rejected me.

Made it to the top though.
Still alive.
Questionable judgment remains.

Most examples I find are brands born online:
Gymshark, SHEIN, Fashion Nova, etc.
I am more curious about traditional/global brands that successfully adapted into social commerce and made it profitable at scale.

Do you know any good examples? And why they succeed?

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I’m very confused about Reddit karma.

How do people actually build karma in the beginning?

I’m not asking for upvotes or promotion — just honest advice and guidelines from people who’ve figured it out.

What helped you most when you started?

I’m curious how others handle this.

In our case, marketing builds the event strategy, landing pages, CRM flows, email campaigns, LinkedIn promotion, seller enablement packages etc. But when it’s time for sales to activate their own networks and accounts, engagement is often very low.

It almost feels like some sales teams have become too comfortable expecting marketing to fill events entirely through email marketing and social promotion.

The frustrating part is that results could likely be much stronger with earlier sales involvement and personal outreach.

What has worked for you to improve collaboration and accountability between sales and marketing around events?

Did you se the logo in the phone, the UX is horrible. I tought it is updating. What do you think?

Mine is probably the post-COVID Extra campaign.
Did you see it? Search for: extra post covid video

What’s yours?

I’ll start.

Recently I heard:
“We should focus less on digital and AI visibility and go back to offline sales.”

I been shocked to hear that today brand still believe u can survive by not nurturing your brand online.

What’s the wildest strategy take you’ve heard internally lately?

I’m currently working with GEO/SEO strategy PoCs for a global brand and started wondering how applicable this actually is for smaller companies and startups.
I see a lot of discussions around AI search, discoverability, schema, authority signals, Reddit/community mentions, structured content, etc. Things are moving extremely fast, but I’m trying to focus on the fundamentals that will probably stay important regardless of how the algorithms evolve.

For those of you working with startups or smaller businesses:
Do companies already have frameworks and governance around GEO/AI discoverability/modern SEO, or are most still very immature in this area?
I’m considering packaging this into an offering or practical guide for startups and scale-ups, but I’m curious if the market is already saturated or if timing is actually very good right now?

Would love to hear what people are seeing in reality.

I honestly feel like some marketers spend more time complaining about AI than actually learning how to use it.
Every time someone creates content faster or works smarter, people immediately say:
“Looks AI generated.”
Okay… and?
AI is not killing creativity.
It’s helping people move faster.
Good marketing still needs ideas, strategy, taste and understanding people. AI just removes a lot of the slow manual work around it.
Meanwhile search is changing, content discovery is changing and customer behaviour is changing fast.
People already search on TikTok, Reddit and ChatGPT instead of only Google.
I think a lot of marketers are underestimating how big this shift actually is.
The market will move forward whether people like AI or not.
Do you think the marketing industry