The NoGood Weekly Digest (8/3/26)

This week: ChatGPT's first brand trip, Costco's new TikTok account, HBO vertical scroll and more

Hi NoGoodies,

We get it, you’re busy. So here’s our weekly digest to catch you up on all of the marketing news you may have missed this past week...

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1. LinkedIn’s AI slop crackdown is landing right after Substack called it out by name.

On the heels of Substack’s AI detection tool launching on July 21st, LinkedIn introduced a new “Seems Like AI Slop” feature. The introduction comes after Substack took a direct shot at LinkedIn, holding it up as the prime example of a platform riddled with AI slop and “Claudefishing” its users.

2. ChatGPT just ran its first-ever brand trip, and the timing did it no favors.

OpenAI flew a group of influencers out for its debut brand trip, a 24-hour immersive experience in Wildflower, New York connecting influencers and AI innovators. The trip comes right as AI companies fight slop allegations and try to seem more human and tasteful. There’s no reporting on the event beyond the influencers’ own Instagram and TikTok posts, but those alone were enough to spark public backlash against the influencers participating in the trip.

3. Apple made its budget pivot official.

Apple rolled out Upgrade, a leasing program with Klarna letting customers pay monthly for Apple products instead of buying them outright, replacing the old iPhone Upgrade Program and arriving right as Apple raises prices over the memory chip shortage. It also lands days after the “Relax, it’s iPhone” campaign put the phone in the rain, the bath, and a dog’s mouth, a sharp turn from the “Shot on iPhone” era that, paired with Upgrade, signals a new direction for Apple.

4. Costco finally showed up on TikTok, and its first post is already doing numbers.

The retailer launched its account this week after years without one, which is odd considering the devoted online fandom that has been making Costco haul videos for years. Costco let a community build itself on the platform before it showed up to reap the reward. The launch itself pokes fun at the fact it waited this long to join.

5. Reddit wants to turn its viral posts into something you watch or listen to.

On this week’s earnings call, CEO Steve Huffman confirmed Reddit is building a video experience for watching or listening to its most popular posts, modeled on the TikTok trend of narrated Reddit stories over gameplay footage. With nearly 20 million TikTok posts tagged #reddit and another 10 million #redditstories, Reddit is essentially building the official version of a format its own content already fuels for free.

6. HBO Max just gave in to the vertical scroll.

The clipping economy just claimed another streaming service. HBO launched a “Shorts” feed of trailers and clips tailored to each viewer’s watch history, plus AI search for queries like “dysfunctional family drama,” joining Netflix, Disney+, and Peacock in admitting the same thing: a massive library is useless if people can’t find anything to watch, so the fix is TikTok’s scroll applied to prestige TV.

7. Doordash’s newest unpaid spokesperson might be an influencer just trying to survive the algorithm.

Audrey Peters went viral with a recurring series documenting every DoorDash order she places in a day. Vulture’s piece on the influencer recession argues the old model of simply posting pretty photos is over, and creators are shifting into whatever format the algorithm prefers now that the exclusivity aesthetic has become table stakes, pushing them to find new territory to stand out, even if that territory is a DoorDash receipt.

Any other news we may have missed? Let us know in the comments!