Five things on Friday #409
Food! Movies! Games! Morality... what?
Things of note for the week ending Sunday January 25th, 2026.
#409
Email truncated? Read it online at the FToF Archive.
INTRO
Hello friends.
Welcome to the FIRST Five things on Friday of 2026. ‘New year, same me’ as a beloved teammate said to me this week. Big fan of that. Set the bar high but hey, let’s be pragmatic yeah? Big fan.
Let’s start with a photo of the best sandwich I’ve made this year.
Chorizo, padron peppers, varying levels of cheese, crusty bread, buttered both sides, all gently pressed with a hot pan on top. My goodness me, I might make another today.
How have you been? Happy New Year to you. I hope you had a nice Christmas. I had a lovely Christmas but then got knocked over by that godawful ‘Super Flu’ (or as I’ve been calling it actual flu) on Dec 30th and I’ll be honest, this week has the first week I’ve properly felt like myself again. Took bloody ages to shake that off. Ugh.
Anyway, it has been VERY NICE and VERY GOOD to hit my stride again on stuff - I actually feel like my year has started (only three weeks in). Work, life, writing… and so here we are :)
Last week and thanks to the brilliant team at Working Options and Common People I gave a talk TO STUDENTS AT A SCHOOL about what it’s like to come my background and the path I took to get to where I am.
Equal parts brilliant and terrifying, I can’t recommend working with Working Options enough (get in touch and see if you can help).
Adjacently, on the actual work front, two Nintendo briefs I had the pleasure of working on last year are slowly appearing in public - which is super fun to be able to talk about.
First, this Legend of Zelda work (LEGO Instagram link if you want it) we made for the launch of the new Ocarina of Time set. Second, well, this isn’t technically ‘announced’ yet (but probably the most fun I’ve had on a brief for a good few years) so… consider this a tease?
There’s so much more to come this year - I’ll be sure to keep you updated :)
What else: I finally watched Tron: Ares. Long-time readers will know my association with the Tron franchise (specifically Tron: Legacy) and I felt like I had to watch it just to see how/if at all it continued the story. It doesn’t. And tbh, when I saw a Gary V cameo at 14 or minutes in I knew I was in for a rough ride. Gutted that the original plan was thrown away and double gutted that this bummer will probably the franchise to bed for a good decade or so before it’s revisited again. Bah.
Fantastic soundtrack though. Obvs. It’s on Disney+ now if you fancy a hate watch 😅
So that’s food, health, work, industry, and a movie thing - all before we’ve kicked off. God, I’m good to you. Shall we crack on with the things then?
Let’s.
—
TO THE THINGS!
THING 1. MORALITY VS UTILITY
Keeping it light for Thing 1. Something that’s been floating around in my head for a while now and is a confluence of conversations between friends, peers, and children - covering substack, tech platforms, and ai.
I’ve been noodling a sum. A sum that is (something that upon reflection thematically stretches through so much of what I write, have written, and will write - even in this newsletter) quite simple:
Most things come down to morality vs utility. I think that much is clear.
And/but/also individual morality is grey af.
This may not be an earth-shattering revelation. I appreciate that. But as something I keep coming back to, for some reason, it sticks in my head. So here’s some open plan thinking about that.
Each of us, individually, has our own measure of what is right and what is wrong and the grey is every degree between the two.
And when it comes to day-to-day life. Morality vs utility turns up in almost every decision. The individuality of morality is something that I think I am slowly coming around to accepting - without judgement (mostly).
Individual morality varies by degree of influence on your life. For example, I drive a diesel car - and I know how bad it is but the utility outweighs the morality (I do not have off-street parking, there is no infrastructure on our street or nearby to support electric vehicles and frankly, right now, I cannot afford a new car).
Do people judge me for it? Maybe. You might. But with a small family that requires school trips, I can’t not have a car so… so you get my point.
In the main, I have tried to remove most of the Meta platforms from my life. I have a broad disdain for everything that Zuck touches, there’s enough evidence in the world to suggest that the platforms do more harm than good and combined with my own professional experiences of working directly with them in the past, I’m kind of out.
But I still use WhatsApp. The utility outweighs the morality. I have however, removed Instagram and Facebook almost completely. I'm OK with that. I probably wrestle a bit too much with what I miss out on on Instagram - mainly because so many of my friends maintain profiles there - but I make peace with the fact that I'm making the right decision by me, my mental health, and the mental health of others (but hey, I know you probably use it so I’ll put Instagram links in here to make life easier for you).
The same story again when you get to Substack, the platform’s insistence of platforming of nazis and really, the terrible response from the founders when the issue was raised (see also: Roblox and child safety = also banned in this household), double underlined my broad distrust of west-coast social platforms and everything and everyone behind them.
Am I going to judge my friends for continuing to use the platform? No. Like, if you keep sharing Twitter/X links, yeah, I’m gonna call you out. I left the platform after it paid its first money out to Andrew T*te (circa: August 2023), I knew I could not happily support a platform that so easily endorses one of the biggest dangers to young men. At all. And I suspected then things would only get worse and oh look, they have.
The morality of that feeling outweighed the utility of 20,000+ followers earned over several years of networking and travelling. I felt I could give it up. And that I should.
I had a similar thing with Substack. But for some reason, my own grey-af morality doesn’t quite go so far as to judge others for using it - not yet at least. I still read, I still share - but I don’t publish, and I’ll do what I can to work around its payment systems.
It’s effed up, right? My morals are mine and I don’t really know what sets or drives them but I’m exploring them, publicly here a bit, to define the morality/utility equation for each one. My friends find utility, I think my morality of supporting them outweighs it. Just.
If we pursue this line of thought then the morality / utility piece will lead me to leave every platform, right? Unless it is genuinely useful and I can hold my nose long enough to get enough value out of it…
These days I think Linkedin and Bluesky are the only places where I think you could call me an 'active' user. The utility of both is better than any attached morality I perceive from not using them. And I've learned to trust my instincts on these things and it'll bottom out where it bottoms out.
See also: Generative AI.
Actually, as an aside: I remember a dinner I went to in late 2024 talking about ‘‘the ethical use of generative ai’. Surrounded by people from music companies, publishers, and similar creative ‘thought leaders’. A children’s book author had uploaded THEIR ENTIRE MANUSCRIPT to ChatGPT to check for edits. The author told me this, having said they were dead against AI, but the act of uploading it had basically given the book away. Even then I said to them, stunned: ‘wow - the utility of the platform has outweighed any morality you had against it’.
I guess where I’m going on this is: some shades of grey are darker for some and lighter for others. I’ve come to accept my friends having a slighter different shade of grey because their own morality/utility equation works out the way it works out.
A lot of this was prompted by the kids asking ‘Dada, can we trust Google?’ and the v long conversation that followed thereafter.
AI-literacy, morality, utility… these are the conversations I have with my kids and, as a result, I’m having them with myself.
And now… with you.
THING 2. THE BATMAN EFFECT
Batman makes people behave better. It’s science!
Prosocial behavior, the act of helping others, is essential to social life, yet spontaneous environmental triggers for such behavior remain underexplored. This study tested whether an unexpected event, such as the presence of a person dressed as Batman, could increase prosocial behavior by disrupting routine and enhancing attention to the present moment.
We conducted a quasi-experimental field study on the Milan metro, observing 138 rides. In the control condition, a female experimenter, appearing pregnant, boarded the train with an observer. In the experimental condition, an additional experimenter dressed as Batman entered from another door.
Passengers were significantly more likely to offer their seat when Batman was present (67.21% vs. 37.66%, OR = 3.393, p < 0.001). Notably, 44% of those who offered their seat in the experimental condition reported not seeing Batman. These findings suggest that unexpected events can promote prosociality, even without conscious awareness, with implications for encouraging kindness in public settings.
Incredible!
…thanks Jonny x
THING 3. THIS WEEK IN… VIDEO GAMES
Kicking off with your regular reminder that there are four Ps in Marketing. Price, Product, Place, Promotion.
(yes, I am beating this drum again)
Paid advertising is always marketing but marketing is not always paid advertising.
So when you hear someone say: ‘Oh and we did all of this with NO MARKETING SPEND!’ they both devalue what marketing is and demonstrate they have no knowledge or training as a marketer.
This happens a lot in games.
But hey, here’s a positive example! Pricing!
Recently, an in an excellent interview with Game File, Nick Kaman, developer of PEAK, explained his approach to getting the game to the right price point.
And it went like this:
I love this so much.
Pricing is marketing (and this is excellent marketing).
Game News Bites.
The big news this week is the Forza Horizon 6 + FABLE reveals. And my goodness me, Playground Games has been cooking.
You can click the two links above for in-depth interviews and details or you can watch the full Developer Direct (including a couple of other games) right here. All are great. I was lucky enough to work on the announcement for FABLE back in 2023 and I’m so so so pleased to see it gently edge towards release. Ralph and the team have been v busy indeed.
Additionally, I’ve had a proper love for Forza Horizon since the 4th one in the series and having the OREO Pagani Zonda appear in FH5 was fantastic. I played the hell out of them both and I’m going to be playing the hell of FH6 too.
I can’t wait :)
More:
2025’s top played games were the same as 2024’s. Interesting.
One of the best things in the newsletter this week: ‘The Game Awards: a mouth that eats and eats’
This ‘Essential multiplayer games from 2025’ list is a) very good and b) made me pick up couch co-op banger, Absolum. Worth a read.
THING 4. REVISITING THE METAVERSE
It’s been a while but honestly, I think 2026 feels like a bit of a turning point.
Later this year will mark five years since Facebook rebranded to Meta.
And it’s probably been about four years or so now since I started spending most of 2022 pointing out this thing was rubbish.
Actually, yes. It has been exactly four years.
Four years since I published this meme in FToF.
Four years since the marketoonist published this (which also appeared in FToF).
Four years since Meta told its staff to call each other ‘meta-mates’ and four years since they tried to tell us Instagram Stories were an example of the metaverse.
..
Three and a half years since I gave a talk at BIMA Beyond (that kicked off a kerfuffle on Linkedin) where I called it all out as waffle. Sir Marty with it too.
Three and a half years since Media Monks published a ‘metaverse map’ likening Decentraland to Roblox.
Three years since McKinsey published its ‘CEO’s guide to the metaverse’ - featuring this banger: ‘we estimate the metaverse will generate $4-$5 trillion dollars by 2030’ - tick tock, lads. I called it out then, I’m reminding you of that now.
Three years since Zuck said ‘We don’t expect anything meaningful until year three’ (full non-paywalled interview here)
Three years since the FT said ‘Hang on, what?‘
And hey…
It’s been ONE YEAR SINCE Meta CTO Andrew ‘Boz’ Bosworth told employees in Reality Labs that “this year likely determines whether this entire effort will go down as the work of visionaries or a legendary misadventure.”
And here we are, in 2026.
What do we think?
What’s the state of the nation?
In the past few months:
Meta retired Meta Quest for work (I wonder how those 60,000 quest devices are going at Accenture).
Reality Labs racked up a total of $70 billion dollars of operating losses. Read that again.
Meta also laid off 1500 employees from Reality Labs (expressing a new direction in wearables).
And after all that, the hints are Meta now want to create their own Roblox clone. A clone of an incredibly popular video-game platform. Well, I’m glad we’ve cleared that up.
And ‘Facebook's Meta rebrand can finally be called a disaster.’
Because ‘VR is growing less quickly than we hoped’
Vogue Business announces ‘luxury brands are getting back into gaming’ (while three years ago was calling Fortnite the metaverse).
And remember Apple Vision Pro? Yeah, no. That’s not gone well at all.
Seen many Chief Metaverse Officers floating around?
My point is: I told you then it was Fortnite, Minecraft, and Roblox.
I’m telling you now it’s Fortnite, Minecraft, and Roblox.
Video games eh?
Wild.
I wonder what they’ll push us onto next. Oh I know.
THING 5. BEWARE THE PUSHERS OF GEN AI
Love love love.
Via.
BONUS SECTION
THIS IS THE BONUS SECTION. BONUS LINKS THAT BUMP US OVER FIVE THINGS BUT DUE TO TIMING AND SELF-IMPOSED WRITING RESTRICTIONS ARE LIMITED TO PITHY COMMENTARY ONLY.
ENJOY.
The best bonus of the week is Harry Hill’s new YouTube show. Episode 1 is with Stewart Lee and it is excellent.
Related: I've also got Alexei Sayle's YouTube episode with Lee Mack lined up (but I haven’t listened to it yet). Someone said it was good about the construction of jokes (but I can’t remember who). Maybe we can talk about it next time.
'My journey from foreign correspondent to uber driver' is a helluva read. Especially in light of, well, everything that’s happening in the US right now.
‘When writing fiction, start with a lie’. A great perspective.
This is a great Bluesky thread: "Without revealing your actual age,what's something you remember that if you told a younger person they wouldn't understand?" - via Robbie.
THE MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE TRAILER IS OUT AND OH MY GOD IT LOOKS MEGA (JUST IGNORE LETO) AND I CANT WAIT BECAUSE THIS IS MY CHILDHOOD.
ALSO: I’m a sucker for a good, no… ANY werewolf movie. ESPECIALLY a new found-footage werewolf b-movie. Watch the trailer for THE FAIRFIELD COUNTY FOUR.
I keep being served ads for Yorkshire Handmade Pies. I'm yet to buy them but I want them and it’s only a matter of time.
Uber Eats hoax debunked. Excellent modern journalism.
The underrated - and I’d argue under-appreciated (like, there are self-proclaimed ‘thought leaders’ and ‘strategy gun’ or whatever they call themselves these days and then there are people actually doing the work and sharing the wealth) - David Carr is back on Linkedin giving away SOLID GOLD for FREE. This time it’s a team charter kick off template. I really like this! And I really like David. Go follow him.
YOU ARE REACHING THE END OF THE NEWSLETTER. MIND THE GAP.
A little ranty one this week. I think I needed to get it out of my system.
And oh my God! I haven’t even told you about my trip to The Magic Circle! I’ll have to save that one for next edition :)
I hope you’ve had a smashing start to the year (better than mine at least) and I look forward to writing to you some more over the coming weeks and months.
Thanks for reading, thanks for subscribing, and thanks for being you.
Until next time,
Whatley out x
Five thing on Friday will always be free.
However, if you want to chuck a couple of quid directly to the running costs then you can do that at these links:
You can sign up to an annual sub (no minimum amount required - people have dropped £20-£50 on this link, which is nice).
Or a one off pay whatever you want donation right here.
100% of all your dollar will go on Buttondown fees (about £23 a month) and anything left over at the end of each year with Buttondown will go direct to men’s mental health charity, CALM.
Add a comment: