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5 min read

Monday Memo

"If we're all gonna eat, someone has to sell."...turning AI hallucinations into imaginations...the “Clean Girl” aesthetic viral trend exposed.
Monday Memo

A Byte of Knowledge

Ken Griffin is the owner of Citadel Securities, one of the largest market makers in the world.

And it's made him a $42 billion fortune.

When he was in his early 20s, Griffin's physics teacher was retiring.

He told Griffin he could take anything from his office.

Griffin didn’t choose the diplomas or awards.

He picked a $10 plaque that read: "If we're all gonna eat, someone has to sell."

At the time, Griffin couldn’t fully explain why it hit him so hard.

But something about that simple, cheesy message grabbed him.

“It was like a wake-up moment,” Griffin later said.

Because he intuitively realized a universal truth of business: You're always selling

To employees, vendors, investors, and customers.

Selling never stops.

Griffin got a crash course in this in 1994, one of Citadel’s worst years.

The firm lost 4% of its capital, and Griffin flew to Switzerland to salvage relationships.

At one meeting, a lunch date literally got up and walked out mid-meal when he realized Griffin wasn’t someone else.

Another banker, sitting in a sprawling, cigar-filled office, told him: “Such a pity that such a bright young man picked the wrong career”

Rejection after rejection.

But Griffin didn’t quit.

He kept pitching, kept persuading, kept selling.

Because he never forgot that "If you stop selling, you stop eating."

Griffin turned that $10 lesson into a $42 billion fortune.

What could it do for you?

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Something to Ponder

We Asked – AI Answered

Our Question: 

"What's a viral trend that appeared to explode organically, but was actually intentionally and strategically engineered?"

AI's Answer:

💡 THE “CLEAN GIRL” AESTHETIC:

Trend: The “Clean Girl” aesthetic — slicked-back bun, dewy skin, gold hoops, flawless brows, minimalist outfits.

Appeared As: A Gen Z-driven beauty trend that “just happened” on TikTok.

Reality: A meticulously engineered influence stack designed to sell beauty SKUs, plastic surgery, and a lifestyle brand to a new generation of hyper-online consumers.

  • By 2019, the Instagram Face — sharp contour, heavy foundation, big lashes — was commercially maxed out. Kylie Cosmetics, Anastasia Beverly Hills, Huda Beauty… all saw slowing growth as customers got fatigue from 30-step routines and garish looks.
  • Brands needed a new narrative: one that made women buy new SKUs for a new standard of beauty — one that was less obvious, more aspirational, and crucially… not something older millennials had already bought into.

The answer? “Effortless beauty” that still required a $400 Sephora cart.

  • LVMH (owns Sephora, Fenty, etc.), Estée Lauder (owns La Mer, MAC, Clinique), and private equity–backed DTC beauty brands all began retooling launches to fit this new “clean” vibe.
  • At the same time, social platforms algorithmically favored the polished, relatable, lo-fi content style — perfectly matched to GRWM (Get Ready With Me) formats.

💡 Influencer Seeding Was Strategic, Not Spontaneous

  • TikTok “random” creators like Alix Earle, Meredith Duxbury, and “that girl” vloggers weren’t just going viral by chance.
  • Brands were seeding product bundles and affiliate contracts to mid-tier micro influencers en masse in 2021–2022.

✅ Fact: Sephora’s #sephorasquad influencer program paid out six figures annually to micro-creators.

✅ Glossier’s “rep” program gave influencers commission + product previews to shape the look and language of the aesthetic.

✅ Google Trends shows a massive uptick in “clean girl aesthetic” right after Sephora, Rare Beauty, and Rhode Skin coordinated launches in 2022.

💡 The Psychology Was Weaponized

  • Women were sold a sense of superiority masked as effortlessness — which is incredibly effective in generating subconscious envy and aspirational mimicking.

The look was built on a subtle status signal:

“I’m low maintenance, but still flawless.”

Reference: Dr. Anna Akbari (sociologist of beauty) explained in her book Startup Your Life how:

“Minimalist aesthetics often hide maximum effort — the power comes from appearing effortlessly superior.”

💡A Trojan Horse for Monetizing Personal Care

Here’s what the Clean Girl trend actually drove revenue for:

💡 TikTok’s Algorithm Was the Accelerator

Let’s be very clear: TikTok is not neutral. It’s a cultural slot machine with rigged levers. It doesn’t just surface content that’s good. It surfaces content that:

  1. Encourages visual mimicry
  2. Reinforces user stickiness (short, repeatable, emotionally engaging loops)
  3. Drives affiliate-driven consumer behavior

The “clean girl” aesthetic checked every box:

Virality via Repetition

  • TikTok rewards sameness: the same look, same sounds, same gestures, same phrases.
  • “Get Ready With Me” (GRWM) content lets viewers watch the same transformation daily… and that kind of predictability trains the algorithm.
  • Clean girl routines (bun → slick gel → glow serum → hoops → gloss) became the new content template.

This led to what I call the Platform-Look Convergence:

The look went viral because it was algorithmically ideal. And it stayed viral because the content trained users to want to replicate it.

Commerce Disguised as Culture

The genius wasn’t just in the virality — it was in how TikTok became the direct engine for monetization:

  • Brands taught influencers to tag “unbranded” terms: #everydaymakeup, #cleangirlhair, #GRWM.
  • That meant the trend appeared user-led… but still drove clicks to affiliate-tagged product links, especially via TikTok Shop and LTK (LikeToKnowIt).
  • Example: TikTok Shop sold out of E.L.F. primer, Dior Lip Oil, and Sol de Janeiro body mist within 24 hours of their inclusion in GRWM videos.

TikTok’s Internal Boosters

And this part’s wild but true:

TikTok’s internal teams have the power to manually boost content through a process called heating (per a Forbes exposé in 2023).

Insiders admitted that some videos — especially commercially relevant beauty content — were manually selected for viral boost to prime trends.

So that “random girl” who blew up after a dewy bun tutorial?
Chances are:

  • She was part of an influencer cohort
  • Tagged the right funnel-friendly terms
  • Got picked up by TikTok’s internal curation team
  • And just so happened to be using Rhode Skin or E.L.F. — both TikTok-optimized brands with direct shopping links

Thanks for reading the Monday Memo.

Until next time!

The AI Marketers

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