The always-excellent China Skinny marketing blog (subscribe to their newsletter) hasa great piece on a recent social-slash-social-media trend in China: Cake Cutting Parties (杀糕局)— strangers getting together offline to cut and eat cake. That's it. That's the whole thing.

But as China Skinny points out, it's tapping into something deeper: the quiet crisis of loneliness, the overload of algorithmic content, and the weirdly touching ways people are trying to connect in real life again.

Around the world, people are spending more time on their screens and less time with each other. Remote work, solo lifestyles and algorithm-driven entertainment have quietly hollowed out social life. The result? A growing hunger for real, in-person connection.

In China, the loneliness problem is even more acute. Now into its second generation of one-child families, many urban Chinese grew up without siblings, cousins, uncles or aunties. Mass migration to cities has weakened family ties further. Add to this fewer team sports, less religious participation and longer working hours, and there are simply fewer natural opportunities to socialise.

At the same time, consumers are drowning in messaging from brands. AI is accelerating content creation and targeting, but the net result feels impersonal and transactional. Chinese consumers are being peppered with ads, notifications and "personalised" campaigns that feel anything but human.

Wise words. Read the full piece here.