Dating platforms market themselves as technological solutions to loneliness right at your fingertips. And yet, for many who are overwhelmed with choice, Valentine’s Day feels lonelier than ever. (Unsplash)

In the weeks leading up to Valentine’s Day, dating apps typically see a spike in new users and activity. More profiles are created, more messages sent, more swipes logged.

Dating platforms market themselves as modern technological solutions to loneliness, right at your fingertips. And yet, for many people, the day meant to celebrate romantic connection feels lonelier than ever.

This, rather than a personal failure or the reality of modern romance, is the outcome of how dating apps are designed and of the economic logic that governs them.

These digital tools aren’t simply interfaces that facilitate connection. The ease and expansiveness of online dating have commodified social bonds, eroded meaningful interactions and created a type of dating throw-away culture, encouraging a sense of disposability and distorting decision-making.

The business of modern dating

Online dating apps are big business.

Match Group, a technology company that dominates the online dating sector with an extensive portfolio of dating app products — including Tinder, Hinge, Match.com, OkCupid, Plenty of Fish and OurTime — reported fourth-quarter revenue of US$878 million this month.

Its analysis showed fewer people are paying for its apps, with paying users down five per cent year over year.

The decline appears to reflect a trend prompting the company to develop new artificial intelligence tools to drive user growth and appeal to younger customers. Part of this means converting free users into paying ones.

Dating apps don’t sell love. They sell the feeling that it is one premium upgrade away. The platforms aren’t primarily designed for users to find love and promptly delete the apps from their phones. They’re designed to keep users swiping.

Why swiping never ends

Prolonged uncertainty is profitable. By creating the sense that a better match is always one swipe away users are kept engaged. Design strategies that gamify choice, offer intermittent variable rewards (like a slot machine) and frequent push notifications produce a fear-of-missing-out mentality and can lead to compulsive and addictive patterns of use.

Maximizing user interaction and time spent on the app, and accumulating consumer data turn users into lucrative opportunities for paid features, monthly subscriptions and advertising dollars.

Dating apps market the idea that dating platforms can achieve our social goals more efficiently and more intelligently, meeting a real-world need with a technological solution.

In this system, people are expected to constantly improve and optimize themselves. Paying for added features becomes an investment in oneself, while value is determined by desirability, performance and outcomes.

By creating an interesting profile, crafting witty messages and curating photos and videos of ourselves, we commodify our time and self-worth, reinforcing the idea that we alone are responsible for our success on the apps, even if the playing field is strategically manipulated to keep us on them longer.

So are we being set up to fail? The distinction between failure and success overlooks a key issue: dating apps function as political entities that control access to and distribution of resources.

Changing social reality

Online dating apps sell us hope by exploiting our needs, desires and insecurities. When apps keep hinting that something better is just one more swipe away, they start to reshape our expectations, and even inflate them.

Typically, people employ a decision-making strategy called “satisficer,” which refers to both “satisfy” and “suffice.” This means we generally choose something that’s good enough, rather than searching endlessly for perfection, because of limits on time, information and cognitive energy. In relationship decisions, compatibility used to be enough.

With apps, there’s an endless supply of options — endless potential partners, endless possibilities. The issue is that the options feel infinite and, as a result, we’re being trained not to be satisfied anymore. Rather, we’re encouraged to keep swiping.

The platforms serve as central planners of resource access, production and distribution, offering the information and databases that guide decisions in a global market of potential partners. As a result, human actions are treated as market-based transactions.

Users adopt a consumption mindset in which choosing partners is no different from shopping, constantly comparing others and discarding some in search of the highest-value partner.

Rather than being defined by connection or mutual care, interactions become a question of optimizing our choices. The illusion of oversupply creates the sense that people are replaceable and forces them to compete on superficial standards of beauty or status. Success and desirability on these platforms tend to reinforce existing hierarchies such as class, race and religion.

These tools can also promote a rejection mindset, with users more likely to reject potential partners as the number of options increases, becoming more closed off to romantic opportunities.

Loneliness is a feature, not a flaw

Reducing romantic connection to a commodity weakens social bonds and prioritizes individual success over community, leading to increased isolation and loneliness.

Dating apps are active platforms that prioritize personal preferences and individual strategies rather than addressing structural inequalities or the underlying causes of loneliness.

By fostering a competitive digital environment, these apps encourage disposability and change how people assess and select one another, often resulting in burnout and cynicism.

Users are prompted to view themselves as products to be optimized and others as options to evaluate. Dependence on dating apps to address loneliness ultimately weakens our social bonds and alters how we engage with one another.

The post What dating apps are really optimizing. Hint: it isn’t love appeared first on TMU Research & Innovation Blog.

Students participating in an international study experience practise weaving at the Fortezza del Girifalco, in Cortona, in the Tuscany region of Italy. (Tanya White), Author provided (no reuse)

Seated on the stone floor of a medieval fortress in Italy’s Tuscan hills, students rip thin, one-inch strips of fabric. They then knot the strips together to create extra chunky yarns. With these chunky yarns, they use oversized, thick crochet hooks, knitting needles and six foot-by-six foot tapestry looms.

This is in the Fortezza del Girifalco, in Cortona, in the Tuscany region of Italy, affectionately known to our group as “the castle.”

As a fashion and textile designer and professor at Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU), I am here with students who are participating in the The Creative School’s Global Learning program.

I create with different yarns and software, developing art-to-wear, objects, sculptures and installations. Creating with textiles is how I express and process my ideas. Yet the purpose of this creative textile work with the students in this program goes far beyond exposing them to textiles. It’s about exploring processes through which we can unearth radical new forms, concepts and esthetics.

Students are from diverse programs at the Creative School at Toronto Metropolitan University (fashion, interior design, graphic communication management, journalism, professional communication, media production, performance and sports media). Over three weeks, we’ll create a substantial textile exhibition for peers, visitors and the Cortona residents.

Site of creative life

The Fortezza del Girifalco is a site of creative life. It has been repurposed and renovated for new visitors, artists and audiences. Most notably, it is the centre of the international photography festival Cortona on The Move.

Yearly, the Fortezza is reimagined, with new interior work, additional and updated partitions, floors and surfaces to facilitate the design of this world-class exhibition. It has a bistro, with coffee, drinks and food.

Planning such an educational-immersive experience involved a great deal of collaboration: discussions with the Creative School’s dean’s office, especially Sadia Kamran, associate director, communications and international development, and Kathleen Pirrie Adams, associate professor from the School of Media, as well as our Cortona operations lead, Tommaso Rossi. After this, the Fortezza Atelier course was planned and piloted in June 2025.

The aims were simple: show up, contribute, be creative and collaborate with your peers.

In three weeks, there was near-perfect attendance. Students gained skills and knowledge, culminating in the creation of a textile exhibition.

Creativity and craft

In the 2021 article, “Build to think, build to learn: What can fabrication and creativity bring to rethink (higher) education?”, authors Jean-Henry Morin and Laurent Moccozet combine their respective expertise in information systems and the representation of and visualization of knowledge to examine the inherent benefits of hands-on education. They consider how this enriches and deepens theoretical understanding.

It is this common tacit knowledge that can’t be taught in the metaverse because it requires a shared embodied experience.

The course introduced students to making textiles, weaving, crochet, knitting and draping with a common raw material to start with, which was a roll of unbleached cotton calico or muslin. It was a purposely humble material that relied on the students’ creativity and resourcefulness.

The frayed yarns and rudimentary studio environment simplified the output, but this limitation became a benefit; they began to pick their exhibition spaces and discuss concepts, narratives and fabrication.

The Fortezza Atelier gave students the chance to unplug, disconnect and use their hands to create a textile project inspired by the Tuscan setting and their personal impressions of international travel and learning.

The classroom: the Fortezza del Girifalco

The journey to the Fortezza was a large part of the experience, set on top of the Tuscan hills.

Its steep incline provided a panoramic view of the surrounding Basilica of Santa Margherita, towns and valley.

It was accessed by a challenging but hikeable path or a small shuttle van that took the students up to the site in groups of eight. Some students would hike and some would ride.

For me, this daily commute was a near-spiritual set-up for the day, providing separation, concentration and a peaceful attitude toward work in the Fortezza — a pathway for other but related embodied creative practices.

Work began and ended with the journey up the mountain, which took presence and commitment every session.

Our Italian team member, Rossi, who manages the Fortezza, brought his two- year-old dachshund named Rustyn.

Rustyn became an honoured part of the Fortezza Atelier course, playing with the students, providing a mascot/emotional support animal role and even serving as a special guest at their final exhibition.

Communal practice

Not even a full day into the process, and without being asked, students were assisting each other, sharing knowledge and skills, forming teams organically and celebrating each other’s accomplishments. I helped and contributed to the communal learning environment.

After setting the expectations and aims on the first day, we, as a class of 32 plus one dog, worked productively, set our schedule and fulfilled our commitment to the course and each other.

Through interviews, informal conversation and a final reflective assignment, students shared their insights on the course: that with hard work, investment, care and collaboration, you can envision and create something with lasting impact.

For most, these projects seemed unattainable, even unimaginable, before time in Cortona.

The educational and social benefits of this opportunity for faculty, students and higher learning institutions also point to significant potential for other iterations of site-specific studio practice experiential learning programs tailored to specific locations and contexts.

The post How hands-on textile work inspires creativity and growth appeared first on TMU Research & Innovation Blog.

Holidays bring celebration, rest and, for many families, long stretches of indoor time. For some, this means table top games quickly reappear on kitchen tables. Games provide opportunities for learning mathematics actively.

These moments of playful learning raise a broader question: how can we support student’s mathematical learning at home without turning the holidays into formal lessons?

One answer comes from a simple but surprisingly powerful classroom learning tool: Tarsia jigsaw puzzles. These are puzzles created with free Tarsia software, from Hermitech Laboratory. The software enables people to create, print out and save customized jigsaws, domino activities and different rectangular card-sorting activities.

For the mathematics classroom, the whole sheet of a Tarsia puzzle printed on paper is typically laminated (for repeated use) before being cut into pieces.

Social and active learning that values mistakes

Canadian mathematician Anthony Bonato advises: “No matter what method is used to teach math, make it fun.” Most students would agree; joy is often missing from their experience.

As a mathematics education researcher, I add that regardless of the method used to teach mathematics, the learning should be active and social, and value mistakes as opportunities for learning. These are conditions under which learners feel safe to try, fail and try again.

Tarsia puzzles, which have been around for more than a decade and have found use in K-12 classrooms, accomplish all of this with almost no explanation for students. However, their use in university calculus classrooms appears to be rare.

My research has focused on why using Tarsia puzzles work to teach math, and their impact in the undergraduate classroom.

Matching geometric tiles

The Tarsia software allows teachers to embed mathematical relationships — fractions, functions, graphs, algebraic expressions — into geometric tiles such as triangles, rectangles or rhombus.

Learners must match the tiles so that the edges align, eventually forming a complete single shape.

The Tarsia software presents users with a variety of puzzle types to choose from.

Teachers in elementary and secondary schools use Tarsia puzzles to strengthen number sense and deepen understanding of functions, graphs and algebraic relationships. University instructors can use them to enliven topics such as limits, derivatives and integration — areas where students often feel intimidated.

Mathematical ‘prompts’

Each tile carries a mathematical “prompt” — for example, an appropriate Tarsia puzzle for elementary school learners might involve pieces marked with fractions, decimals and percentages, to help students understand equivalents like ¼ = 25 per cent.

For more advanced learning, puzzle pieces might show two equivalent fractions, a logarithmic expression and its simplified form or a function paired with its graph.

In both cases, learners assemble the puzzle by identifying which pieces belong together. When all tiles are matched correctly, a single full shape emerges.

Because Tarsia puzzles emphasize recognition and relationships rather than lengthy calculations, learners think about how ideas connect. They compare expressions, notice graphical features and reason out equivalence. In many ways, the activity mimics authentic mathematical thinking.

Tarsia puzzles require little supervision, and most of students’ learning happens in the conversations around the table — not in written solutions.

Grades 11 and 12 math students might use a Tarsia puzzle on logarithms — part of learning about exponents or “the power to which a base must be raised to yield a given number.”

Why active learning matters

Decades of research show that students learn mathematics best when they talk through problems, test ideas and make mistakes in low-pressure settings. Studies confirm that active learning improves understanding, reduces failure rates and builds confidence across STEM subjects.

Yet many mathematics classrooms still operate as one-way lectures, where students quietly copy procedures and hope to follow along.

Tarsia puzzles reverse this pattern. They create structured, collaborative problem-solving that feels more like play than assessment. A student who dreads formal proofs may still be eager to match a derivative with its graph. Another who dislikes fractions may feel less pressure when an incorrect guess simply means trying another tile.

A challenging puzzle might combine square and triangular pieces into a 10-sided figure, helping to teach limits, sequences, series and partial derivatives in multivariable calculus.

Recent study

At Toronto Metropolitan University’s active learning classroom, colleagues and I explored how Tarsia puzzles help first-year students learn calculus, relying on structured reflection and student feedback to examine our own teaching practices.

Several themes consistently emerged from the analysis of our reflective notes about students using Tarsia puzzles:

1. Less fear: Students who were usually anxious about being wrong participated more freely. Mistakes became part of the puzzle-solving process rather than personal shortcomings.
2. More talk: Learners debated ideas, explained reasoning and corrected each other — behaviours rarely observed in traditional tutorials.
3. Better engagement: Students worked longer and with greater focus compared with worksheet-based tasks. Some who typically packed up early stayed to complete the puzzle.

Why parents and tutors should care

Mathematics is often portrayed as solitary work, yet mathematicians collaborate constantly — arguing, checking, revising and proposing alternatives. Students benefit from similar interactions.

At home or in small tutoring groups, a Tarsia puzzle offers a low-stakes entry into mathematical reasoning. Learners who are reluctant to speak up in class may confidently identify mismatched edges or question whether two expressions are equivalent. Misconceptions are revealed naturally through the puzzle, allowing gentle correction without embarrassment.

To try Tarsia puzzles, parents and tutors of young students could try examples suitable for upper elementary and junior high school students.

A call to developers

The Tarsia software is useful but dated. Currently, it operates on a Windows operating system.

A modern web-based version — with collaboration tools, curriculum-aligned templates, and built-in accessibility — would significantly expand its adoption. Educational technology developers looking for impactful, low-cost tools could find enormous potential here.

Mathematics becomes easier when it invites curiosity. Tarsia puzzles, modest in design but powerful in effect, encourage learners to talk, think and take intellectual risks. They help parents, tutors and instructors see students’ reasoning in real time, not merely their final answers.

Most importantly, they restore an often-forgotten truth: mathematics can be playful — and learning happens in conversation.

The post Jigsaw puzzles help make mathematics learning more active and fun appeared first on TMU Research & Innovation Blog.

Toronto Blue Jay Addison Barger hits a grand slam against the Los Angeles Dodgers during sixth inning World Series playoff MLB baseball action in Toronto on Oct. 24, 2025. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette

Whether it’s the World Series, the FIFA World Cup or the Olympic Games, the hope for hosting mega sporting events is that the economy will emerge as the true winner.

A quick search shows how expensive World Series tickets are, or how much it costs for accommodations, food and transportation. Similar spending patterns can be predicted for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, which Canada is hosting with Mexico and the United States.

Visitor spending provides direct economic benefits, generating revenue for businesses and providing jobs. There are also indirect benefits through suppliers and staffing, and induced benefits as staff spend their wages locally.

Mega-events can also generate significant reputations benefits for host cities and countries, including heightened global media exposure, enhanced national branding and greater confidence among international investors who see the city as capable of managing large-scale events.

These intangible outcomes can translate into sustained tourism growth, increased economic vitality and a lasting “feel-good” effect that boosts civic pride among residents and visitors.

While hosting large sporting events appears to be great for communities, research suggests the actual financial outcomes are often more modest than anticipated. Nonetheless, many politicians remain eager to host them.

The math doesn’t always add up

Tourism and event scholars suggest being cautious about the so-called multiplier effect. This is the idea that mega-events ripple throughout the economy, providing benefits for others.

Meta-analyses of such events show highly variable economic outcomes and frequent overestimation of long-term benefits. A lot of spending is lost due to export leakage, where additional gain goes to non-local businesses, event organizers and ticketing agencies instead of local businesses.

Often, mega sporting events cause tourism displacement, as regular tourists avoid the destination due to crowds and high prices, sometimes even after the event finishes.

Politicians, tourism offices and event organizers are quick to claim large economic benefits when bidding for and hosting events.

Yet some academics warn that “most economic impact studies are commissioned to legitimize a political position rather than to search for economic truth.” In other words, government-commissioned studies are often biased toward positive results.

A World Series boost — but for how long?

The Toronto Blue Jays post-season run and the World Series produced a concentrated burst of spending: sold-out home games, fuller hotels at higher prices, restaurants and bars crowded for watch parties and heavy merchandise sales.

Local media and business surveys commonly report measurable upticks in hospitality and retail during playoff runs, and small business owners cite increased footfall and merchandise revenue.

Sports economists, however, urge caution in extrapolating short-term spikes into lasting gains. They describe playoff-driven forecasts as “overstated,” pointing to limited duration, substantial leakage and limited job creation beyond temporary hospitality shifts. While people may spend more on a game night, they often spend less elsewhere, meaning net spending is usually smaller than headline numbers suggest.

A World Series may be excellent for civic morale and a short retail bump, but it rarely transforms a city’s economic trajectory on its own.

Canada’s FIFA World Cup moment

The FIFA World Cup is a multi-week, globally televised event with millions of spectators and huge international attention. For Canada’s co-host role in 2026, official and municipal assessments project substantial economic benefits.

FIFA has announced that over 1 million tickets have been sold for next year's World Cup. The tournament will be hosted by the U.S., Canada and Mexico.

— The Associated Press (@apnews.com) 2025-10-16T23:01:21.556Z

A City of Toronto impact assessment projects roughly $940 million in positive economic output for the Greater Toronto Area, including hundreds of millions in GDP and several thousand jobs from June 2023 to August 2026.

British Columbia also estimates significant provincial output and thousands of roles tied to hosting in Vancouver. These are significant short-term impacts that reflect visitor spending and operational expenditures.

But will hosting the World Cup add much to cities that are already well-known? Some are doubtful, but the visibility can help achieve tourism marketing objectives and support bids for future international events often central to destination strategies.

Counting the real costs

Mega-events often come with significant financial and environmental costs. While they can create jobs, these are typically short-term, low-wage positions concentrated in hospitality and service sectors.

Public funds directed at event staging or stadium upgrades could finance affordable housing, transit or health services with potentially higher social returns for local residents. There have also been repeated cases where promised mega-event legacies failed to materialize.

Environmentally, mega-events produce significant carbon footprints from global fan travel, temporary construction, energy use and waste, with many events having more negative than positive environmental outcomes. This is particularly relevant for transnational tournaments that attract long-distance travellers and temporary stadium retrofits.

Cities seeking to maximize gains should prioritize local community benefits and measure net economic impact, not gross receipts, by accounting for displacement and export leakage.

For the World Series, that meant leveraging short-run enthusiasm into repeat visitation and accrued local spending habits. For FIFA 2026, the focus should be on converting global attention into long-term tourism and business flows while ensuring community benefits and limiting environmental costs.

Only then will the reputational windfall translate into durable economic value.

Measuring the real impact of mega-events

Sports events can deliver meaningful short-term revenue, reputational exposure and long-term benefits, but those outcomes are neither automatic nor evenly distributed.

Thoughtful policy design, transparent evaluation and binding community and environmental safeguards determine whether a World Series run or a World Cup week becomes a fleeting headline or a lasting city asset.

The main benefactor of the World Cup will be FIFA, not host cities. As The Economist noted in its review of economist Andrew Zimbalist’s Circus Maximus, there is “little doubt that under current conditions, prudent city governments should avoid the contests at all costs.”

The post Do mega-sporting events like the World Series pay off? Here’s the economic reality behind them appeared first on TMU Research & Innovation Blog.

Electronic Arts (EA) is one of the world’s largest gaming companies. It has agreed to be acquired for US$55 billion in the second largest buyout in the industry’s history.

Under the terms, Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund (a state-owned investment fund), along with private equity firms Silver Lake and Affinity Partners, will pay EA shareholders US$210 per share.

EA is known for making popular gaming titles such as such as Madden NFL, The Sims and Mass Effect. The deal, US$20 billion of which is debt-financed, will take the company private.

The acquisition reinforces consolidation trends across the creative sector, mirroring similar deals in music, film and television. Creative and cultural industries have a “tendency for bigness,” and this is certainly a big deal.

It marks a continuation of large game companies being consumed by even larger players, such as Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision/Blizzard in 2023.

Bad news for workers

There is growing consensus that this acquisition is likely to be bad news for game workers, who have already seen tens of thousands of layoffs in recent years.

This leveraged buyout will result in restructuring at EA-owned studios. It adds massive debt that will need servicing. That will likely mean cancelled titles, closed studios and lost jobs.

In their book Private Equity at Work: When Wall Street Manages Main Street, researchers Eileen Appelbaum and Rosemary Batt point to the “moral hazard” created when equity partners saddle portfolio companies with debt but carry little direct financial risk themselves.

The Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF) is looking to increase its holdings in lucrative sectors of the game industry as part of its diversification strategy. However, private equity firms subscribe to a “buy to sell” model, focusing on making significant returns in the short term.

Appelbaum notes that restructuring opportunities are more limited when larger, successful companies — like EA — are acquired. In such cases, she says, “financial engineering is more common,” often resulting in “layoffs or downsizing to increase cash flow and service debt.”

Financial engineering combines techniques from applied mathematics, computer science and economic theory to create new and complex financial tools. The failed risk management of these tools has been implicated in financial scandals and market crashes.

Financialization and the fissured workplace

The financialization of the game industry is a problem. Financialization refers to a set of changes in corporate ownership and governance — including the deregulation of financial markets — that have increased the influence of financial companies and investors.

It has produced economies where a considerable share of profits comes from financial transactions rather than the production and provision of goods and services.

It creates what American management professor David Weil calls a “fissured workplace” where ownership models are multi-layered and complex.

It gives financial players an influential seat at the corporate decision-making table and directs managerial attention toward investment returns while transferring the risks of failure to the portfolio company.

As a result, game titles, jobs and studios can be easily shed when financial companies restructure to increase dividends, leaving workers with little access to these financial players as accountable employers.

Chasing incentives and cutting costs

The Saudi PIF has stated a goal of creating 1.8 million “direct and indirect jobs” to stimulate the Saudi economy. But capital is mobile, and game companies will likely follow jurisdictions that have lower wages, fewer labour protections and significant tax incentives.

Some Canadian governments are working to keep studios and creative jobs closer to home. British Columbia recently increased its interactive media tax credit to 25 per cent.

The move was welcomed by the chief operations officer of EA Vancouver, who said “B.C.’s continued commitment to the interactive digital media sector…through enhancements to the … tax credit … reflects the province’s recognition of the industry’s value and enables companies like ours to continue contributing to B.C.’s creative and innovative economy.”

This may buffer Vancouver’s flagship EA Sports studio, but those making less lucrative games or in regions without financial subsidies will be more at risk of closure, relocation or sale. Alberta-based Bioware — developer of games including Dragon Age and Mass Effect — could be at risk.

Other ways of aggressively cutting costs might come in the form of increased AI use. EA was called out in 2023 for saying AI regulation could negatively impact its business. Yet creative stagnation and cutting corners through AI will negatively impact the number of jobs, the quality of jobs and the quality of games. That could be a larger threat to EA’s business and reinforce a negative direction for the industry.

Game players have low tolerance for quality shifts and predatory monetization strategies. Research shows that gamers see acquisitions negatively: development takes longer, innovation is curtailed and creativity is stymied.

Consolidation among industry giants may cause players to lose faith in EA’s product — and games in general, given the many other entertainment options that are available.

Creative control and worker power at risk

Some have raised concerns that the acquisition could affect EA’s creative direction and editorial decisions, potentially leading to increased content restrictions.

While it’s still unclear how the deal will influence EA’s output, experiences in other industries might be a sign of things to come. For instance, comedians reportedly censored themselves to perform in Saudi Arabia.

The acquisition may also have a chilling effect on the workers’ unionization movement. Currently, no EA studios in Canada are unionized. Outsourced quality assurance workers at the EA-owned BioWare Studio in Edmonton successfully certified a union in 2022, but were subsequently laid off. Fears of outsourcing, layoffs and restructuring could discourage future organizing efforts.

On the other hand, the knowledge that large financial players are making massive profits could galvanize workers, especially considering that before the buyout, EA CEO Andrew Wilson was paid about 264 times the salary of the median EA employee.

The deal certainly does nothing to bring stability to an already volatile industry. Regardless of any cash injection, EA remains very exposed.

The post What the US$55 billion Electronic Arts takeover means for video game workers and the industry appeared first on TMU Research & Innovation Blog.

In the debut episode of the new sitcom The Paper, freshly appointed editor-in-chief Ned Sampson tries to rouse the spirits of his colleagues at The Truth Teller, a fictional local newspaper in Toledo, Ohio.

It’s a community institution with a storied past but a precarious future — in recent years, the paper has relied almost exclusively on news wire articles and clickbait entertainment to meet its bottom line.

Ned makes a declaration while standing on a desk, as a documentary film crew records it all:

If you have ever wanted to be the first person to know what’s going on in the place where you live, or if you want to make sure the people who are running your city are telling the truth … You are more than welcome, all of you, to volunteer your time at this newspaper.”

It’s meant to be an uplifting moment, with the earnest but inexperienced leader insisting that good journalism can make the paper profitable again. But, even as some colleagues respond with cautious optimism (if not skeptical curiosity), the episode ends by cutting back to an earlier gag — a nearby building has been on fire the entire time, unnoticed and unreported.

It’s an apt, if unsettling, metaphor for the state of local news in North America, where so many outlets have vanished that residents often don’t know what’s happening in their own backyard.

Alarming rate of collapse

Local newspapers are collapsing at an alarming pace. In Canada, more than 500 outlets have closed since 2008, affecting more than 370 communities, according to the Local News Research Project.

In the United States, the number exceeds 2,800 closures since 2005, based on research by Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.

The result is what scholars call “news deserts” — places where no professional local news source remains to cover councils, courts or communities.

The causes of this decline are multifaceted. Reporters and editors need to be paid, newsrooms need resources and investigative journalism is costly and time-consuming. Print advertising, once the financial lifeblood of local papers, has been in steep decline for years as businesses moved their spending to platforms like Google and Facebook.

That collapse in revenue left papers more dependent on digital ads and subscriptions, neither of which has filled the gap. According to the Florida-based Poynter Institute for Media Studies, local news websites saw about a 20 per cent drop in page views and unique visitors in 2022, undercutting the ad impressions needed to sustain online revenue.

Patchwork assistance

Canadian news organizations have sought compensation for the ways tech platforms profit from news content. Google reached a deal with the Canadian government to provide $100 million annually for five years to domestic publishers in exchange for an exemption from the Online News Act, which allows continued access to Canadian news links.

As Gretel Kahn with the Reuters Institute reports, some Canadian outlets — including The Conversation Canada — have begun to benefit from these payments. The money is disbursed by the Canadian Journalism Collective, a federally incorporated nonprofit.

However, the effects are uneven: larger corporate chains such as Postmedia and Torstar are getting most of the support, while smaller independent and local publishers receive far less. This patchwork assistance offers temporary relief but does little to fix the deeper imbalance in how digital advertising profits are distributed.

Expectation of free news

Audiences have now grown accustomed to receiving news instantly and for free, often through social media feeds or aggregators rather than directly from a newspaper. Younger readers in particular encounter news on platforms like TikTok, Instagram or YouTube, where entertainment and opinion often overwhelm verified reporting.

In this environment of declining ad dollars and fragmented attention, local outlets are trying harder than ever to convince audiences their work is worth supporting. This is the tension The Paper plays for laughs.

Throughout the series, the characters contend with all manner of challenges as they strive to keep their newspaper relevant and viable. They get scooped on major stories by a teenage blogger. They struggle to decide whether to chase sensationalism that attracts eyeballs or invest in reporting that actually matters. They try to revive accountability coverage by investigating local businesses but must tread carefully not to alienate the few remaining advertisers willing to support them.

Reporters as underdogs?

On screen, journalists have often been depicted as crusaders for truth — from All the President’s Men to Spotlight to The Newsroom. Even shows and films that explore the darker side of the industry, like The Wire, Bombshell or Tokyo Vice, frame journalism as a profession of serious consequence and high-stakes drama.

The Paper suggests something different: reporters not as larger-than-life figures, but as struggling underdogs doing their best and often getting it wrong. On one hand, this risks trivializing the work of local journalists at a time when the survival of their industry is already in doubt.

For real reporters, it’s no laughing matter. A 2022 Canadian study found many are experiencing high rates of burnout, anxiety and online harassment. In 2021, in the U.S., newsroom employment had fallen by more than a quarter since 2008, with those left behind facing heavier workloads as colleagues were laid off.

The loss of reporters has created gaps in coverage of councils, courts and communities that once formed the backbone of civic accountability.

Heartfelt missive

On the other hand, when it’s at its best, The Paper is a heartfelt missive about why local journalism has always mattered: that despite its sometimes dysfunctional newsroom, the reporters are people who truly understand and care about the community they cover because they live there too.

This kind of connection has long been a foundation for building public trust and encouraging dialogue. But it has been severely eroded as outlets close and news deserts spread.

Research shows that as local news declines, so does voter turnout, civic engagement and political accountability.

The Paper doesn’t pretend to solve the seemingly insurmountable problems facing local news, but it does capture the messy reality of trying to do the job. In a moment when journalists are often idealized or demonized, showing them as flawed but dedicated may not be comforting — but it may be closer to the truth.

The post What The Paper reveals about local news and journalism today appeared first on TMU Research & Innovation Blog.

Imagine an actor who never ages, never walks off set or demands a higher salary.

That’s the promise behind Tilly Norwood, a fully AI-generated “actress” currently being courted by Hollywood’s top talent agencies. Her synthetic presence has ignited a media firestorm, denounced as an existential threat to human performers by some and hailed as a breakthrough in digital creativity by others.

But beneath the headlines lies a deeper tension. The binaries used to debate Norwood — human versus machine, threat versus opportunity, good versus bad — flatten complex questions of art, justice and creative power into soundbites.

The question isn’t whether the future will be synthetic; it already is. Our challenge now is to ensure that it is also meaningfully human.

All agree Tilly isn’t human

Ironically, at the centre of this polarizing debate is a rare moment of agreement: all sides acknowledge that Tilly is not human.

Her creator, Eline Van der Velden, the CEO of AI production company Particle6, insists that Norwood was never meant to replace a real actor. Critics agree, albeit in protest. SAG-AFTRA, the union representing actors in the U.S., responded with:

“It’s a character generated by a computer program that was trained on the work of countless professional performers — without permission or compensation. It has no life experience to draw from, no emotion, and from what we’ve seen, audiences aren’t interested in watching computer-generated content untethered from the human experience.”

Their position is rooted in recent history: In 2023, actors went on strike over AI. The resulting agreement secured protections around consent and compensation.

So if both sides insist Tilly isn’t human, the controversy, then, isn’t just about what Tilly is, it’s about what she represents.

Complexity as a starting point

Norwood represents more than novelty. She’s emblematic of a larger reckoning with how rapidly artificial intelligence is reshaping our lives and the creative sector. The velocity of change is dizzying, and now the question is how do we shape the hybrid world we’ve already entered?

It can feel disorienting trying to parse ethics, rights and responsibilities while being bombarded by newness. Especially when that “newness” comes in a form that unnerves us: a near-human likeness that triggers long-standing cultural discomfort.

Indeed, Norwood may be a textbook case of the “uncanny valley,” a term coined by Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori to describe the unease people feel when something looks almost human, but not quite.

But if all sides agree that Tilly isn’t human, what happens when audiences still feel something real while watching her on screen? If emotional resonance and storytelling are considered uniquely human traits, maybe the threat posed by synthetic actors has been overstated. On the other hand, who hasn’t teared up in a Pixar film? A character doesn’t have to feel emotion to evoke it.

Still, the public conversation remains polarized. As my colleague Owais Lightwala, assistant professor in the School of Performance at Toronto Metropolitan University, puts it: “The conversation around AI right now is so binary that it limits our capacity for real thinking. What we need is to be obsessed with complexity.”

 

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Synthetic actors aren’t inherently villains or saviours, Lightwala tells me, they’re a tool, a new medium. The challenge lies in how we build the infrastructures around them, such as rights, ownership and distribution.

He points out that while some celebrities see synthetic actors as job threats, most actors already struggle for consistent work. “We ask the one per cent how they feel about losing power, but what about the 99 per cent who never had access to that power in the first place?”

Too often missing from this debate is what these tools might make possible for the creators we rarely hear from. The current media landscape is already deeply inequitable. As Lightwala notes, most people never get the chance to realize their creative potential — not for lack of talent, but due to barriers like access, capital, mentorship and time.

Now, some of those barriers might finally lower. With AI tools, more people may get the opportunity to create.

Of course, that doesn’t mean AI will automatically democratize creativity. While tools are more available, attention and influence remain scarce.

Sarah Watling, co-founder and CEO of JaLi Research, a Toronto-based AI facial animation company, offers a more cautionary perspective. She argues that as AI becomes more common, we risk treating it like a utility, essential yet invisible.

In her view, the inevitable AI economy won’t be a creator economy, it will be a utility commodity. And “when things become utilities,” she warns, “they usually become monopolized.”

Where do we go from here?

We need to pivot away from reactionary fear narratives, like Lightwala suggests.

Instead of shutting down innovation, we need to continue to experiment. We need to use this moment, when public attention is focused on the rights of actors and the shape of culture, to rethink what was already broken in the industry and allow space for new creative modalities to emerge.

Platforms and studios must take the lead in setting transparent, fair policies for how synthetic content is developed, attributed and distributed. In parallel, we need to push creative institutions, unions and agencies to collaborate in the co-design of ethical and contractual guardrails now, before precedents get set in stone, putting consent, fair attribution and compensation at the centre.

And creators, for their part, must use these tools not just to replicate what came before, but to imagine what hasn’t been possible until now. That responsibility is as much creative as it is technical.

The future will be synthetic. Our task now is to build pathways, train talent, fuel imagination, and have nuanced, if difficult, conversations. Because while technology shapes what’s possible, creators and storytellers have the power to shape what matters.

The post What AI-generated Tilly Norwood reveals about digital culture, ethics and the responsibilities of creators appeared first on TMU Research & Innovation Blog.

Settling in a new country is often imagined as a sequential process, built on a supposed hierarchy of needs. You accomplish one priority, then another, and another and then you’re integrated into the country and economy.

Material and essential matters — housing, employment, language classes — come first. Cultural or spiritual matters — a sense of belonging, community connections, civic participation — come second.

The recently released research I conducted with Toronto Arts Council (TAC) on its Program for Newcomers and Refugees (PNR), however, suggests this logic needs to be challenged.

What does art have to do with settlement?

Founded in 1974, TAC is an independent funding organization that operates at arm’s length from the City of Toronto. Its mission is to enrich the quality of life in the city by supporting the arts. The decision to create a program specifically for newcomers was driven by research highlighting the barriers newcomer artists faced in finding work and navigating the Canadian arts landscape.

The PNR launched in 2017 and has allocated about $2.92 million between its inception and 2023. Forty organizations received support through the Newcomer and Refugee Arts Engagement stream, while 176 individual artists received Newcomer and Refugee Artist Mentorship grants.

Two years ago, along with TAC, I began researching to learn about who benefited from this support and how. We held focus groups with newcomer artists, arts managers and settlement

organizations, analyzed program data and produced film portraits of two artists.

Our goal was to understand what the arts contribute to integration and what challenges newcomer artists face. Our findings show that the divide between settlement and the arts should be reconsidered.

Instead of being treated as separate domains, they can complement each other in ways that strengthen integration.

The arts as holistic settlement support

The Newcomer and Refugee Arts Engagement stream provides grants to organizations — including settlement agencies, community arts organizations and artistic institutions — with experience serving newcomers through artistic activities. Beneficiaries of the engagement stream showed that arts projects are not cosmetic add-ons.

Community arts professionals work hand in hand with settlement workers to address practical barriers from the outset.

Child care is arranged so mothers can attend. Interpreters support multilingual workshops. Programs offer snacks and Toronto Transit Commission fare. Schedules are adapted to hospitality and shift-work hours. These small design choices make participation possible.

The outcomes are multidimensional. Arts programs support language learning in low-pressure, confidence-building settings. They open pathways to employment through the acquisition of digital skills, production experience and access to professional networks. They reduce isolation and support mental health by creating safe, culturally sensitive spaces.

Newcomers Dance Too!, a free dance class for refugee-background women and girls in Flemington Park run by dancers from Fusion Cardio Toronto — which was promoted in Arabic, Urdu, Punjabi and other languages — is one example.

StoryCentre Canada, a non-profit that empowers short multimedia first-person narratives, set up digital storytelling workshops that taught photography and video editing while letting participants share their stories in the language of their choice, building both technical and communication skills. Hinprov, a collective of South Asian improvisers, created spaces where expression was possible even for those still learning English.

Arts projects also spark civic conversations. At Matthew House, which offers transitional housing settlement assistance, a mural led by a refugee artist-in-residence prompted neighbours to ask questions about refugees, opening dialogue that challenged stereotypes. Another PNR project collaborated with LGBTQ+ newcomers, using photography and film to counter stigma and create networks of care.

These initiatives show how the arts allow creative newcomers to assert their voices and identities on their own terms, positioning them not simply as guests but as active shapers of the cultural fabric of their new country.

Newcomer artists face systemic barriers

Newcomer artists design and deliver effective arts-based projects. Their ability to contribute, however, is limited by systemic obstacles.

General settlement services rarely provide tailored guidance for creative careers. Newcomer artists are directed toward generic job markets or told to pursue “Canadian credentials,” with little information about arts funding, networks or sector norms.

Discrimination compounds these hurdles: accents and linguistic differences become barriers to casting and collaboration; racial bias and expectations about “ethnic” content narrow opportunities; western-centrism and unfamiliarity with certain artistic traditions from outside the West devalue skills gained abroad. For instance, an Indian musician criticized the tendency to classify Indian classical music as “world music” rather than recognizing it as a classical form, limiting its appropriate recognition and funding.

Administrative rules add further exclusions. Temporary residents may be ineligible for public arts funding. Artists living in the Toronto area but outside the city proper can be excluded by residency requirements, even when they exhibit and perform in Toronto. These policies limit access to precisely the resources that help artists integrate into local scenes.

As part of our project, we worked with filmmaker Ogo Eze to produce two short portraits of newcomer artists: Iranian artist Aitak Sorahitalab and Palestinian-Syrian musician Tarek Ghriri.

Both stories illustrate how, despite formidable challenges, newcomers can become community leaders, using their art to support other newcomers while enriching Toronto’s cultural scene. Their stories show resilience but also underline how much potential is lost when systemic barriers remain in place.

Mending the arts and settlement divide

We have too often treated settlement and the arts as separate and incompatible worlds. Bridging them requires a shift on both sides.

On the settlement side, we must move away from sequential-needs thinking that relegates the arts to the bottom of the priority list or treats cultural activities as communications window dressing. This underestimates the concrete, multifaceted support community arts professionals can provide and sidelines newcomer artists.

On the arts side, TAC’s program is a promising template. By offering targeted support to newcomers, the PNR acknowledges the particular challenges they face when starting out, while avoiding the trap of permanently labelling them as “migrant artists.”

Given that only two per cent of Canadian arts funders offer targeted support for newcomers, lessons from this program can guide similar initiatives across Canada and beyond.

The post How the arts strengthen newcomer settlement in Canada appeared first on TMU Research & Innovation Blog.

With live service games, players are learning that what they’ve really bought is not a game but access to it. And, evidently, that access is something that can be revoked. (Unsplash/Samsung Memory)

When French video-game publisher Ubisoft announced it was shutting down servers for The Crew, a popular online racing game released in 2014, it wasn’t just the end of a title. It marked the beginning of a broader reckoning about the nature of digital ownership, led by players angry at the company’s decision to deny them something they had paid for.

The Stop Killing Games (SKG) movement was born from that moment. As of July 2025, it has gathered more than 1.4 million signatures through the European Citizens’ Initiative. The European Commission is now obliged to respond.

At the heart of the issue is a deceptively simple question: when we buy a video game, what are we actually purchasing? For many gamers, the answer used to be obvious. A game was a product, something you owned, kept and could return to at will.

However, live service games have changed that dynamic. These are games usually played online with others and that typically require subscriptions or in-game payments to access features or content. They include popular titles such as Fortnite, League of Legends and World of Warcraft.

With live service games, players are learning that what they’ve really bought is something more tenuous: access.

And, evidently, access is something that can be revoked.

Erasing gaming communities

The issue goes well beyond The Crew. In the last couple of years alone, several games have been shut down, including Anthem, Concord, Knockout City, Overwatch 1, RedFall and Rumbleverse.

There are valid reasons why companies might choose to end support for a title. The game industry is saturated and brutally competitive. Margins are tight, player expectations are high and teams often face impossible deadlines. When an online game underperforms, a publisher will likely be inclined to cut their losses and shut it down.

Games tend to accumulate bugs in their code that are complex to clean and create player dissatisfaction. In our research, we have shown that when a game underperforms or becomes too costly to maintain, shutting it down can be a rational, even reparative, decision on many levels.

Yet, when companies decide to shut down a live service game’s servers, it’s not just content that vanishes. So do the communities built around it, the digital assets (costumes, weapons and so on) players have earned or paid for and the sometimes hundreds of hours invested in mastering it. In the blink of an eye, the game is gone, often without recourse or compensation.

That’s not just a customer service issue; it’s a cultural one.

Games are not just another type of software. They are creative works that can foster shared experiences and vibrant communities.

Players don’t just consume games, they inhabit them. They trade stories, build friendships and express themselves through digital spaces. Turning those spaces off can feel, to many, like erasing a part of their lives.

This profound disconnect between business logic and player experience, which we theorized in the past, is what gave rise to the SKG movement. Video game publishers failed to anticipate the cultural backlash triggered by these shutdowns.

What regulators can do

Players of shut-down games may believe they were misled and should be compensated. Unfortunately, the current system offers little transparency and even less protection for them.

That’s where regulation can help. The European Commission now has a chance to provide much-needed clarity on what consumers in the European Union are actually buying when they purchase live service games.

A good starting point would be requiring companies to disclose whether a purchase grants the buyer ownership or limited access, akin to recent legislation passed in California.

Minimum support periods, clearer content road maps (the projected updates) and making companies create mandatory offline versions for discontinued online games might also help prevent misunderstandings.

There’s room for creativity here, too. Rather than killing a game outright, companies could allow player communities to take over its maintenance and allow for the continued creation of new content, especially for titles with active fan bases.

This is known as “modding,” and in some cases, community-led revivals have even inspired publishers to re-release enhanced editions years later.

Developers need protections too

There’s another part of this story that’s unfortunately overlooked: the people who make these games. Video game developers are regularly subjected to long hours, poor conditions and toxic workplace cultures in order to meet the demands of continuous live service updates.

In our research, we’ve found that this new model of endless content creation and perpetual support is unsustainable, not just financially or technologically, but humanly.

Instead of periodically “crunching,” live service game developers are now constantly “grinding.” Somehow, in an industry notoriously demanding for workers, this model has managed to make things even worse.

Policymakers need to protect both players and the workers creating games. That means, among other things, rethinking release schedules, enforcing rest periods for development teams and holding companies accountable for the well-being of their staff. The overall health of the industry depends on it.

Whether you support the SKG movement or not, the issues it raises are urgent. While the ownership question is a very legitimate one, video game developers deserve more care and protection.

The European Commission’s response could help define the future of digital ownership, cultural preservation and ethical labour in gaming.

The post ‘Stop Killing Games’: Demands for game ownership must also include workers’ rights appeared first on TMU Research & Innovation Blog.

During Coldplay’s “jumbotron song” — the concert segment where cameras pan over the crowd — the big screen landed on Andy Byron, then-CEO of data firm Astronomer, intimately embracing Kristin Cabot, the company’s chief people officer. Both are married to other people.

The moment, captured on video and widely circulated on social media, shows the pair abruptly recoiling as Coldplay’s lead singer Chris Martin says: “Either they’re having an affair or they’re just very shy.”

Martin’s comment — seemingly light-hearted at the time — quickly took on a different tone as online sleuths identified the pair and uncovered their corporate roles and marital statuses. Within days, Byron resigned from his position as CEO while Cabot is on leave.

This spectacle raises a deeper question: why does infidelity, especially among the powerful, provoke such public outcry. Literary tradition offers some insight: intimate betrayal is never truly private. It shatters an implicit social contract, demanding communal scrutiny to restore trust.

When trust crumbles publicly

French philosopher Paul Ricoeur’s notion of “narrative identity” suggests we make sense of our lives as unfolding stories. The promises we make (and break) become chapters of identity and the basis of others’ trust. Betrayal ruptures the framework that stitches private vows to public roles; without that stitch, trust frays.

Byron’s stadium exposure turned a marital vow into a proxy for professional integrity. Public betrayal magnifies public outcry because leaders symbolize stability; their personal failings inevitably reflect on their institutions.

When Astronomer’s board stated the expected standard “was not met,” they were lamenting the collapse of Byron’s narrative integrity — and, by extension, their company’s.

This idea — that private morality underpins public order — is hardly new. In Laws, ancient Greek philosopher Plato described adultery as a disorder undermining family and state. Roman philosopher Seneca called it a betrayal of nature, while statesman Cicero warned that breaking fides (trust) corrodes civic bonds.

The social cost of infidelity in literature

Literature rarely confines infidelity to the bedroom; its shockwaves fracture communities.

French sociologist Émile Durkheim’s idea of the “conscience collective” holds that shared moral norms create “social solidarity.” As literature demonstrates, violations of these norms inevitably undermines communal trust.

Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina (1875-77) dramatizes the social fracture of betrayal. Anna’s affair with Count Vronsky not only defies moral convention but destabilizes the aristocratic norms that once upheld her status.

As the scandal leads to her ostracization, Anna mourns the social world she has lost, realizing too late that “the position she enjoyed in society… was precious to her… [and] she could not be stronger than she was.”

In Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary (1857), Emma Bovary’s extramarital affairs unravel the networks of her provincial town, turning private yearning for luxury and romance into public contagion.

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter (1850) makes this explicit: Hester Prynne’s scarlet “A” turns her sin into civic theatre. Public shaming on the scaffold, the novel suggests, delineates moral boundaries and seeks to restore social order — a process that prefigures today’s “digital pillories,” where viral moments subject individuals to mass online judgment and public condemnation.

Domestic crumbs and digital scaffolds

Contemporary narratives shift the setting but uphold the same principle: betrayal devastates the mundane rituals that build trust.

Nora Ephron’s autobiographical novel Heartburn (1983), based on her own marriage’s collapse to investigative journalist Carl Bernstein, weaponizes domesticity.

Heartburn’s protagonist Rachel Samstat delivers her emotions through recipes — “Vinaigrette” as a marker of intimacy and betrayal, “Lillian Hellman’s Pot Roast” as a bid for domestic stability and “Key Lime Pie,” hurled at her cheating husband — become symbols of a life undone by public infidelity.

Ephron’s satire, later adapted into a film, anticipates our digital age of exposure, where private pain fuels public consumption and judgment.

Jenny Offill’s Dept. of Speculation (2014), which draws from her own life, shows another perspective: betrayal as quiet erosion.

Offill never depicts the affair directly; instead, the husband’s absences, silences and an off-hand reference to “someone else” create a suffocating dread. This indirection shows betrayal’s power lies in its latent potential, slowly dismantling a life built on trust before any overt act.

Both works underscore betrayal’s impact on the collective conscience: a lie fractures a family as fundamentally as a CEO’s indiscretion erodes institutional trust. Power magnifies the fallout by turning private failings into public symbols of fragility. Even hidden betrayal poisons the shared rituals binding any group, making the notion of “private” unsustainable long before any public revelation.

The limits of power

Literature acknowledges power’s protective veneer from consequence — and its limits.

Theodore Dreiser’s Trilogy of Desire (1912–47), modelled on the Gilded Age robber baron Charles Yerkes, follows the rise of financier Frank Cowperwood, whose power shields him — until it doesn’t. Even his vast empire proves vulnerable once his adultery becomes public. The very networks that protected him grow wary.

Though many critics of the elite are themselves morally compromised in the trilogy, Cowperwood’s transgression becomes a weapon to discredit him. His brief exile shows that power may defer, but cannot erase, the costs of betrayal. Once trust fractures, even the powerful become liabilities. They do not fall less often — only more conspicuously.

Gender also plays a role in shaping these narratives. Male protagonists like Cowperwood rebound as tragic anti-heroes, their moral failings recast as flaws of character. By contrast, women — think Flaubert’s Emma Bovary or Hawthorne’s Hester Prynne — are branded cautionary figures, their transgressions stigmatized rather than mythologized.

This imbalance in assigning consequences reveals a deeper societal judgment: while broken trust demands repair, the path to restoration often depends on the transgressor’s gender.

The unblinking eye

From Tolstoy’s salons to TikTok’s scroll, literature offers no refuge from betrayal’s ripple effects. When private trust visibly fractures, communal reflexes kick in.

Scarlet letters, exile or a CEO’s resignation all aim to heal the collective trust. The jumbotron, like Hester’s scaffold, is the latest instrument in this age-old theatre of exposure.

Jumbotrons. Scaffolds. Same operating system. Same shame.

The post Caught on the jumbotron: How literature helps us understand modern-day public shaming appeared first on TMU Research & Innovation Blog.

Why did Aritzia open a café inside its flagship store in Toronto? Why did Burberry pivot from fashion photography to cinematic ads that transport viewers into dreamlike sequences? And why is Simons, Canada’s remaining department store, incorporating art and interactive technologies into its retail spaces?

The answer lies in a trend known as escapist marketing. In an era marked by economic uncertainty, climate anxiety, geopolitical tensions and relentless digital fatigue, brands are turning to fantasy, storytelling and emotionally immersive design to sell products to consumers.

Escapist marketing is a strategy that creates emotionally immersive experiences to help consumers temporarily escape from reality, often through fantasy, nostalgia or idealized lifestyles. It taps into the desire for relief from stress or monotony by offering imaginative or aspirational narratives.

A video introducing ‘It’s Always Burberry Weather: London in Love,’ a series of seven films by Burberry inspired by British romantic comedies. 

Escapist marketing has been gaining traction in Canada as consumers are drawn to brands that spark imagination and emotional engagement. According to a 2024 Retail Council of Canada report, Gen Z shoppers prefer brands that offer emotional connection, purpose and creativity.

The inaugural Great Canadian Brand Index, which one of us (Eugene Y. Chan) helped develop, found that brands perceived as adventurous, honest and imaginative scored highest in overall public favourability. These are precisely the qualities expressed through fantastical storytelling.

As marketing professors and researchers, we’ve been studying how and why this approach works, and we’ve found it’s grounded in psychology.

The rise of fantasy in branding

While brands have long used aspiration in their marketing, today’s strategies feel noticeably different. The focus has shifted from luxury and exclusivity to escapism itself, and it’s becoming increasingly visible across industries.

Consider Coca-Cola’s “Real Magic” campaign, for instance, which uses AI-generated imagery to create whimsical dreamscapes. Or Apple’s recent “Mother Nature” ad, which reframes a corporate report about the brand’s support of environmental and social issues as a high-concept film starring Octavia Spencer.

Apple’s ‘Mother Nature’ ad.

In London, Gucci’s “Gucci Cosmos” series invites visitors into a surreal world of time travel and design history.

These marketing campaigns are all designed to be emotional experiences for consumers. This means that the emotional reactions consumers have during interactions with a brand, product or service influence their attitudes, memories and future decision-making. These emotions deepen engagement and strengthen brand loyalty.

As consumers continue to feel burned out and overstimulated, fantasy in the form of escapism offers them mental relief. Research shows that immersive experiences — whether through entertainment, retail environments or brand storytelling — can distract from stressors and promote emotional recovery. By providing a temporary break from reality, fantasy-driven marketing taps into a deep psychological need for comfort and cognitive release.

Why it works: The psychology of escapism

To understand why escapist marketing is so effective, it helps to look at the psychology behind it.

One explanation comes from construal level theory, a framework that examines how psychological distance shapes thinking. When something feels far away in time, space or familiarity, we tend to think about it more abstractly.

Surreal or fantastical branding increases this distance, shifting consumers’ focus from immediate utility to emotional resonance, identity and imagination.

While escapist marketing is a broader strategy that aims to help consumers mentally disengage from reality, surreal or fantastical branding is one specific tactic that uses dreamlike, imaginative visuals and narratives to achieve that goal.

Not all escapist marketing is surreal, but surreal branding often serves as a powerful form of escapism by transporting consumers into an alternate world.

A video about the Gucci Cosmos exhibition celebrating over 100 years of the brand’s history. 

Our research supports this. In one study, we explored how concave visual design — where ad elements curve inward — draws viewers into the imagery, increases feelings of immersion and enhances message recall and persuasion. This is likely why dreamlike campaigns often use fluid, expansive or distorted imagery.

Another factor is anthropomorphism: the tendency to assign human traits to objects or environments. In our studies on destination branding, we found that people are more emotionally connected to places or products that seem to come alive. These findings help explain why fantastical branding resonates so strongly with consumers, particularly in times of stress.

Escapism also pairs naturally with luxury branding, where emotional desire often outweighs functional need. In a recent study with our research colleagues, we found that luxury brands were evaluated more favourably when their positioning felt abstract or elevated. Fantasy enhances this effect, allowing consumers to feel both wealthier and transported.

Escapism isn’t a free pass

There’s a fine line between meaningful escapism and empty spectacle. If a brand’s fantasy narrative feels disconnected from its action, or appears to mask unethical practices, consumers are quick to notice.

Greenwashing, AI overuse or tone-deaf advertising can easily backfire on businesses.

When consumers perceive a brand as inauthentic — whether through misleading sustainability claims, excessive reliance on AI or insensitive messaging — it can erode trust, trigger public criticism and lead to brand avoidance.

Studies show that such missteps often result in reputational damage and decreased customer loyalty, particularly among values-driven or socially aware consumers

This is where the concept of radical honesty intersects with escapism. The most effective marketing campaigns today blend creativity with transparency. They tell imaginative stories while also acknowledging real-world issues like carbon emissions, labour practices and social justice issues.

Brands like Patagonia — and Peace Collective in Canada that’s working in conjunction with McDonalds — have managed to strike this balance by combining emotionally impactful ad campaigns with commitments to ethical and sustainable practices.

Consumers want experiences that resonate

In times of economic stress and cultural fatigue, Canadians are seeking experiences that resonate with them. When done thoughtfully and grounded in psychology and authenticity, escapist marketing can respond to consumers’ desire to feel something deeper, even via something as brief as a 30-second ad.

So next time you find yourself smiling at a surreal commercial or lingering in a carefully curated retail space, understand that small moment of wonder is a strategic choice, supported by research.

But while immersive storytelling may captivate audiences, consumers are becoming more discerning about what feels authentic. The future of escapist marketing may lie in the blending of digital and physical realities. Tools like augmented and virtual reality can allow brands to create even more immersive fantasies.

Imagine ordering coffee from an AI-generated character or in a branded metaverse cafe. While it may seem futuristic and fun, many consumers feel uneasy when brands rely too heavily on artificial interactions, fearing a loss of authenticity. This tension highlights the growing divide between technological novelty and the human connection consumers still crave.

As technology evolves, so, too, will consumer expectations of emotional, imaginative engagement. The next chapter in fantasy branding may not just offer us an escape, but could redefine how we experience commerce itself.

The post Why brands are embracing fantasy: The psychology behind escapist marketing in anxious times appeared first on TMU Research & Innovation Blog.

If you’ve seen videos of people tearing into tiny toy packages online, or noticed teens obsessing over pastel-coloured figurines at the mall, you’ve probably encountered the global craze for blind box toys.

These small collectibles — usually figures of cartoonish characters — are sold in sealed packaging that hides which specific item is inside. You might get the one you want, or you might not. That uncertainty is part of the thrill.

Unlike traditional toys, these figures are marketed as collectibles. Many are part of themed series, with some designs labelled as “rare” or “secret,” appearing in as few as one in every 144 boxes. This sense of exclusivity fuels repeat purchases and has spawned a resale market where rare figures can command hundreds of dollars.

Popular among children and adults alike, blind box toys have grown into a billion-dollar industry. One of the more popular brands is Pop Mart, a Chinese toy company founded in 2010 known for its collectible designer toys sold in mystery packs.

Gen Z consumers, in particular, have embraced blind box toys both as a nostalgic pastime and as a form of legitimate collecting. The proliferation of unboxing videos on platforms like TikTok and YouTube, where creators open dozens of blind boxes on camera, has added to their appeal.

For many fans, these toys offer more than just cuteness: they also provide suspense, surprise and a rush of dopamine with every box opened. But how did this niche product become a global obsession?

From Tokyo streets to western malls

The origins of blind box toys trace back to East Asia. Capsule toy vending machines called gashapon originated in Japan in the 1960s. By the 1980s, they had become a cultural fixture. These machines dispense small toys in opaque plastic balls, with customers never quite sure which item they’ll receive.

In the early 2010s, Chinese companies like Pop Mart adapted the gashapon model for the mainstream retail space. Instead of vending machines, they began selling artist-designed vinyl toys in blind boxes at dedicated boutiques.

Pop Mart’s success helped transform the blind box into a mainstream commercial phenomenon. Characters like Molly, Skullpanda and Dimoo became instant hits, combining Japanese kawaii esthetics with western pop art sensibilities.

Pop Mart figures have since developed a cult-like following. Many consumers treat the toys as affordable art objects, displayed in cabinets, on purses or traded online.

Today, blind box retail stores have expanded globally from Asia to Europe and North America. In October 2024, Pop Mart opened its first store in the Midwestern United States, located on Chicago’s Magnificent Mile at The Shops at North Bridge. The store offers exclusive products and taps into the growing demand for collectibles among American consumers.

The psychology behind the mystery

What makes blind box toys so hard to resist?

Their success relies on a psychological principle known as variable-ratio reinforcement — the same reward pattern that makes slot machines so addictive.

You never know exactly when you’ll score the item you’re after, but the possibility that the next box might contain it keeps people coming back. This unpredictability keeps people engaged, especially when the potential reward is framed as rare or valuable.

Cconsumer psychology research also suggests that anticipation plays a major role. Studies show that dopamine, the brain’s reward chemical, spikes not just when we get what we want, but when we anticipate it. The sealed packaging, the suspense of unwrapping and the hope for a rare figure all heighten this effect.

For younger collectors, the excitement of “the chase” can foster compulsive buying habits. This effect is amplified by the social influence of watching unboxings online or seeing friends complete their sets, and it becomes a powerful loop.

Even when buyers don’t get the figure they want, the sunk cost fallacy — the feeling that they’ve already invested too much time or money to walk away — keeps them buying more.

The hidden costs of blind boxes

As blind box toys surge in popularity, they have drawn criticism from consumer advocates, psychologists and environmentalists alike.

Some worry that blind boxes normalize gambling-like behaviours, especially among children. The randomness, excitement and promise of rare rewards closely mirror the mechanisms behind loot boxes in video games — another product that has sparked global concern over youth exposure to gambling psychology.

Several countries, including Belgium and the Netherlands, have regulated loot boxes under gambling laws. Blind boxes, though currently unregulated, may be next in line for scrutiny.

There are also environmental concerns. Many blind box toys come in excessive packaging — plastic wraps, foil bags, cardboard boxes — most of which is discarded immediately. The collectibles themselves are often made of non-recyclable plastics, raising questions about sustainability in an era of rising consumer awareness over waste.

Even among adult fans, some critics question whether blind boxes are designed less to bring joy and more to trigger compulsive consumption. The joy of collecting, they argue, is increasingly overshadowed by the mechanics of engineered desire.

What should we make of the blind box boom?

Blind box toys are not inherently harmful, and for many, they’re a source of fun, nostalgia and self-expression. They also offer an accessible way for consumers to engage with designer art in a collectible, miniature form, as many of them are created by individual artists.

But blind box toys also raise deeper questions about how modern marketing leverages psychological triggers associated with gambling, especially when it comes to children.

As these toys continue to gain traction in the West, it’s worth asking more critical questions, like: are we buying into mystery or are we being sold obsession and compulsion?

The blind box trend reflects broader shifts in how products are marketed, how value is perceived and how consumer behaviour is shaped in a digital, attention-driven economy. Understanding the forces at play may be the first step toward more informed — and perhaps more mindful — collecting.

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