🥤We still don’t know what consent is

👋 Good morning. It pains us to report that AI may have fully taken over. We spoke to five researchers for Main Squeeze today, and one person was running so many tools at once we needed a lie-down. Anyway, what happened on the internet this week?

Let's get into it.

In this edition: This week in culture, 5 researchers discuss using AI in their work, New Music Friday, and more.

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Phrase of the week

August break

🗞️ THIS WEEK IN CULTURE

🎵 MUSIC

Tems served as the curator and executive producer of the Children of Blood and Bone soundtrack, bringing together fellow Nigerian music stars, FireboyDML, BNXN, Ayra Starr and Burna Boy on the project. Watch the trailer here.

👟 FASHION

Nigeria Fashion Week has unveiled the dates for its 2026 edition, taking place in Abuja from October 2 to 4 under the theme, Beyond the Runway: Fashion and Culture at the Heart of the Green & Blue Economy. With Lagos Fashion Week following from October 28 to November 1, we are gradually approaching fashion szn.

📈 BUSINESS

Three months after FoodCourt shut down, GoLemon Grocery has followed suit. During their operations, they completed over ₦2 billion worth of deliveries for 40,000+ customers. We’re sad to see them go.

📽️ FILM

Call of My Life is now the highest-grossing Nollywood release of 2026, earning ₦817.6 million at the box office, a remarkable pivot from its ₦78 million opening. Turns out, Nigerians do love romance.

⚡TRENDING

Following backlash from Nigerians after Tyla announced her decision to extend her tour to Lagos, the tour dates have been updated, removing Lagos from her itinerary. The debate was whether the timing was right for a South African artist to perform in the country following the xenophobic attacks.

MAIN SQUEEZE

5 researchers discuss using AI in their work

This week, conversations arose around the use of AI and how the summarized results AI provides ruin the search engine experience and defeat the purpose of research. As usual, people had different opinions about this.

We were curious about whether these tools are truly helping human discovery, so we spoke with five research professionals. They shared how they use AI in their respective fields, the specific tools they use, as well as the pros and cons they've encountered along the way.

Paula, Content and Marketing Specialist

AI has made research a lot easier and faster. It is now a huge part of my day-to-day workflow. 

For research and content, I use ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, NotebookLM, and Google AI Studio. For SEO, I also use RyRob for blog topic ideas and AIPRM to speed up prompts and workflows. For social media research, I use TrendsRadar, Viralfindr, TikTokalyzer, Sandcastles.ai, Sortfeed, and Google News to spot trends early. For email marketing, I use Friday AI to draft emails quickly, then edit them to sound like me. I also use Milled to study campaigns from top brands.

Despite its speed being a key advantage, I think one downside is that it doesn't always allow you to develop your own opinion naturally. AI summarizes everything for you, which is helpful, but it can also make you skip that thinking process.

Another concern is that you might miss really valuable sources. AI usually surfaces the most visible content. It also makes it easier for people to create lots of content without actually understanding the topic. 

Bimbo, Data Engineer

Research is so much faster now with AI, instead of having to manually read articles and documentation that would take days, I can get the exact information I need with very few prompts.

For writing code, I use Codex, while ChatGPT works for planning and research. 

The con of getting the answer fast means a lot of foundational knowledge needed to truly understand a new tool or process is being skipped. Guarding against errors is a personal responsibility. I take the aggregated information from AI, but I still read the documentation and take a short course where possible just to have an independent understanding.

Opeyemi, Psychologist

In my field, which is counselling psychology, we deal with human interactions, so AI can't solely be relied on for my scope of work. However, it helps to collate, document, and fast-track information and data.

The workload is often reduced. I use Consensus, Claude, Gemini, and ChatGPT to gather data and get references. Still, the heavy workload falls on me; that's just what my fieldwork demands.  

An advantage is the gathering of vast information and citations in a short time. The major disadvantage of AI in research is that it makes people lazy and affects the quality of data. It affects critical thinking, as such a high level of reliance tampers with actual results. The results derived either get exaggerated or worsened. 

To verify AI findings, I return to the field to make physical observations. AI is good, but relying solely on it is too shallow and dangerous for accurate research work. 

Ewaoluwa,  Freelance Writer 

AI has been useful for research as a writer, contrary to the negative opinions. It helps to dot the I’s and cross the T’s. I use Claude because it is well-optimized, and I know other writers who stand by this.

I use it to fact-check, edit, and draft outlines. It really just depends on the prompts and you doing all the work to verify. The result is always as detailed as the effort put into the prompts. 

AI’s advantages include greater reach and shorter work time. It saves time, and time is money. The issue with it is that as much as it is helpful, AI is just a tool and still prone to flaws. As long as you know that, you can work better with it. The greatest danger is freelancers’ overdependence on AI. I'm not against dependency, but do due diligence. 

Busayo, Cybersecurity Analyst

AI is transforming research by automating repetitive tasks. In my workflow, it helps me quickly scan large volumes of information, identify relevant sources, and generate first drafts of reports or analyses. 

A lot of the security solutions I use have generative and agentic AI tools embedded in them. Another one is the Copilot AI tool in Microsoft. It helps to run and implement formulas in Excel sheets for people who work in corporate. I think that's really cool.

The greatest advantage is speed and scale. AI can process and synthesize information across thousands of sources in minutes, which would naturally take me weeks. I think the biggest danger is over‑reliance.

AI can produce plausible but inaccurate or biased outputs; it only works with the information that has been fed to it, and that can be dangerous, especially when you're working with a bigger context.

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🔪 THE PEEL

We still don’t know what consent is

The Discourse

When it comes to consent, it’s almost always like we are one step ahead and ten steps back. Recently, the University of Lagos’ Student Affairs Division released a banner containing “counseling tips for ladies”. The pointers included advice like “don’t shake hands with men,” “don’t mingle carelessly with men,” “don’t dress to kill,” etc.

Across all eight pointers, the word consent never appeared once. That was quite a disappointing banner for such a revered institution.. Instead of addressing violators of boundaries, they focused entirely on what women should or shouldn't do to avoid becoming victims.

Around the same time, a tweet of a man asking if a man could still perform his sexual marital duties if his wife was in a coma blew up. How can someone unconscious possibly consent to sex? We frequently say we know what consent means, but as a society, how many truly do?

Peeling it back

According to Merriam-Webster, consent means to agree to do or allow something: to give permission for something to happen or be done. It is a voluntary act. While the meaning sounds straightforward enough, respecting consent seems to be hard for some to practice. 

Oftentimes, we think consent only has to do with sex, but it is far beyond that. It applies to personal space, physical touch, relationships, and every interaction where another person’s boundaries are involved.

We’ve heard and seen instances when strangers touch people in crowded markets and react with comments like “Are you that fine?” “My wife fine pass you,” and some even go as far as calling you a prostitute when confronted.

We see it when someone’s pictures or videos are taken without their permission and pasted across the internet for laughs. We hear about women being harassed in buses, at outings, in their homes by strangers or even by known people. 

Even conversations around women in professional spaces depict these mindsets. A few days ago, a Twitter user complained about an argument with his female boss, and somehow concluded that he could see them “sleeping together” soon. When challenged, he even doubled down. 

The disregard for consent occurs everywhere. Midway through this month, the body of a POS operator was reportedly found raped and dumped in a river in Sangotedo, Ajah. A criminal with no ounce of regard for consent did that. These incidents are far apart, yet they all stem from failure to recognize consent.

Another layer

The consequences that come with this are far greater than often spoken of. We see people say their social experiences have at times been ruined by the lack of respect for boundaries. Isolation begins, and people start to shrink themselves. 

We begin to think twice before going for walks, going to events, or even engaging in harmless interactions. We become hyper aware of what we wear, what we do, and who is watching.

We get scared of being the next viral meme or object of ridicule. Another bothersome part is how these behaviors are excused. The “boys will always be boys” narratives have survived for way too long and normalized persistence after rejection. 

The UNILAG banner has also, in a way, contributed to this thinking. Rather than emphasizing that people should not harass, assault, or violate others, it fully focuses on telling women what to do or not do.

If a room full of learned adults can come together to draft guidance that limits behaviors instead of enforcing respect for consent, it tells us the deeper problems we have as a society. What all these do is enable breach of boundaries, rape, hurt, and even possibly death.

The Core

Consent should be a baseline rule. Yes. Just like reading, writing, and learning basic manners, consent should be taught at the grassroots level and right from an early age.  A little “Can I?”, “Should I?”, “May I?” goes a long way.

More importantly, not only should asking for consent be taught, but it should also be strictly adhered to. No should remain no without cajoling, persuasion, or force. 

Until we stop treating consent as a women’s issue and instead as a societal responsibility, we’ll continue taking one step ahead and ten steps back.

🎵 PRESSED BY THE JUICE

Music is food for the soul, and we should renew that food. You can get your weekly renewal from us with jams fresh out of the oven. This week, we have spoken words from Wanawana, and new performances from Moelogo, Lodù, Davido, and Odeal. 

We update every Friday! Save, share, and follow our Pressed by Juice playlists on Spotify.

Do you have a song you’d like us to include? Put us on, reply here.

POLL OF THE WEEK

August Break means a short mid-summer dry spell or a temporary pause in heavy rainfall that occurs during the rainy season in West Africa.