Forbes Curses and Facebook Nexdoorification
plus: the after school debate club recap
More than 100 people came to the 14th Street Y a week and a half ago for The After School Debate Club. Another 200 tuned in to the livestream. There was a marching band. There were cheerleaders! It was so much fun.
Over the last few years, I’ve watched in awe — and with a little jealousy — as fellow Substackers have hosted happy hours and parties for their subscribers. The jealousy isn’t because they’re in a position to throw get-togethers for their communities; it’s that they are not hamstrung by the kind of social anxiety that makes hosting any sort of public gathering unimaginable.
My anxiety is pretty much entirely under control until you put me in front of a crowd of people. You can still put me in front of a crowd of people — eventually, my voice and my knees stop shaking — but it takes a little time. I’m a writer. I’d rather be behind a computer screen. But the brief discomfort was worth it to meet so many extremely cool people who read this newsletter — I felt (and feel!) extremely lucky — and besides, the crowd wasn’t just there for me.
They were there to see internet favorites like Adam Faze, Joe Hollier, Kareem Rahma, Nolita Dirtbag, JP Brammer, and Randa Sakallah debate hot-button topics like, “Will you create a federal pregnancy monitoring agency?” and “Is climate change real?” Oh, wait, no that was the vice-presentational debate last week.
The hot-button topics were: “Is screentime a gift or a curse?” (The crowd consensus was “a curse,” though I vehemently disagree!); “Are dating apps actually good?” (Crowd consensus: No. Hell no.); and “What’s better (or the lesser of two evils, at the very least): Zyn or cigarettes?” (Crowd consensus: Cigarettes, obviously.)
Thank you to the debaters for being so game, thank you to the Substack team, especially
, , and Henry Firestone, for planning an incredible event (Sophia, I think the canned wine was a hit!), and thank you to Day One Agency for being brilliant creative partners — and for this beautiful sizzle reel! ❤️🔥A quick note on my outfit: I grew up wishing, desperately, that I wore a school uniform, and as this event was coming together — school theme, debate club, cheerleaders, marching band — I knew exactly what I would wear: This was my moment to dress up in a school uniform, or at least an approximation of it.
Last year when the Rowing Blazers x Target collaboration dropped, I very quickly fell in love with this skirt…though not before it sold out nationwide. I mentioned this personal heartbreak in my newsletter, and the Target team generously tracked one down in my size and sent it to me. I love it so much, and I’ve worn it a bunch, but never to an event this thematically ideal.
In early August, long before this event took shape, I decided I was going to be a loafer girl this fall. I’ve always loved ballet flats and will continue to, but there’s just something about a loafer.
So when Loeffler Randall reached out offering to send me a pair of shoes for fall, I did not have to think twice: I wanted these. They are stunning and so well made, and they make me feel like a bratty Catholic schoolgirl, which is all I ever want to feel like.
If you get them, I suggest breaking them in before wearing them to an event that requires you to be on your feet for five hours. Not only am I grinning through my anxiety, but I’m also grinning through the blisters. Or just wear them with socks, as the Gen Zers do!
Kamala Harris is on the newest episode of Call Her Daddy (Alex Cooper invited Trump, too); Ella Emhoff just dropped a sock collab; and the TikTok girls are going to go crazy for this Gap x Cult Gaia capsule collection.
FACEBOOK LAUNCHES A GEN Z-FOCUSED REDESIGN, techcrunch
The social media platform announced a series of changes to attract younger users — like a new “Explore” tab meant to compete with TikTok’s FYP — at a Facebook IRL pop-up event in Austin over the weekend, which I suspect was timed to coincide with ACL. Facebook is leaning into its Marketplace success — a favorite among young people — with more local features, though I don’t think NextDoor-ifying Facebook will get Gen Z interested. According to data from the Pew Research Center only 33% of U.S. teens are now on Facebook as of last year, down from 71% of teens in 2014.
DATING APP CHALLENGERS: THE NEW SUITORS COURTING GEN Z, adweek
As legacy dating apps like Tinder and Bumble struggle to turn things around, a wave of new entrants are targeting Gen Z and millennial users with promises to help solve toxic dating behaviors or facilitate alternative relationship models. Of the four mentioned by Adweek — Feeld, Better In Person, Archer, and After — that last one, female-founded and designed to eradicate ghosting, seems the most promising to me.
After’s debut campaign explicitly speaks to Gen Z singles who are grappling with dating app fatigue. The brand created the Crush Cache Clear Out Challenge on social media, paying people to clear their phones of past dating app contacts to make room for more memorable ones.
HOW A SOCIAL SHOPPING STARTUP IS GAINING GROUND, theinformation
For years, LTK, the influencer platform formerly known as rewardStyle, dominated the affiliate marketing space. But ShopMy, a four-year-old platform that’s on track for roughly $20 million in revenue in 2024, has emerged as a challenger, luring more than 75,000 creators, including Alix Earle and Paige DeSorbo, and nearly 50,000 brands, like Shopbop, Net-a-porter, and Nike. My understanding from conversations with people in the space is that ShopMy is much friendlier to brands, and where the brand dollars go, so, too, do the influencers.
TEEN BOYS HAVE ELABORATE SKIN-CARE ROUTINES, TOO, thecut
Henry, a 14-year-old from Brooklyn, cleanses his face with a Skinceuticals Simply Clean Gel, a $39 cleanser. “I learned on TikTok it’s important to wash your face, especially if you’re an athlete,” he said. He is not alone: The market research firm Mintel recently found that today nearly 70 percent of Gen Z men aged 18 to 27 use skin-care products, compared to just half of all American men.
KIDS’ POLITICAL CONCERNS ARE SURPRISINGLY GROWNUP, vox
When Shari Conditt, who teaches 11th and 12th graders in Washington state, surveyed her students on key issues, “border control,” “abortion rights,” “affordable health care,” and both “gun restrictions” and “gun rights” came up the most. Climate change did not come up at all.
CURSE OF THE FORBES 30 UNDER 30!, airmail
Forbes editors select 30 winners in 20 categories, and the list has been going for 13 years, so some napkin math suggests there have been more than 7,000 30 Under 30 honorees, making Airmail’s comparatively brief list of 26 ”members of the club” who have been “accused of fraud, theft, or sexual abuse and are jailed, canceled, or mocked” not too bad, really.
One last thought:
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