

Discover more from After School by Casey Lewis
Taylor Swift will allegedly be on the “Barbie” soundtrack (feels right); 2023 is the year of anti-nihilism; and why being cringe is the coolest thing you can do in the new year.
GOOGLE AND META’S ADVERTISING DOMINANCE FADES AS TIKTOK, STREAMERS EMERGE, wsj
Though the global ad slowdown will inevitably hurt Google and Meta, TikTok — whose “command of the U.S. digital-ad market more than doubled in 2022, thanks to its nearly 100 million U.S. monthly active users, the virality of the platform and its hold over Gen Z, millennials, and influencers” — will likely get more ad money than ever.
THE INSTAGRAM REELS GOLD RUSH, new yorker
A dark deep-dive into Instagram’s quantity-over-quality reels play: By mass-producing face-filter videos, aspiring creators who had previously struggled to find an audience on Instagram saw their accounts balloon to hundreds of thousands of followers and their videos reach hundreds of millions per month.
AMAZON AND ADOBE AMONG BRANDS INFLUENCERS LIKE WORKING WITH MOST
A report from influencer platform F*** You Pay Me finds that Adobe, Amazon, and Samsung are creators’ favorite brands to work with. Among the worst: Fashion Nova and a bunch of brands I’d never heard of, including MVMT, VIVAIA, GOLI Nutrition, and NAKD.
BRITISH DRINKING CULTURE, MEET COST OF LIVING CRISIS, vice
In the words of Becca, 23: “If I’m honest I just tap my card. If it’s £40 for a Pornstar, I’m like ‘OK!’” (A “Pornstar” — I had to look it up — is a martini made with vanilla vodka, fresh passion fruit, passion fruit liqueur, and lime juice, usually served with a shot of Champagne.)
FANS SEARCH FOR COVETED FILM MERCH—FIVE DECADES AFTER A MOVIE’S RELEASE, wsj
The demand for bootleg merchandise is up, not only because the vintage T-shirt market has priced out the casual fan, but also because dupes are cool now.
There was a time when wearing a knockoff was considered déclassé or disingenuous. But, in recent years, a reappraisal has occurred: in some cases bootlegs are seen as cooler than originals. Credit Gucci partnering with Harlem’s original knockoff king Dapper Dan, or Virgil Abloh’s design ethos of taking an original object and minutely tweaking it to make something entirely new.
One last thought: