Barbie Montages and Ikea Monkeys

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Taylor Swift fans cause a 2.3-magnitude earthquake at her Seattle show; Greta Thunberg used a viral Barbie trend to protest a new oil and gas field; and on the heels of the Greta Gerwig film’s success, Lena Dunham is directing a Polly Pocket film adaptation starring Lily Collins.

GEN Z LOVES CLOTHING HAULS AND HATES LANDFILLS. ENTER THE STYLE BUNDLE., wapo
Amid a trend cycle in hyperdrive thanks to TikTok, aspiring personal stylists have found a niche selling “style bundles” — curated collections of secondhand clothing that clients could request via direct message — giving “eco-conscious Gen Z customers the thrill of a shopping spree without the guilt of a Zara haul.” Stitch Fix but…sustainable. On TikTok, #stylebundle has 189.4M views.

BARBIE REAL-WOMEN MONTAGE INSPIRES TIKTOK TREND ON GIRLHOOD, vulture
One specific scene from the movie, a video montage of women in different stages of life set to Billie Eilish's song "What Was I Made For?,” is going viral on TikTok. The trend now includes more than 147,000 videos using the sound, with TikTokers sharing their own nostalgic montages, often captioning them “Girlhood.”

GEN Z IS CHOOSING STUFFED IKEA MONKEYS INSTEAD OF HAVING CHILDREN, radiico
Even though China’s experiencing its first population decline in six decades, parenting tips are rampant among young people on the Instagram-like app Xiaohongshu. Except the ‘babies’ in question are $19.99 stuffed monkeys from IKEA. Since the monkey began trending in June, the related hashtag has garnered over 11 million views.

HOW MILLENNIALS AND GEN Z ARE BEHIND THE SEX PARTY BOOM, metro.co.uk
Young people are “eschewing the traditional dating scene in favour of a rapidly growing alternative way to meet people – sex parties.” Feeld, an app that has been credited with “single handedly firing up London’s sex party scene,” experienced ‘triple digit growth’ between 2020 and 2022, and now makes around 700,000 connections each month.

MOCKTAILS AND SOBER BARS: THE GEN Z FUELED DECLINE OF ALCOHOL, axios
The mocktail is seemingly everywhere this summer. These days, every trendy bar menu has a no-alc section, and on TikTok, #mocktails have nearly 9M views. Total dollar sales of nonalcoholic drinks reached $395 million from August 2021 to August 2022, and the industry is expected to grow to $30 billion by 2025 — largely driven by interest among young consumers.

META'S REELS REVENUE NARROWS IN ON TIKTOK, BOOSTED BY AI, reuters
Reels videos are now viewed over 200 billion times per day on Facebook and Instagram, up from 140 billion last fall, and the annual revenue run rate of Reels alone has jumped to $10 billion, making it comparable in size to TikTok's business. As Meta continues to invest in artificial intelligence to improve content recommendations and ads, Reels will likely only get better.

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