Beast Mode and Young Janeites
hooked on phonics
GloRilla is the new face of Fenty; the Buffy The Vampire Slayer reboot is officially happening; Julia Fox says she’s writing film scripts for the “youth” who “want fresh content” and not “reboots” (sorry to Buffy); and Nicole Kidman’s daughter Sunday Rose is in Miu Miu’s spring campaign.
GEN Z WAS NOT BUILT FOR AMAZON’S BRUTAL ‘BEAST GAMES’, hollywoodreporter
MrBeast’s game show averages only 13% on Rotten Tomatoes, with reviewers calling it “a sad reflection of our modern times,” “one of the most undignified spectacles ever shown on TV,” and “a deafening, joyless cash dash” that “exists solely to show us the worst of the human condition.” But if you’re able to make it through the series, what emerges is a fascinating glimpse of generational differences, exposing the ideological gulf between Gen X’s ruthless pragmatism and Gen Z’s fragile idealism.
…Beast Games is a bit distressing in terms of what it says about America right now. Yes, there are always differences between generations, we all know that. But while the media relentlessly focuses on the political divide between Left vs. Right, the social experiments in Beast Games suggest there are perhaps even bigger ideological gulfs between older generations which were famously neglected and younger generations which were famously sheltered.
WHAT'S THE NEXT 'BEAST GAMES'? STREAMING SERVICES AND TV STUDIOS HUNT FOR MORE CREATOR-LED SHOWS, businessinsider
Following the success (however controversial!) of MrBeast’s streaming debut, Hollywood is now looking to social media creators for unscripted content. Netflix, in particular, has been mining YouTube for talent: "I do find that the short-form services also are a great breeding ground for new storytellers," co-CEO Ted Sarandos said on the company's fourth-quarter earnings call. They recently aired a Jake Paul-Mike Tyson fight that saw 65 million households tune in.
DUB IS THE COPY TRADING APP THAT HAS TEENS TALKING, techcrunch
A fintech startup founded by 23-year-old Harvard dropout Steven Wang is positioning itself as the “TikTok of investing.” The startup raised $17 million in seed funding and surpassed 800,000 downloads, and while Wang says the platform’s average user is “between 30 and 35,” they’ve drawn the attention of a much younger audience: As Techcrunch’s Connie Loizos writes, “This editor’s 15-year-old has asked more than once about ‘investing like Nancy Pelosi’ after marinating in Dub ads on Instagram.” Pelosi herself isn’t on Dub, but a trader mirroring her disclosed moves is. “Nancy Pelosi is up 123% on Dub with real capital,” says Wang, “and we’ve made our customers millions of dollars since that portfolio was launched on the platform.”
MEET THE YOUNG WOMEN OBSESSED WITH JANE AUSTEN, cosmopolitan
First Bridget Jones, now Elizabeth Bennet? A new generation of Jane Austen fans — or Janeites, as they call themselves — have propelled the author back into the zeitgeist more than 200 years after her first book was published. “Fan edits of Austen adaptations, particularly those of the 2005 Pride and Prejudice movie, are everywhere on TikTok, with Mr Darcy’s hand flex having its own viral moment in 2020,” they write. “Fable, a book app favoured by Gen-Z, is filled with Jane Austen book clubs, and IRL, the Meetup app has many events listed for people who want to convene and discuss her work.”
HOW A TIKTOK CODE WORD IS EXPOSING THE LIMITS OF ONLINE ORGANIZING, rollingstone
The TikTok trend “cute winter boots,” originally algospeak for warning about ICE raids, has devolved into performative activism at best and a cynical engagement hack at worst. While the phrase may be driving more views to political content, its virality comes from trend-chasing rather than any real success in evading TikTok’s alleged censorship.
P.S. I got a bunch of emails, texts, and DMs, mostly from educators and parents, about phonics and the “science of reading” after linking to this story in the WSJ yesterday. (I also got many, many recommendations for the podcast “Sold a Story,” created by reporter Emily Hanford, which covers this issue.) I’m ashamed to admit I didn’t realize we were in the midst of what experts call “The Reading Wars” — and this isn’t even new! The Atlantic wrote about it back in 1997, around the time I was learning to read. Apologies for my naivety. From what I’ve read and learned about phonics versus context in the last 24 hours, all of this is very nuanced. (We really do not pay teachers enough!) If you, like me, were completely unaware of all of this, I appreciated one reader’s very concise explanation:
It looks like you haven't heard about the whole change in teaching kids to read -- sounding out words instead of guessing based on pictures. When I was in school 30 years ago, we used phonics. But at some point, a lot of schools switched. Now they're finally starting to switch back to phonics. Ignore this if you're already aware, but it's really shocking. It sounds like middle class parents were hiring tutors en masse to teach phonics privately and all the other kids just weren't learning to read.
One last thought:
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Yay for an evidence-based approach to reading and thank you for those links!