Danksgiving is the new Friendsgiving; America’s World Cup hopes depend on Gen Z; Taylor Swift made a historic run at last night’s American Music Awards; and “I joined Mastodon and all it took was my sanity and self-esteem.”
LEG BOOTY? PANORAMIC? SEGGS? HOW TIKTOK IS CHANGING LANGUAGE, nyt
As creators try to get around algorithms and strict content moderation, they’re both making up works (like “unalive” for “dead” or “kill”) and creating novel spellings — le$bian with a dollar sign, for example, which TikTok’s text-to-speech feature pronounces “le dollar bean.”
BOOKTOK’S RACIAL BIAS, thecut
“I can’t really think of a single book that’s blown up on BookTok that wasn’t written by a white person,” says Leah Koch, owner of the Los Angeles–based independent bookstore the Ripped Bodice. Koch says she’s noticed that Gen Z cares the least about racially diversifying their reading.
TRAD-WIFE WELLNESS INFLUENCERS ARE TRYING TO TAKE DOWN BIRTH CONTROL, jezebel
Fertility awareness methods, or “FAM,” have increasingly become a trendy TikTok challenge akin to bleaching your eyebrows, premised on the supposed danger of birth control.
LUXURY GOODS BOOM IN BRITAIN AS SUPER-RICH YOUNGSTERS BUCK THE RECESSION, theguardian
Swiss watches, Louis Vuitton trainers, rare Birkin bags and 81-year-old whiskies are among the products that the “young, rich and mortgage-free” are buying.
WHEN KIDS EXCLUDE PEERS FROM GROUP CHATS AND TEXTS, IS IT BULLYING?, wsj
The thing about teens is that they are always going to find new ways to make their classmates feel like shit!
[16-year-old] Joseph says being excluded took a toll on his self-esteem. He says he knows that he can be socially awkward, even nerdy, and that other kids his age are better at communicating online. “People would tell me I was a dry texter, that I would seem uninterested when I texted,” he says.
One last thought: