DinerDrip and Masstige

after school weekend edition

Welcome back to After School ✨weekend edition✨. Think of the daily letter as the CliffsNotes; this is the extended version for paid subscribers.

Yesterday while walking my dog, I found myself behind two high school girls who were wearing tiny baby tees and baggy, low-rise, faded jeans that bunched at their ankles. They were wearing chokers and had patch-covered backpacks slung over their shoulders. I felt like I was watching a fashion spread from a 1999 issue of Seventeen play out in front of my eyes. I looked down at my jeans — not baggy, not low-rise, not faded — and I’ve never felt older than I did at that very moment.

Tess Malone @temalone

You can differentiate between Gen Z and millennials based on how tight people’s jeans are.

Speaking of Seventeen, I listened to a podcast with the magazine’s former EIC Atoosa Rubenstein (who I am extremely lucky to know IRL and who is reading this right — hi Atoosa!), and it’s been replaying in my mind all week.

Atoosa is talking about TikTok and the state of media, and she says, “We're using it as an anesthetic right now…Perhaps the more we get comfortable with what's actually happening in our lives, the less we want to look at videos of” — and I’m paraphrasing here — cute young girls dancing. (While TikTok has long shed its reputation as an app full of cute young girls dancing, there’s still a lot of cute young girls dancing on the app!) She continues:

“To me that just looks like Pirate’s Booty. How do we shift from eating so much Pirate’s Booty to sushi? That's what we're trying to figure out; what the next big thing is. What is the next sushi? For traditional media companies, like the one I worked for, it was their birthright to figure this out. They really dropped the ball, so now they're just content farmers. They've let these young enterprising people really make social media their own, which I think is wonderful. I do think it's Pirate's Booty though. What does the sushi look like? I think that's the TBD.

What does the sushi look like? The whole interview is worth a listen, but this particular bit is about an hour in if you want to hear it.

Alright! Today we’re talking about:

• Masstige

• Caesar salad martinis

• Lipstick index

• Amex status

• The businesswoman special

• The Torah teacher aesthetic

• The Reva’s return

• Raspberry Ralley

• Ravewear booms

• DinerDrip

• Reverse cord cutting

• “Advanced innovative patented scent technology”

And so much more. Hope you enjoy and, as always, ty for reading!

Nick Morrow @NRMorrow

I love saying “ty!” for thank you! It’s so cute! This is how I feel when I type it!