Glitch Gothic and Prom Optimism
monday long read
Welcome back to After School Monday Edition, a not-so-brief trends debrief for paid subscribers. 🫶
In today’s letter:
Prom 2026, by the numbers
Group project theory
47 hobbies, zero boyfriends
Dancing is back
Track shorts summer
The '90s block heel returns
Two twentysomething tech founders are luring Gen Zers to a small town in Texas
Young people are talking less than ever
Starbucks tweens save the quarter
“It’s trendy to like food again”
Animal print bags as an antidote to quiet luxury
Skin tint searches up 50%
And so much more, plus everything I’m buying, reading, and listening to. But first, my favorite TikTok of the week:
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I spent the last week watching thousands of prom TikToks.
There are so many downer headlines about this generation — manosphere radicalization, the loneliness epidemic, screen-time doom, AI panic, and on and on — but I came away feeling unexpectedly optimistic about the future. They all seem so happy! Obviously, it’s just one night, and it’s a big night, but the amount of joy and pride everyone continues to put into this time-tested rite of passage is extremely reassuring. They just look like regular ol’ teens, you know? Very gussied-up teens who know how to expertly apply contour makeup, but still: just regular ol’ teens!
While watching these TikToks, I scribbled down any trends or signals that surfaced; I also asked my friend Megan Duong, the founder of the social listening tool Plot, what she was seeing across platforms, and she pulled some data for me.
Prom is an even bigger deal now than it was twenty years ago because of the social media multiplier. Some kids post dozens of TikToks around prom night — GRWMs, multiple before-and-after transitions, after-prom recaps — and they all go viral, often from accounts that barely post the rest of the year. Outfit reveals were the #1 content format by volume, according to Plot’s data — confirmed by my own media consumption — with GRWMs second and shopping hauls third.
There's always been pressure to find the perfect prom dress, but these days, you're no longer just being judged by your classmates. A theoretical audience of millions might weigh in — best case, “omg who makes this dress????” or worst case, “you wore THAT to prom?” Transition content — a pre-glam clip spliced with the full reveal — performs so well on TikTok that girls are now putting effort into the “before” outfit, too, often in matching PJ sets perfectly coordinated to the dress.
Out of 1,030 prom posts that Megan analyzed, exactly one was explicitly anti-prom. Ambivalence showed up in a handful, but it was almost entirely logistical (”too much work for one night”). Cost came up in 21% of posts: 52% aspirational (”worth every penny”), 38% proudly budget-conscious, and only 10% resentful of the price tag. Anecdotally, it certainly didn’t appear to me that young consumers (or their parents) were cutting back on the prom budget this year.