

Discover more from After School by Casey Lewis
Cuffing season is dead; “infla-dating” is making cheap dates trendy; Harry Styles stars in his own Gucci HA HA HA campaign; and this weekend, shoppers waited four hours to get into the new Williamsburg location of Glossier (about as much time as it took the average runner to complete the NYC marathon, fwiw).
MIDTERMS ARE TRENDING ON TIKTOK. NO, NOT THOSE MIDTERMS., nbcnews
”Treadwell said she has not seen any videos about the midterm elections but did make her own video about studying for her chemistry midterm. That video has close to 1 million views.”
THE INTERNET IS FULL OF PREDATORS. OMEGLE LETS YOU MEET THEM., motherjones
Like Chatroulette, Omegle is a website that pairs users at random for one-on-one video chats. Their tagline: “The internet is full of cool people. Omegle lets you meet them.” Unfortunately, as Mother Jones tells it, the “most regular and popular use” for the “cool people” on Omegle “is for live sexual activity, such as online masturbation.” And all too often, “cool people” are kids.
HOW DOES TIKTOK’S UNCANNY ALGORITHM DECIDE WHAT YOU SEE? WE TESTED IT ON THREE PEOPLE, theguardian
The Guardian launched a (micro, admittedly, yet still quite telling) experiment that aims to decode the mysterious TikTok algo; it doesn’t achieve that, really, but it’s a fascinating look inside of the app nonetheless.
…Then there were a lot of videos that felt designed to provoke an emotional reaction. Videos that made me think of the old New York Post idiom – that every headline was designed to appeal to one of two emotions: fear or anger.
FAST-FASHION UPSTARTS ARE USING SHEIN’S OWN STRATEGIES AGAINST IT, bloomberg
E-com heavyweight Pinduoduo — which has an annual active user base of 880 million and controls roughly 13% of Chinese online retail — recently launched Temu, a Shein dupe that’s already climbing the ranks in the U.S. Apple Store.
GENERATION ALPHA IS COMING. THEIR TOP CAREER CHOICES MAY SURPRISE YOU, fastco
Dumb headline, but a good insight or two here: 26.2% of Gen Alphas — according to a survey of 1,000 five- to eight-year-olds — want to be a doctor, nurse, or healthcare professional, 16.5% want to be teachers, and 12% want to be creators (specifically, “TikToker/YouTuber/Vlogger”).
One last thought: