Labubu Futures and Network Panic

“i don’t care how much it costs, but i do not want it to look like it cost a lot”

Nov 21, 2025

Emma Corrin and Hunter Schafer are starring in an A24 horror movie; Rachel Sennot’s hit series I Love LA is renewed for a second season; and see Emerald Fennell’s new edition of Wuthering Heights (it’s certainly something!).

GEN Z IS HUGE. THEIR TV SHOWS ARE TINY. AND HOLLYWOOD IS PANICKING, theankler
Gen Z is the second-largest U.S. demographic at nearly 70 million, yet 65% of 16–34-year-olds’ viewing goes to older “library” shows (Friends, Grey’s Anatomy, Gilmore Girls) rather than new series. Even the shows that do break through — I Love LA, Adults, Overcompensating — draw modest audiences and rarely crack Nielsen’s charts. Executives say they simply can’t keep pace with a cohort whose culture shifts at TikTok speed. As

Whitney Friedlander

writes:

There’s also a more existential problem for TV: The most vibrant Gen Z comedy right now isn’t on TV at all. It’s playing out on TikTok and YouTube, where 22-year-olds narrate their dating disasters, roommate betrayals and quarter-life freakouts directly to millions of followers. The creator economy didn’t just steal young viewers’ attention — it stole their genre. For this generation, the funniest shows about being young are made by people their own age, on their own phones, in formats that evolve by the hour.

AMERICANS’ SOCIAL MEDIA USE 2025, pew
Pew’s latest report shows just how dramatically young adults are reshaping the platform hierarchy. While YouTube still dominates overall use (84% of U.S. adults) and Facebook somehow manages to hang on at 71%, the real momentum comes from under-30s, who have disproportionately fueled growth on Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, WhatsApp, and Reddit. Eighty percent of 18- to 29-year-olds use Instagram, and nearly half say they go on TikTok daily, compared with just 5% of adults 65+. TikTok adoption among all adults has jumped from 21% in 2021 to 37% today, and WhatsApp and Reddit show similar increases.

GEN Z BROKE THE MARKETING FUNNEL, WHAT NOW?, vogue
Young adults are rejecting frictionless social-commerce shopping because it feels “mindless,” “less of an event,” and overly algorithmic, according to new Vogue and Archrival research. Gen Z is instead moving toward resale, experiential retail, and “intentional micro-friction,” with 70% interested in in-person brand activations. They still discover products on social media — TikTok (92%), YouTube (88%), Instagram (87%), and Pinterest (85%) — but they’re losing trust in search: 42% of Gen Zs think major search engines won’t exist in 10 years. And despite having a projected $12 trillion in spending power by 2030, this generation is expressing emotional fatigue: 32% say they’re living beyond their means, 84% have used BNPL, and 87% believe people buy more than they need, creating a cycle of “doomshopping” where purchases trigger guilt rather than joy.

FORGET SPORTS BETTING. KALSHI WANTS YOU TO WAGER ON SNEAKERS AND LABUBU DOLLS., businessinsider
Are you bullish on Labubu? You can now bet on it. Kalshi, a Polymarket rival that just raised $1 billion at an $11 billion valuation, is expanding prediction markets beyond sports and politics through a new StockX partnership that turns collectible drops into wagerable events. The platform’s first “product event contracts” let users bet on whether items like rare Air Jordans or Pokémon cards will clear specific resale price thresholds. The move taps a booming U.S. collectibles market that’s now worth $7 billion, fueled by what Kalshi calls “some of the most hardcore, data-obsessed communities in the world.”

MEET THE $50M ‘EXPERIENCE DESIGNERS’ FOR THE 0.01 PER CENT, ft
Ultra-wealthy families are increasingly outsourcing their social lives to “experience designers” who stage $50 million weddings, “no budget” birthdays, and custom travel meant to manufacture “meaningful experiences” for clients who see time, not money, as their scarce resource. Ellidore, a “lifestyle management” firm, produces 250 bespoke trips a year, including Patagonia heli-skiing for a bored young sheikh and “legacy awareness trips” to Venice, Oxford, and Copenhagen for billionaire offspring. One interior designer told FT that luxury is “not about accumulation, but time well spent”; another said her client told her, “I don’t care how much it costs, but I do not want it to look like it cost a lot.”

(SOME) MAGA GIRLS JUST WANNA HAVE FUN, theatlantic
An ideological split is taking hold among young MAGA-aligned women: the “city Republicans” versus the “tradwives.” Raquel Debono, a 29-year-old “Chanel-wearing representative of the Barstool Sports corner of the womanosphere” who self-identifies as a “Sex and the City conservative,” supports “casual sex, abortion, and gay marriage,” which Turning Point-aligned traditionalists argue “is not conservatism.” This divide, according to The Atlantic’s Elaine Godfrey, is creating an identity crisis for a movement whose young women can’t agree on what being conservative even means anymore.

One last thought: