Lazy Summers and New Nostalgia

"therapy dupe"

I hope you had a great long weekend. I took a few days away from my laptop, which I haven’t properly done since the holidays. Instead, I read a book, ate some birthday cake, and touched grass sand, narrowly missing some sharks at the Rockaways. I’m very happy to be back online!

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Lorde’s Virgin album debuts at No. 2 on the Billboard chart; meet David Iacono, the Jurassic World Rebirth heartthrob who, as Vanity Fair puts it, “you’ll hope gets eaten”; and Dazed documents how Nia Ivy went from TikTok parodies to pop stardom.

CAN KIDS STILL HAVE LAZY SUMMERS?, vox
The “lazy summer” of the ’90s is obsolete, replaced by structured schedules, screen time, and safety concerns that limit unsupervised fun. Kids now get phones by age 10 and tablets even earlier, with 60% of their screen time going to gaming, per a 2025 Common Sense Media report. One expert notes that unstructured play still exists, it just happens online: “Just because it’s on a screen doesn’t mean it’s not still fulfilling the same goals,” said Brinleigh Murphy-Reuter, program administrator at the Digital Wellness Lab at Boston Children’s Hospital.

THE NEW NOSTALGIA, airmail
A wave of Gen Z nostalgia centers on a pre-Internet era they never actually lived through. Nearly half of young people say they’d prefer a world without the Internet, not out of a rejection of technology, but more so a desire for a less performative way of living. Writer Isabel Brooks points to the viral appeal of grainy early-2000s footage — like MGMT’s student performance at Wesleyan, filmed when she was just four — as evidence of a growing romanticization of uncurated, analog moments. “‘Authenticity’, I think, looks like the power to opt in or out, perform or not, when you want to — in other words: freedom,” she writes.

INFLUENCING WITHOUT THE INFLUENCERS, nytimes
Brands are bypassing traditional influencers and turning to in-house content creators like 28-year-old filmmaker Sarah Tang to produce lo-fi TikToks that emulate peer-to-peer authenticity. Tang, who films from Dusen Dusen’s staged Brooklyn studio, creates unsponsored-feeling videos with deadpan humor that often go viral, despite her modest personal following. As Tang puts it, “When I’m on camera for the brand, I am the brand,” though I do have to wonder where the limits are when your personality becomes part of the product (and, separately, when the non-influencer becomes an influencer via repeated virality).

REPORTS OF GEN Z’S LAMENESS ARE GREATLY EXAGGERATED, persuasion
In a personal essay, recent Yale graduate

Arden Yum

pushes back on stereotypes about Gen Z, arguing the generation is not entitled, screen-addicted, or ideologically uniform, but rather intentional, self-aware, and politically engaged. She notes that while AI tools exist, “I can’t think of a single friend who has relied on ChatGPT to write an essay for them,” and that many students still choose demanding coursework, such as reading Moby Dick or Dante’s Divine Comedy. Contrary to claims of screen addiction, Yum says her average daily phone use has stayed around two hours, and she and her friends actively seek out nature and in-person dating over apps. As she writes, “We aren’t lazy, but we are intentional about where our energy is going.”

INSIDE THE ‘ANTI-WOKE’ LITERARY SCENE GROWING IN L.A., rollingstone
A new "anti-woke" literary scene is gaining momentum among young, mostly white creatives in Los Angeles, many of them Gen Z men who feel alienated by mainstream publishing and progressive cultural norms. (Wait — so, you’re telling me men can read?!) Many in the scene operate under pen names to avoid cancellation, yet see their outsider status as a strength: “It’s never been easier to get your work read by f*cking millions of people,” said alt-lit writer Delicious Tacos, who has sold 26,000 books despite (or because of) his hyper-transgressive POV.

POP MART’S LABUBU CRAZE SUPERCHARGES TIKTOK SHOP SALES, modernretail
I don’t know about you, but I’ve reached the point of L*b*bu mania where my eyes involuntarily glaze over when I merely see the word. Still, there’s no denying the collectible’s grip on Gen Z: Pop Mart’s TikTok Shop sales jumped 1,000% year-over-year, driven almost entirely by livestreams (85% of revenue) and just 1,300 creators—a fraction of what top sellers typically use. On Amazon, searches for the plush toy surged over 260% in May, and Labubu-inspired merch jumped from $361K to $7.34M in the span of a year, despite the core product not even being listed on the site.

One last thought:

@manondevelderx @manondevelderx ♬ original sound - Sofia Boman

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