Male Lust and Bowl Cuts
french fries for lunch
Selena Gomez teased a new single with Gracie Abrams; Doechii is on [one of] the cover[s] of The Cut’s spring fashion issue; and A$AP Rocky now has absolutely no reason to keep delaying his album (remember when it was supposed to drop Aug. 30 because I do!).
HOW CROWN AFFAIR BECAME THE QUEEN OF IT-GIRL HAIR CARE, businessoffashion
On the heels of her brand’s fifth anniversary, Dianna Cohen is passing the CEO reins over to Elaine Choi, which is so smart — not because she wasn’t an effective CEO, but because Dianna is the brand’s most influential ambassador and this frees her up to be even more visible. My hair could not be more different than hers, but that hasn’t stopped me from bookmarking her viral airdry TikTok tutorials. We’re used to seeing the creator-turned-founder pipeline, but Dianna’s doing something even more interesting: Founder-turned-creator.
KAI CENAT PLANS TO LAUNCH A ‘STREAMING UNIVERSITY’ TO TEACH ASPIRING CREATORS, fastco
Twitch star Kai Cenat will be renting out a college campus to launch a "streaming university," a weekend-long crash course to teach aspiring creators how to live-stream, with major influencers like MrBeast set to lead classes. Cenat, who’s so popular he caused a riot in NYC last year, ranked No. 24 on Forbes’s top-earning creators list in 2024 with $8.5 million in earnings.
‘THERE’S NO STRESS’: GAMERS GO OFFLINE IN RETRO CONSOLE REVIVAL, theguardian
The revival of retro gaming is being driven by a (seemingly unending!) desire for nostalgia and a demand for offline entertainment. Younger generations are seeking out vintage consoles like the Game Boy and SNES as an escape from social media, which has led to an uptick in businesses like RetroSix, which repair and modify classic systems.
HOW MALE LUST FOUND ITS WAY BACK INTO FICTION, gq
I think often of that 2021 Dazed story about the lack of male novels in the publishing industry. Well, good news — men are underrepresented on the bookshelf no more, and not only are they writing, but after years of apparent restraint, they’re writing about male desire. Popular new releases like Rejection by Tony Tulathimutte and Flesh by David Szalay embrace explicit, often unsettling explorations of masculinity, reviving a tradition of provocative, ego-driven male storytelling…
WELCOME TO THE INCEL AGE OF FICTION: MISOGYNISTIC, MURDEROUS AND... SYMPATHETIC?, independent
Some companion reading to the above: The rise of incels has moved from obscure online communities to mainstream literature. Books like Hermit by Chris McQueer and, once again, Rejection by Tony Tulathimutte explore the lives of socially isolated men who turn to online communities for validation. These stories don’t glorify incel ideology, exactly, though Tulathimutte has been accused of being an incel apologist.
MON DIEU! FRENCH FALL FOR FROZEN FRIES: “YOUNG GENERATIONS NO LONGER PEEL MUCH,” nypost
Niche, maybe, but I was interested to learn from the New York Post by way of The Guardian via, originally, The Times that an insatiable appetite for French fries among young people, accompanied by a distaste for making them (so laborious!), has led to a “frozen chip boom.” The trend is worldwide, with the global market for frozen potato products expected to grow from $7.27 billion in 2023 to $89.51 billion in 2029. (Funnily enough, The Atlantic just published a story about how frozen food has undergone a major reputation shift, evolving from bland, “mediocre eating” to a staple of modern home cooking.)
One last thought:
Tiktok failed to load.Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser