Mini Mullets and and Frame Mogging

"we’re not interfacing well"

Feb 10, 2026

Bad Bunny’s Spotify streams soared 470% in the U.S. post-Super Bowl; Esdeekid’s New York debut was proof that he’s more than a viral sensation; Lana Del Rey announced a new single, “White Feather-Hawk Tail Deer Hunter,” co-written with husband Jeremy Dufrene; and Charli XCX will star as a “demonic brat” in Takashi Miike’s next horror movie.

A STANFORD EXPERIMENT TO PAIR 5,000 SINGLES HAS TAKEN OVER CAMPUS, wsj
Date Drop, an algorithmic matchmaking platform built by Stanford grad student Henry Weng in three weeks, has signed up over 5,000 of Stanford’s roughly 7,500 undergraduates since launching in September. Students answer 66 questions about values, lifestyles, and politics, then matches “drop” every Tuesday at 9 p.m., which has quickly turned into a campus ritual where students huddle in dorms and libraries to see results. Date Drop solves a “very Stanford” problem: “A lot of people at Stanford place so much emphasis on success in other areas aside from social interaction, so it just naturally falls to the wayside,” said sophomore Alena Zhang. “People struggle with striking conversations — let alone romantic interactions.” But elite campus dating isn’t easy, even with algorithms to help: sophomore Gabriel Berger had a great first date over matcha lattes, but between her dance practice and his research, four courses, and fraternity VP role, it ended with a shared realization: “We’re not interfacing well.”

THESE A.I. DREAMERS DON’T FIT THE STEREOTYPE, nytimes
Young founders in their early 20s, most of whom do not have traditional tech backgrounds, are flooding San Francisco to chase the AI gold rush. “I took, like, one coding class in my life,” said William Alexander, 21, co-founder of AI startup Arzana. “There is no Plan B…We’re going to do the start-up thing until we die.” The stakes are incredibly high: researcher Matt Deitke landed a four-year, $250 million contract at Meta’s Superintelligence Lab, while peers like Scale AI’s Alexandr Wang have become self-made billionaires. Many of them don’t fit the tech-bro stereotype — one kid’s mother emigrated from El Salvador and grew up in a dirt-floored house with seven siblings; another paid his own way through Stanford — but they share the same ambition: “Not at any time in history have we seen so much capital mobilize in one direction,” said 24-year-old Marshall Kools, the other Arzana co-founder. “You’d be crazy not to want to get in on that.”

THE FOOTBALL YOUTUBERS WHO ARE THERAPISTS FOR TROUBLED FANS, nymag
Young male sports fans are turning to their favorite football podcasters as de facto therapists, DMing them about relationships, financial strain, and even suicidal thoughts. “Even though this would have been a Black Mirror episode 20 years ago, I’m honored that these people come to me,” said Andrew Fenichel, a popular sports content creator and self-described “Gen Z elder.” “This is not at all a surprise to me,” said Dr. Gayle Stever, a professor who studies parasocial relationships. “Attachment theory says that we are biologically hardwired to seek proximity to our comfort objects,” and media figures can fill that role, especially when algorithms encourage daily content that makes a creator’s voice and presence feel constant. The irony is that the internet accelerates the loneliness epidemic while simultaneously becoming one of the few places where isolated men feel safe enough to ask for help.

COOL GUYS HAVE BOY BANGS NOW, gq
After a decade of skin fades, hard parts, and Beckham-inspired precision cuts, men are opting for boyish, face-framing bangs — choppy fringes, 401(k) mullets, and grown-out mops seen on Jacob Elordi, Connor Storrie, and MJ Lenderman. New York hairstylist Mark Alan Esparza says “flow” is the word he hears most in his chair now, and where he once had a single client committed to maintaining a fringe a few years ago, “nearly every cut comes topped with a snippy forehead kiss.” This is part of a broader aesthetic shift toward rugged masculinity: “They’re working out in jeans, protein-maxxing by way of all-meat diets, and overall leaning into a more unvarnished kind of guyishness.”

A CLIP OF STREAMER CLAVICULAR GETTING “FRAME MOGGED” BY A FRAT GUY HAS TURNED INTO THE LATEST COPYPASTA MEME, dailydot
A Kick livestream clip of 20-year-old “looksmaxxing” influencer Clavicular encountering a muscular ASU frat leader and getting “brutally frame mogged” — which is manosphere slang for being physically outclassed in a side-by-side comparison — has become one of the latest copypasta memes, with users dropping the phrase into Star Wars dialogue, fake crisis hotlines, and ironic grief posts. (“I cried only three times in the last ten years. When we broke up. When my grandfather died. And when Clavicular was brutally frame mogged by an ASU frat leader,” reads one comment.) The meme’s virality is partly fueled by Clavicular’s growing notoriety: In the last month, he’s been featured in (though not interviewed by — he’s notoriously press-shy) Rolling Stone, The Atlantic, and WSJ.

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