Minting Things and Single Positivity

background check optional

The “single positivity movement” is a scam; Bumble is calling on daters to close the “romance gap”; Tinder is adding a $2.50 background check option; and did you know Millie Bobby Brown is dating Jon Bon Jovi’s son, because I did not.

Yung Jov

TY HANEY IS DOING THINGS DIFFERENTLY THIS TIME, nyt
I was psyched to talk to the Times about the former OV founder’s new web3 retail startup, Try Your Best, which “will enable brands to collect input from customers in exchange for rewards such as digital collectibles (NFTs) and brand coins that can be used for bragging rights or toward purchases.”

TIKTOK’S NEW MUSIC PLATFORM WILL PAY ITS CREATORS, papermag
SoundOn, TikTok’s new payment program for musicians, “allows musicians to get paid weekly for their music and keep ownership of it all.” Speaking of music platforms that do or do not take a massive cut, Walmart’s Spotify partnership takes direct aim at Amazon Prime.

WHITE HOUSE BRIEFS SOCIAL MEDIA INFLUENCERS ON UKRAINE CRISIS, cbs
White House staffers held a briefing with 30 “influential social media content creators” on Thursday about Russia's war on Ukraine. Pretty cool! (Uh, maybe not.) Meanwhile, on SNL, TikTok stars advise Biden on how to stop Putin.

TIKTOKING FROM A BOMB SHELTER, thecut
Juxtaposing TikTok tropes and trending audio with footage of her destroyed city, [20-year-old Valeria Shashenok’s] videos have gone viral. While jaded and darkly funny, her footage doesn’t hide the devastation.

JOB’S A GOOD’UN: HOW LINKEDIN TRANSFORMED ITSELF INTO A GEN Z-FRIENDLY SOCIAL MEDIA CONTENDER, guardian
The social network is “attracting 200 new users every minute, has its users making 9,000 new connections, and which says that the often hard-to-reach Gen Zers make up a growing fraction of that new activity.” In adjacent headlines, meet 38 people who joined the Great Resignation in search of a more balanced life.

CAMPARI, DRIZLY TARGET THE NEWEST DRINKERS: GEN Z, mediapost
“Four years ago, the first Gen Z-ers turned 21, and over the next 11 years, the rest of these nearly 70 million Americans will also reach drinking age.” So, this particular study is technically sponcon, but I’m endlessly interested in how the drinks industry is attempting to reckon with younger consumers, who have pretty different beverage preferences than older gens.

One last thought:

tasbeeh @THerwees

trying to explain to bf that when he says “tiktok is not reading” he is reinforcing an oppressive and classist hierarchy of literature but he’s not buying it