Murder Mystery and Hard Seltzer

Your daily digest of youth culture

Jul 14

Olivia Rodrigo wore vintage Chanel for her much-hyped White House visit, duck nails are dividing the internet, BAPE x Coach x Megan Thee Stallion = gold, and…

IS ANYTHING COOL ANYMORE?

Tl;dr: no. (Except maybe Megan.) “With what young people genuinely like being harder to pin down, they’ve created a new kind of selfhood that surpasses Main Character Syndrome: hyperreal individualism.” // vox

FACEBOOK PLANS TO PAY CREATORS $1 BILLION TO USE ITS PRODUCTS.

Influencers will soon be able to earn money “by using specific Facebook and Instagram features or by hitting certain milestones.” Very, very interesting when you consider the extent Zuck has gone to avoid paying publishers for content. nyt // Related: Twitter is shutting down Fleets, its short-lived IG Stories competitor. verge

DTC BEAUTY BRANDS ARE REPLACING FOCUS GROUPS WITH PRIVATE ONLINE CLUBS

Everything Geneva’s doing is *extremely* smart. glossy

CHINESE GEN Z’S NEW OBSESSION: MURDER MYSTERY GAMES

Jubensha (“Script Murder” in Chinese), a role-playing game that involves dressing up and hunting for clues in escape room-style venues, has exploded among China’s younger generations. voguebusiness (though Jing Daily covered it first and they crucially didn’t put it behind a paywall)

CONSUMER STUDY BY DRIZLY PAINTS PICTURE OF HOW AMERICANS WILL BUY AND ENJOY ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES AS "NEW NORMAL" TAKES HOLD

As someone who categorically detests* hard seltzer, I find it amusing that “what hard seltzer actually is eludes many adults.” Also interesting: Long gone are the days when the only opinion young people had re: alcohol is “whatever gets me drunk fastest.” drizly

How it’s made and by whom matters most for Gen Z, who over-indexed on both factors compared to other generations in purchase decision making. Nearly one third of 21 to 24-year-olds surveyed cited minority-ownership (BIPOC, women, AAPI, LGBTQ+, etc.) as an important brand choice consideration, followed by millennials at 18%, Gen X at 14% and Baby Boomers at 11%.

*With the exception of this hard seltzer — it’s not full of chemicals, it tastes like an aperol spritz, and it happens to be woman-owned, which means it’s Gen Z approved

TWO 14-YEAR-OLDS GRILL AN AUTHOR ABOUT THE FUTURE OF HUMANITY

A rare author interview that’s actually worth reading (and that’s only because it was conducted by two teens — a “self-described humanitarian and feminist who loves reading and doing jigsaw and crossword puzzles” and a “Girl Scout and an aspiring journalist”). npr

One last thought: