Nihilistic Indulgence and Swing Time
"hospitality’s hottest piece of merch"
I leave early tomorrow morning for a near 24-hour travel day to Cannes! Expect a newsletter, but maybe a little later in the day than usual. Tonight I’m living out one of my biggest millennial dreams and seeing Juvenile in concert. Will I cry seeing “Back That Azz Up” live? Almost certainly. If you haven’t watched his Tiny Desk, please do.
I’ll be sending daily dispatches from Cannes Lions next week (thank you to my friends at Day One for sending me!). As always, thank you for reading.
Target is collaborating with Hollister on a home collection; GQ talked to Milly Alcock about being Gen Z’s Supergirl; Laufey made an appearance on The Simpsons; Charli XCX is on the cover of Rolling Stone; Ciara Miller is the new face of Covergirl; and Jack Schlossberg’s doorman asked the aspiring politician questions for Interview Magazine (“because who knows him better?”).
‘TONE-DEAF’ TO ‘VERY COOL’: WHAT YOUNG MEN THOUGHT OF TRUMP’S U.F.C. FIGHT, nytimes
Trump’s glorified birthday party U.F.C. Freedom 250 event, which drew 200,000 attendees to the White House lawn, was by all accounts a masculine spectacle, complete with fighter-jet flyovers and Octagon girls wearing sexy flags. But a Reuters/Ipsos poll released last week found just 16% of Americans supported it, and once-loyal young conservatives interviewed by the New York Times felt the event was “pandering” and in poor taste. Don Valencia, 26, a New York real estate worker and former Trump supporter, said the event was “totally tone-deaf, considering what the country is going through.” He added that he “can’t afford a home. My groceries are more expensive than they were under Biden. What do I have to celebrate?” Aidan Hoffses, 20, called it “a spit in the face to some of the people who are struggling right now.” (At least one fan — Nathan Remillard, a 23-year-old America First streamer and Trump skeptic — found it to be “very cool, very patriotic. Everyone there seemed super happy. I even gambled on it,” he said.)
WELCOME TO THE POST-JOURNALISM ERA OF PROFESSIONAL SPORTS, poynter
As teams, leagues, and athletes build out their own content operations, journalists are finding themselves locked out of the spaces that once produced revealing reporting. Locker rooms closed during COVID and never fully reopened; beat reporters are disappearing alongside slashed travel budgets; and leagues like the WNBA have adopted the NBA’s two-tiered system, where only select media get informal access. Victor Wembanyama led the San Antonio Spurs to 62 wins and an NBA Finals spot in 2026, yet remains “something of a mystery,” even to fans. He speaks to reporters only at press conferences, skipped a mandatory media session after Game 5 of the Western Conference Finals, and French reporters get a single native-language question per session. “We [see] these people more and more, but we know less about them than we ever have,” said media veteran Andrew Haubner. Maybe because some of them are very, very boring. But we deserve to know that!
SEX RECESSION, WHO? MEET THE YOUNG COUPLES BRINGING BACK SWINGING, cosmopolitan
No matter how upside-down the world gets, at least we can count on Cosmo to be reliably Cosmo. The women’s magazine reports that zillennials are reviving swinging for the sex party era. (Gen Z may not like sex on TV, but they love sex parties.) UK swinging app SwingHub has seen the share of under-30s joining roughly double in the past six months, according to Head of Operations Bailey Masterson, and female-centered event Killing Kittens has experienced a 400% increase in party attendance. Ash and Tanya, both 32, co-run swingers’ social Corruption Events and share their lifestyle with 56k Instagram followers; they say they prefer swinging to other forms of ethical non-monogamy because there’s no emotional involvement, just physical pleasure. “Everybody thinks swinging is connected to Benidorm and the old couples who were doing it in the 1970s, but when we go out [to swing], everyone is young.”
HOW GEN Z HELPED SPARK A SMOKING HOT COMEBACK FOR THE RESTAURANT MATCHBOOK, bloomberg
A few years ago, young people couldn’t get enough of restaurant-branded totes and baseball hats, but these days, “hospitality’s hottest piece of merch” is the humble matchbook. Joe Dannon of the Match Group — a company that sells customized matchbooks, not to be confused with Match Group, Tinder’s parent company — says sales of elaborate “retro-feature matches” have climbed 75% annually for the last three years. At Wild Cherry in the West Village, the die-cut slot-machine matchbooks cost nearly a dollar each, and the owners had to cap how many they put on the table after spotting them resold on eBay. After Bar Snack’s martini-swilling shrimp matches went viral on TikTok, people began lining up outside and admitted they were really there for the matches.
IF KOMBUCHA’S THE NEW TEQUILA, WHAT’S NEXT FOR ALCOHOL BRANDS?, vogue
Young people may be lining up for martini matchbooks, but they’re not clamoring for actual martinis, at least not like previous generations. Alcohol is in “suspended animation,” according to Spiros Malandrakis, Euromonitor’s global insights manager for alcoholic drinks, with global growth flatlining and only 23% of consumers drinking weekly. Moët Hennessy CEO Jean-Jacques Guiony told investors “all categories are declining across the board” in the U.S., with low-priced ready-to-drink cans — like the Gen Z-approved BuzzBallz — the only growth area. Malandrakis calls the emerging mood “nihilistic indulgence,” theorizing that self-optimization has started to fray under job precarity, pushing some towards pleasures like higher-proof products and cigarettes. “Why not make the most of the present?” he says.
One last thought:
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Thank you beautiful.