

Discover more from After School by Casey Lewis
Nike shares a very good Air Max campaign starring K-pop supergroup NewJeans; Sydney Sweeney is designing a Euphoria-inspired collab with Frankies Bikinis; and Zendaya stopped traffic outside of Louis Vuitton show.
WOULD YOU DATE A PODCAST BRO?, nyt
A new dating red flag has emerged around young singles: men with podcasts.
On TikTok, hashtags like #menwithpodcasts gather videos of (mostly) women using a beard filter to satirize the sorts of things male podcast hosts say, such as: “Why, as a man, are you born in the month of February?” or “That’s the problem with women who read.” Others have called on them to “put down the mics” and “get a job!”
‘NO PROBLEMO’: WHAT GEN Z ARE REALLY SAYING WITH THEIR T-SHIRTS, theguardian
Tees emblazoned with the phrase “no problemo” are everywhere, from Zendaya’s tortured Euphoria character to Portia, the pathologically bothered assistant in the second series of White Lotus. In real life, Manchester City striker Erling Haaland and Bones and All actor Taylor Russell have been spotted wearing them. And the “no problemo” tee has become a de facto uniform for creative workers across the UK.
LAYOFF STIGMA STINGS: WHY GEN Z WORKERS ARE LESS LIKELY TO SHARE THAT THEY LOST A JOB, fastco
Only 20% of people who lost their jobs shared the information with their future employer, according to new research. For every young person taking to TikTok to talk about their layoff, there are a dozen Gen Zers who feel shame over unemployment.
MORE BIG BRANDS BRAVE THE ROCKY TERRAIN OF ENDORSEMENT DEALS WITH COLLEGE ATHLETES, wsj
“It’s been like a year and a half of, ‘How is this going to work?’” There are no federal laws regulating NIL deals, which has “created a policy patchwork that varies by state and institution, creating confusion about what brands and athletes can expect.” So much money at stake, yet so much red tape. The uncertainty has spawned a subcategory of specialty agencies and NIL marketplaces — and multiple lawsuits.
NIL deals will likely evolve to often include intellectual property agreements with the schools in question...Hair-color brand Hally Hair Inc. spent four months negotiating such a deal with Baylor University that includes the sale of branded products on campus as well as more than 100 athletes working as content creators and brand spokespeople, said Kathryn Winokur, founder and chief executive. On the first day of the campaign, Hally Hair recorded four million social-media impressions and a 56% week-over-week jump in sales on Amazon, according to Ms. Winokur, who said the company is now in talks with at least 25 other schools about similar deals.
A GEN Z MYSTERY: MY INSTAGRAM POSTS KEEP SHOWING UP ON FACEBOOK!, nyt
Young adults are discovering that they’ve been active on Facebook unwittingly after Instagram introduced a prompt when people posted a photo or story asking if they wanted to share to Facebook, too. To make the prompt disappear, users had to click a big blue button — which granted Facebook permission to repost — or a smaller hyperlink to opt out. And you can guess where the story goes from here.
A TIKTOK BAN WOULD MAKE FOR AN INCREDIBLY STRANGE DAY ON THE INTERNET, nymag
The downstream effects on the commerce and politics would be immediate, major, and no easier to predict than TikTok’s are now (the app’s influence on the American music industry alone has been impossible to miss). Countless social-media-adjacent jobs would be altered in an instant. Some would disappear entirely.
One last thought: