Nostalgia Economy and Analog Awakening
everything i (and you) learned last year
Welcome back to After School Monday Edition, a not-so-brief trends debrief for paid subscribers. 🫶
I publish five times a week, roughly 260 newsletters a year. Each newsletter includes at least five stories that point to broader cultural shifts, with many, many more links in the long Monday editions. That’s a lot of signals! So I went back through the After School archives to determine the bigger trends that happened last year (and what we can expect this year), as well as the most interesting catchphrases, buzzwords, and bits of slang from the last 12 months.
Before I jump in, I just want to thank you for reading After School. As you can probably tell, I’m truly obsessed with youth culture and generational trends, and I can’t believe I’m able to make a living writing and talking about them. I started the newsletter almost five years ago, and I quit my job two years ago to do this full-time — this being the newsletter, but also consulting projects and corporate talks. (Related to that last part, halfway through the year, I finally got on beta blockers, making corporate talks so much less excruciating and instead actually kind of fun! Like a lot of writers, I’m more comfortable behind a computer screen, but thanks to modern medicine, I’ve mostly overcome my stage fright and pathological fear of IRL attention.)
Every now and then, someone asks me what my goal is with After School, and my genuine answer is: you’re looking at it! I don’t want to be a girlboss, even though they do appear to be making a comeback in 2026. I don’t want to build a media company or manage anyone or delegate anything.
This year, I just want to write better and think deeper. And, okay, also post more on TikTok.
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BUZZWORDS THAT DEFINED 2025: A GLOSSARY
Algorithmic blandness: A perceived sameness across social feeds caused by optimization and trend recycling. (I, II, III, IV)
Slop life: Acceptance of overstimulating, low-quality consumption as a default mode. (I, II, III)
Life360 kids: Young people whose movements are tracked by parents via location apps. (I, II, III, IV)
Social maxxing: Overcommitting to social plans and events. (I, II, III, IV)
Fishermancore: Coastal-prep staples like cable knits, boat shoes, and lobster motifs flood feeds as “spring’s biggest trend.” (I, II, III, IV)
Girly-pop ecosystem: A term used to describe conservative media targeting young women through lifestyle content. (I, II)
Snoafer: The sneaker-loafer hybrid becomes a TikTok-proof ugly-shoe flex. (I, II, III, IV)
Club Club: A pro-going-out “club for going to the club” emerges in response to nightlife nostalgia. (I, II)
No revenge: Post-breakup content shifts toward “they’re already losing,” with Valentine’s Day acting as a revival moment. (I, II)
Amialivecore: Kids film themselves dropping increasingly heavy objects on their feet and rating the pain, a sort of “proof of life” posting in an increasingly numb, dehumanizing digital world (I, II)
Zyndemic: See also: “The Great Zynpression.” Philip Morris’s single U.S. factory struggles to meet surging demand driven by mostly Gen Z “Zynfluencers” promoting the brand online. (I, II)
Banana botox: TikTokers rub banana peels on their faces and call it “natural botox.” (I, II)
BBL jacket: TikTok’s nickname for Lululemon’s Define jacket. (If you’d like to BBL-maxx, Garage sells what girls have deemed “BBL pants.”) (I, II, III)
Fetty edits: Fetty Wap songs get dubbed into movies and historical scenes as JBL-speaker jokes and fake reaction content. (I, II)
Dinosaur Time: TikTok girls eat handfuls of raw greens straight from the container. (I, II, III)
Meme drought: Creators declare the moment spiritually unfunny, with some ironically repurposed Great Depression-era photographs to express their despair ("When mfs say they grew up poor but never had to live during the great meme depression”). (I, II)
Boneless lashes: TikTok slang for point lashes that are precise and separated rather than fluffy; a good thing. (I, II)
Vibes betting: Gen Z picks March Madness winners based on vibes rather than stats, with an average willing-to-lose number of $199. (I)
Dilly-dallying spring: Gen Z declares spring 2025 the season of whimsically wandering outside with no agenda. (I, II)
Hozier yell: A dramatic soundbite from “Northern Attitude” becomes the go-to audio for awe-inspiring shots, including strip malls with Brandy Melvilles. (I, II)
Restivals: Festival culture shifts toward livestreaming and at-home experiences rather than physical endurance. (I, II)
Floodlighting: A dating term for oversharing trauma early to manufacture intimacy; an emotional jump scare. (I, II)
Lemony miso gochujang: Satirical shorthand for hyper-fusion, algorithm-optimized recipes. (I, II)
Monkey barring: Dating behavior where someone lines up the next relationship before letting go of the current one, swinging from partner to partner without ever being single. (I, II)
Monk mode: A self-imposed period of extreme discipline and withdrawal framed as productivity-driven, often involving no dating, no socializing, and obsessive self-improvement. (I, II)
Trinket girlies: Collectors framing tariffs and economic shifts as personal threats to their cutesy collections. (I, II, III)
Conclavecore: Pope-watching as pop fandom, complete with gossip and memes. (I, II, III)
Sharking: Pursuing romantic flings for sport rather than connection. (I, II)
Ego scrolling: Swiping on dating apps for validation instead of actual dates. (I, II)
Zendaya theory: An ironic conspiracy-fandom spiral built around exaggerated interpretations of Zendaya content. (I, II)
Caveman Method: Quitting face-washing entirely in the belief that total neglect will heal the skin barrier. (I, II)
Ballerina cappuccina: An Italian brainrot phrase used as absurdist slang with no fixed meaning. (I, II)
Aura points: A Gen Alpha social score that rises or falls based on perceived coolness. See also: “aura farming.” (I, II, III)
Hedi Boy: A Slimane-coded indie-sleaze uniform featuring skinny jeans and cigarettes. (I, II)
Good boy: A Gen Alpha bit that started as joking submissive praise and became a classroom menace. (I, II)
Girl canon: TikTokers listing formative “canon events” that shaped their personality or taste. (I, II)
Recessioncore: Interpreting retail trends as an economic omen, with one viral TikTok likening Old Navy’s spring collection to “District 12,” a reference to The Hunger Games. (I, II, III, IV)
Wealth-gap summer: When social plans become financial stress tests, forcing lower-earning friends to choose between protecting their savings or going into debt to keep up with wealthier peers’ expensive lifestyles. (I, II)
Low GPA: A label for aggressively chaotic behavior tied to meme-ified failure. (I, II)
Holy airball: A dunking phrase for a painfully bad attempt, applied to flirting, jokes, or takes. (I, II)
Recession indicator: Reading everything from retail choices to airline policies as proof the economy is collapsing (even though it’s not!). (I, II, III)
Yearner girl: A proudly earnest romantic who texts back, unabashedly wants a relationship, and refuses to act chill. (I, II)
Bed party: A celebration for college acceptance involving decorating a teen’s bed with school merchandise and themed décor. (I, II)
Banksying: Emotionally exiting a relationship while remaining technically in it, with distance replacing a breakup. (I, II)
Gen Z stare: A blank expression that sparked a moral panic about customer service and social skills (or lack of). (I, II, III)
Clip farming: Engineering moments specifically to generate repeatable viral clips. (I, II, III)
Millennial optimism: A reframing of millennial cringe as a lost freedom Gen Z never had. (I, II, III)
And of course, there are the buzzwords that made it into the mainstream lexicon — 6’7, brainrot, etc. — that need no definition due to their ubiquity.
YOUTH CULTURE 2025: A YEAR IN REVIEW
This newsletter is very long 😵💫 click “view in a browser” to read the whole thing!
I. The Great Analog Awakening
II. The Attention Economy’s Breaking Point
III. The Platform Wars
IV. The Invisible Infrastructure
V. The Economics of Being Young in 2025
VI. The Nostalgia Industrial Complex
VII. The Aestheticization of Everything
VIII. The Gender Divide Widens
IX. The Romantic Recession
X. Gen Alpha: The Next WaveI. THE GREAT ANALOG AWAKENING
2025 was defined by Gen Z’s seemingly endless enthusiasm for pre-digital experiences. Physical media is experiencing unprecedented demand, with Pokémon cards returning 3,821% since 2004, far outpacing the S&P 500’s 421%. Vintage CDs are being traded through apps like Dissonant, and old-school photo booths are drawing crowds in cities across the country.
NYC’s school phone bans sparked a rush on retro watches (Timex, Casio, and nostalgic Shark Watches) as students rediscovered analog timekeeping. One eighth-grader reported that her teacher had to teach the class how to read a wall clock, a skill no longer assumed among the digital-native generation.