Nostalgia Economy and #cringe tbh
"Are you ready for Gen Red?”
Sorry for the late send; this is coming to you after hours because I’m on the west coast for a few days. Instead of reading with your afternoon oat matcha latte, read with your favorite pour of natural orange wine. 🍊
People are taking out loans on NFTs (and it’s going exactly how you’d think); Sotheby’s launched a "digital art platform called the “Metaverse”; Vice ponders whether Abercrombie is…cool again? (It is); and the word “cringe” means something different to Gen Z.
TIKTOK DRIVES NEW NOSTALGIA ECONOMY
Gen Z TikTok users are fueling nostalgia for millennials' heyday (from lowrise jean skirts to wired headphones to, well, A&F), driving a whole new throwback economy. axios
↳ The 13 Going on 30 dress (of all things) is trending on TikTok. vogue
INSTAGRAM STRUGGLES WITH FEARS OF LOSING ITS ‘PIPELINE’: YOUNG USERS
Just last month, “teen time spent” — an actual term used at IG HQ denoting how many hours a day teenagers are on Instagram — dipped, which alarmed higher-ups, as “Instagram relied on teenagers to spend an average of three to four hours a day on the app, nearly double what adults spend on it.” This is a must-read. nyt
↳ But it’s not all doom and gloom re: young ppl and IG: “On Instagram, 20-Somethings Are Jumping, Twisting and Falling for the Likes.” wsj
HOLLISTER UNVEILS GAMER APPAREL FROM NEW 'CHIEF GAMING SCOUT'
Is “chief gaming scout” the new “creative director”? As part of his duties, Kyle "Bugha" Giersdorf, an 18-year-old world champion Fortnite player with 4.8 million Twitch followers, will help design a hoodie and sweatpants set specifically designed for gamers, “with a large zip pocket for storing snacks and an oversized hood to fit over a headset.” marketingdive
MARRIAGE RATES ARE PLUMMETING. WHY ARE REALITY DATING SERIES SO POPULAR?
Census data shows only 29% of 18-to-34-year-olds were married in 2018, compared to 59% in 1978. And yet! 80% of Gen Z and millennials report that they “had spent some time imagining their wedding day,” and most of them expected to be married within two to five years. Fairy tale dreams are alive and well; just blame The Bachelor? politico
Conservatives can rant about the state of unions within the union, and suggest any number of fixes; at that think tank last summer, J.D. Vance proposed a range of complicated incentives to get people to marry, after all. But if millennials and Gen Z-ers watch enough reality TV, they’ll get all the persuasion they need.
COMMUNISM IS TRENDIER THAN LOUIS VUITTON AMONG CLUELESS GEN Z AMERICANS
This is completely ridiculous, but I had to include for the headline alone. Also for this sentence: “On TikTok, #Communism has racked up over a billion views. So, lots of kids are trying to promote the world’s most comprehensively failed idea with, er, iPhones. Are you ready for Gen Red?” nypost
One last thought: