Quarter Zips and Flow States
“May I meet you?”
Welcome back to After School Monday Edition, a not-so-brief trends debrief for paid subscribers. 🫶
In today’s letter:
The Great Meme Reset of 2026
“Hot girl” influencers have discovered AI
Gen Z is mocking the “millennial smirk”
Why girls are sharing the moment “the rabbit got me”
The trendiest way to soft-launch a breakup
Young adults are saving the cruise industry
The one major metro where Gen Z can still buy a starter home without a trust fund
Shein is selling romantasy
Nutcrackercore
“High-schoolers are, famously, anti-purse”
The “save the bleph” movement
Young women are age-shaming each other online.
And so much more, plus everything I’m buying, reading, and listening to. But first, my favorite TikTok of the week:
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Last week, a few Reddit threads surfaced accusing a NYC micro-influencer of scamming small businesses and faking her online clout. Screenshots show that she accepted a $200 comped meal at Chef Papa, tipped $6, ignored repeated follow-ups asking her when she would publish the agreed-upon post about the restaurant, and then later shared a vindictive “1.2/10” review. She has 44K followers — a number large enough to secure comped meals from buzzy restaurants in exchange for social media content — but Reddit sleuths noticed that she had virtually “zero engagement” on Instagram, suggesting she likely bought those 44K followers.
My mind immediately went to Kyle Chayka’s recent column on the new prestige of having barely any followers. Oversized audiences have lost all meaning now that so many accounts “are bots, hate-followers, and dead profiles,” he says, which tracks eerily well with what Reddit surfaced. As Grace Clarke told Chayka, “Audience-amassing is actually no longer ‘expensive,’ a.k.a. hard or rare. It’s easy to game.”