There is an entire university course on Harry Styles (at Texas State University, of all places); you can now shop in IG DMs; the Euphoria creator's new HBO show The Idol, which stars The Weeknd and Lily-Rose Depp looks truly wild; aaaand, speaking of nepo babies, Dirt let me write about how Teen Vogue rich girls were the OG nepo babies!
FROM PIZZA EARRINGS TO TIE-DYED SCRUNCHIES: INSIDE CLAIRE’S REMARKABLE TURNAROUND, fastco
“It’s a treasure hunt experience…It’s an experiential store.” As retailers faltered during the pandemic, Claire’s grew: Last year, it generated $1.4 billion in revenue and swung a profit, with sales increasing by 51% over the year before — and as a millennial who got my ears pierced at the local Claire’s when I turned 12, this makes me really happy!
HOW ‘STRANGER THINGS’ IS FUELING AN OBSESSION WITH THE 1980S—AND WHY THIS NOSTALGIA IS UNIQUE, fastco
Sure, nostalgia sells—but what retromarketers really try to induce are feelings of “pseudo-nostalgia.” Younger consumers of these revived products and services have never experienced the original; they are buying retrotastic products and services that sometimes have little relation to 1980s reality whatsoever.
GOOGLE TO GENERATION Z: LET’S INTERNET BETTER, adweek
Just last week, Google execs admitted that TikTok has largely replaced Google Search for Gen Z. And now, Google’s unveiled a new campaign aimed at, wouldn’t you know it, Gen Z. The company described “Let’s Internet Better” as a call to action for Gen Z to use its search tools to verify information, and it said the “videos embody that age group’s aesthetics, humor, and tone”…well, at least they tried?
HOW TO DROP OUT OF COLLEGE, nyt
Rayne Fisher-Quann (whose Substack, Internet Princess, is a must-read) on leaving college: The night before I dropped out of school, I stick-and-poked a Kurt Vonnegut quote onto my thigh with a sewing needle taped to a pencil. It was meant to say “SO IT GOES,” but it ended up more like “SO I GUES.”
ANONYMOUS Q&A APP NGL IS POSING AS YOUR FRIEND, gizmodo
Have you noticed NGL, the anonymous app, creeping into all of your friends’ (or internet-people-you’ve-never-actually-met-but-consider-friends’) social media posts? Yeah, most of those questions are created by bots, and worse, now NGL is embroiled in a lawsuit insinuating that they didn’t even create the deceptive feature; they stole it from another anonymous app, which somehow makes it even worse???
REPORT FINDS EVIDENCE OF WIDESPREAD, ANTI-AMBER HEARD ONLINE HARASSMENT CAMPAIGN, jezebel
Per a report released Monday, analysis of 14,000 tweets characterizing Heard as deceptive or abusive of Depp revealed that 24.4% of accounts tied to these tweets were created just months ago, and one in five of the accounts appeared to be “dedicated to spamming.”
One last thought (the meme-ification of BeReal has arrived!):
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