Ruralmaxxing and Hopeless Romantics
"buzzfeed circa 2013"
Charli XCX — who I will be seeing host SNL this weekend thanks to reader Brianna! 🥲— is the new face of Acne Studios; Euphoria season 3 will allegedly begin filming in January 2025; and I’m currently in LA for something really, really cool…expect a full recap in Sunday’s newsletter.
TIKTOK’S NEW TRADEMARK FILINGS SUGGEST IT’S DOUBLING DOWN ON ITS US BUSINESS, semafor
Now that it looks like Donald Trump is going to save TikTok, the company is doubling down on America with two new trademark filings. One’s for an app called TikTok Go that will promote “restaurants, retail businesses, the travel industry, and other online and offline businesses”; the other is a buy-now-pay-later service called TikTok PayLater. If you’ve been reading this newsletter for a bit, you know I think BNPL apps are an insidious scheme preying on young people, but they sure make a lot of money! Klarna is readying for an IPO, as announced earlier this week, though I like to believe I already knew it was in motion because I live near a car wrap advertising place that’s been cranking out pink Klarna cars for two weeks straight.
GEN Z’S CHANGING POLITICAL IDEOLOGY, morningconsult
Some fascinating data points on young people and politics: As of October 2024, the share of liberal-identifying Gen Z adults dropped from 41% to 27%, and the share of self-described conservatives grew from 16% to 23%. Between January 2021 and October 2024, the share of Gen Z adults who cited economic issues as their top concern when casting votes for federal officeholders grew from 31% to 42%, a figure that is 4 percentage points higher than the share of all U.S. adults who said the same.
FORGET LA AND BK: THE RURAL PLACES WHERE YOUNG AMERICANS ARE MOVING, businessinsider
This is a shift I’ve been tracking for awhile — if I’ve given a trend presentation to your company in the last year, you’ve heard me talk about it — and it’s fun to get some quantitative data to back it up the qualitative. Communities with under 250,000 residents have seen a growing influx of Gen Z and millennials; about 63% of counties classified as rural or in small metros had increases in this age demographic between 2020 and 2023, compared to just 27% between 2010 and 2013.
OUR 2025 DATING TRENDS ARE IN AND THIS IS WHAT THE DATA SAYS, bumble
According to a new (but notably pre-election) survey of 41,294 Bumble users between the ages of 18 and 35, three in four (72%) say they’re looking for a long-term partner in the next year, over half (55%) of women are self-proclaimed romantics “who love love,” and half (50%) of women say a lack of romance has had a negative impact on their dating lives (I wonder what percentage of women would agree that the apps themselves are part of that very problem — I suspect many!).
SPOTIFY’S NEW PIVOT: WE’RE A BIG VIDEO CREATOR PLATFORM NOW, TOO, hollywoodreporter
The streaming giant is launching a new platform called Spotify for Creators as part of what the company is calling “the biggest update to podcasts on Spotify ever.” As part of the push to video, they’ll soon begin paying creators based on how much engagement their videos receive in a move to compete with YouTube.
THE NEW MUST-HAVE FOR OVERWHELMED KIDS: AN EXECUTIVE FUNCTION COACH, wsj
Concerned about their kids’ lack of organizational skills and study habits, parents are hiring executive function coaches for $125 to $225 an hour, a trend that coincides with a rise in ADHD diagnoses and mental health problems in young people. Some psychologists “say the problem isn’t so much kids’ executive function skills as adults’ expectations.”
One last thought:
Tiktok failed to load.Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser
Have fun at SNL, tell Charli I love her 😭
im in Sweden