Techno-Optimists and TikTok Meets Zillow

"you’re girlbossing too hard"

Procrasti-shopping with Emma Eun-joo Choi, NPR’s youngest podcast host; the other cool Gen Z Emma — Chamberlain — just got her own Cava bowl (Sweetgreen is weeping); and Netflix is doubling down on anime (and Nancy Meyers).

FARFETCH AND NEIMAN MARCUS TEAMING UP TO TAKE ON U.S. LUXURY, wwd
Nothing is more thrilling to me than a shiny e-com retailer investing in one of the most storied department stores in history (and not the other way around). Indeed, Farfetch is planning to make an up to $200 million minority investment in Neiman Marcus Group, which will supercharge the latter’s digital capabilities, not to mention give them access to young luxury consumers.

SHRINKING THE GAP: HOW THE CLOTHING BRAND LOST ITS WAY, guardian
A brilliant look back at the Gap’s role in youth culture and what it needs to do to reclaim relevance (it’s going to take a whole lot more than a trending hoodie on TikTok).

PLAYHOUSE IS TIKTOK MEETS ZILLOW FOR THE NEXT GENERATION OF HOMEOWNERS, techcrunch
Think Zillow, but with a TikTok interface. “As you scroll, you can guess whether the price Playhouse showed you is higher or lower than the actual listing price, helping to educate future buyers about the market (… and also it’s fun, even if you’re not looking to buy a $2 million home in San Francisco),” Techcrunch writes, but “fun” isn’t going to pay the bills — or pay the investors’ $2.8 million dollars back. Will be interesting to see how monetizing comes into the picture.

A BOOKSTORE REVIVAL CHANNELS NOSTALGIA FOR BIG BOX CHAINS, bloomberg
The latest trendy gathering place for young people: stores that sell books.

Plenty of Millennials who grew up with a Waldenbooks, a Crown or a Borders have the same nostalgia for those chains that they feel for the malls that once contained them. At the same time, Gen Z is taking to TikTok to talk about books — driving billions of views as well as sales for authors’ backlists — and staging those videos at Barnes & Noble. B&N’s green-and-cream decor persists as an accessible symbol for books and, in a country recently starved for social interaction, a place where one day we will browse together again.

YOUNG PEOPLE ARE THE BIGGEST “TECHNO-OPTIMISTS”, axios
More than 1 in 4 young American adults are invested in cryptocurrency — and it's people under 25 who express the most excitement about everything from electric vehicles to smart home technology, an Axios-Momentive poll found.

HOW STATES ARE TURNING TIKTOK INFLUENCERS INTO PROPAGANDA MACHINES, dazed
If you look up #RussianLivesMatter on TikTok, you’ll see that the tag currently sits at 19.2 million views. The more widely used #RLM has racked up 31.2 million. In one video, a woman in pigtails does the Bella Poarch nose scrunch while forming the letter ‘Z’ with her hands, a symbol of support for Russia’s military.

One last thought:

Curtis Sittenfeld @csittenfeld

A trivia category could be: child of Grimes & Elon Musk or new variant?

April 5th 2022

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