Whimsy Capitalism and Third Degree Yearns

mrbeast lipstick effect

Calzedonia named Hailey Bieber its new global ambassador; Charli XCX is the face of YSL Beauty; Jenna Ortega is starring in Lily May B, “the anticipated next film by visionary French auteur” Leos Carax; and GQ asked Dua Lipa how she’s “funmaxxing” (clubs and museums, mostly).

‘WHIMSY,’ A NEW TREND, MAY BE A LIFE RAFT FOR ZILLENNIALS, nytimes
Young people have been fixated on “whimsy” since the start of the year — Business Insider deemed it the “it word of 2026” in February — but the trend is nowhere near peak yet. Etsy searches for “whimsical jewelry,” “whimsical décor,” and “whimsy-related items” are up at least 50% year over year, which Etsy trend expert Dayna Isom Johnson calls “everyday escapism.” Liz Plank, a 39-year-old podcaster, says her “whimsy pajamas” (a cream ruffled tank-and-shorts set) and a “really cute coffee ritual” each morning lifted her out of the doldrums. “We really can’t control what our leaders are doing, but you can control what kind of mug you’re going to choose,” she said. Harvard psychiatry professor Nassir Ghaemi ties the “whimsy” phenomenon among young adults¹ to information overload and exhaustion with performative online life, though an anti-whimsy backlash has already begun: “You’ve got to buy the top five things off Amazon to find whimsy, baby, that’s not whimsy. That’s capitalism,” one TikToker said.

TINDER IS BETTING GEN Z DATERS WOULD RATHER BE OFFLINE, bloomberg
To counter rampant swipe fatigue, Tinder is investing in IRL events to win over Gen Z. So far, they’ve hosted everything from art classes to silent discos to happy hours for dog lovers; a pickleball gathering near Santa Monica State beach hit capacity with a line out the door. While they aren’t doing away with swiping altogether (unlike competitor Bumble), they are introducing a bunch of new features, like a “Groups” tool that lets female users form friend groups to connect with cohorts of single men for 6-to-12-person “group hangs” and virtual speed dating with three-minute video chats. CEO Spencer Rascoff and his executive team Slack with two Gen Z college students, Abby and Jasmine, for real-time feedback; they’ve also built GPT-generated “persona” versions of the pair to test concepts internally.

HELP! MY BOYFRIEND DOESN’T READ, dazed
Young women are finding themselves in “reading-gap relationships,” where they read dramatically more than their male partners. In the last few years, fiction reading among American men has dropped sharply, so much so that women made up 80 percent of the book-buying market in the UK, US, and Canada as of 2023. (Meanwhile, men aged 25 to 34 now make up the largest podcast audience.) For some women, the divergence in media consumption is a dealbreaker: in a recent survey, 24% of people said they wouldn’t date someone whose reading habits don’t match their own. April, 24, spent four years with a boyfriend who barely read and now considers not reading a “red flag”; her current boyfriend has a library in his bedroom.

YEARNING IS SO BACK: HOW RIVALS AND OFF CAMPUS MADE SUBTLETY THE SEXIEST THING ON TV, cosmopolitan
The desire to yearn continues. Back in 2024, Dazed reported on viewers being “hauled to the emergency room with third degree yearns” over the Netflix One Day adaptation, with Google Trends at the time showing searches for “yearning” and “longing” climbing for two-plus years. Now, two years on, the fixation remains: Cosmopolitan UK says the “hottest” moments on TV are the lip bites, finger brushes, and lingering looks on Disney+’s Rivals season two and Prime Video’s new Off Campus, the Elle Kennedy hockey-romance adaptation being pitched as the straight Heated Rivalry. Fans are reportedly more obsessed with two characters sharing a waffle than with nude scenes, proving out that survey finding that Gen Z doesn’t want to see sex on screen.

LOWE’S IS BETTING ON MRBEAST TO DRIVE ‘LIPSTICK EFFECT’ SALES, businessinsider
Lowe’s is launching MrBeast-themed in-store kids workshops — participants earn MrBeast badges for each one completed, Boy Scouts-style — alongside a line of $14.98 buildable MrBeast toy kits, with Jimmy Donaldson collecting royalties on the toys. Beyond building brand loyalty with a very young audience, they’re also unlocking their parents’ wallets: “Gen Alpha actually has a larger influence on where their parents shop and what they purchase than any other influence,” Lowe’s CMO Jen Wilson said, which brings to mind a recent interview with Sincerely Yours co-founder Julia Straus, who told Business of Beauty that her tween skincare brand operates with “two customers” in mind because the purchase is usually going on a parent’s credit card.

One last thought:

@carrottlimeafter you, princess sir! #feminism #comedy #pov

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1. Is a 39-year-old still considered a “young adult”? Don’t answer that.