it’s a big year for Sweeney and Bezos

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Hello and welcome back to as seen on.

Today’s newsletter is free and fun I hope you enjoy xo.

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• Just thought I should let you know that I will not be partaking in the generational moral panic of Gen Z not having sex, nor will I be wasting your time talking about the “Gen Z stare.” This is also my stance on Labubu discourse, by the way. Not in this house. 

• More on “Gen Z reporting.” Everyone wants to be Kyla Scanlon so bad. There’s this bizarre rat race among journalists to coin new language around habits that either only a small slice of Gen Z is engaging in—or that everyone is actually doing—and it’s very unfortunate. Makes it hard to be in this space with you.

NOW TO THE NEWS:

• A new Bloomberg Intelligence survey found that Gen Z users reported more discomfort than millennials when it comes to using AI within dating apps. Nearly 50% said they had no trouble creating a profile on their own, and most don’t struggle to hold a conversation with a potential match. Translation: literally no one asked for this.

• Your Google results are about to look a lot more like social feeds. Instagram content is now searchable on Google, because Gen Z is 25% less likely than Gen X to use Google for searches, and 46% of Gen Z and 35% of Millennials prefer social media to traditional search engines. It’s hard not to feel bad for every publication out there right now when Google’s survival might literally require it to cannibalize their lunch (breakfast, and dinner). Curious to see

  Rachel Karten
  ’s take on implications for social media managers.

• Air Mail wrote about Substack’s events people and “secret weapon”, Sophia Efthimiatou and Matt Starr (of Dream Baby Press). This platform is very much in its PR golden age, isn’t it? Substack does host some really cool events, which I guess is easy enough to pull off when your power users have great taste, niche interests, and engaged readers.

• Skydance is in early talks to acquire The Free Press. Last month, Oliver Darcy reported that Bari Weiss and Skydance CEO David Ellison had discussed a possible role for Weiss at CBS News, which Ellison will oversee following the Paramount-Skydance merger. But Weiss reportedly wants to keep The Free Press independent, so it’ll be interesting to see what kind of arrangement—if any—they land on. The more telling story here, though, is what this signals about the kind of future Ellison has in mind for CBS.

• Happier Grocery is going all in on Ballerina Farm. They just introduced a protein soft serve.

  happiergrocery

  

  A post shared by @happiergrocery

• I don’t know what it means that we are midway through July and there is no consensus book of the summer, but I know it means something. I just finished reading The Emperor of Gladness, which I decided is the worst kind of book to read when tank tops are an option, but am also making my way through Come If You Want, a serialized novella Loosey’s

  Brendon Holder
  is publishing on Substack. Fiction isn't something I usually read on here, but I love Brendon’s writing and am always here for a good literary experiment. So far I’m loving it. I told Brendon I was going to mention the series in today’s newsletter and asked him to share a teaser with my readers.

  “It feels like a modern revamp of a tradition. Subscribers will experience a blend of the episodic fiction drops made popular by Charles Dickens with the immediacy of today’s technology. Tonally, the novella fuses the doomed romance of Kristen Roupenian’s ‘Cat Person’ with the comedic supernatural elements of Sloane Crosley’s Cult Classic. If you loved ‘Rejection,’ had mixed feelings about The Materialists, and/or can’t escape the latest Love Island discourse, this story is for you.”

  The book of the summer could be in your inbox.

  What if the book of the summer was in your inbox?

• Speaking of Substack and CBS, last month Substack.com got more traffic than The Wall Street Journal and CBS News—the first time it outpaced both legacy outlets in the same month.

• Mommy blogs are making a comeback—well, at least one is.

• How are we feeling about these Vogue–Lauren Sánchez rumors? Because surely there can be no truth to them. Surely. Given that so far all Bezos has gotten from acquiring The Post is scandal and headache, I doubt he’s eager to go ten toes down in traditional media again. Besides, there are plenty of ways to buy Vogue without actually buying Vogue.

• It’s a big year for Sweeney and Bezos. My news feed has been flooded with reports that Sydney is the frontrunner to be the next Bond Girl, and last week Puck reported that the actress is launching a lingerie label, backed by Ben Schwerin, a partner at private equity firm Coatue. Jeff Bezos and Michael Dell just backed the Coatue Innovation Fund with $1 billion. That Lolita-coded photoshoot with Amélie Tremblay makes a lot more sense. I’m still surprised by Sydney Sweeney’s ability to sell anything, but clearly, she’s a very effective channel. To her credit, I will say that despite being a very present cultural force, I have no idea what Sydney is actually like. This may be intentional; she may have zero personality. Who’s to tell. Selling lingerie is a bit of an obvious move, but sometimes that’s just the thing to do.

  

• WPP named Microsoft’s chief operating officer for global enterprise as their new CEO. Her remit? Turn the global agency holdco into an “AI-driven platform business.”

• Cocaine is the hottest prop in TV right now.

• Just how much do we think David Zaslav loves James Gunn in this moment? I’m thinking a whole lot. The new Superman movie grossed $125 million in its first weekend of release, making it the third-biggest box office opening weekend this year—behind only the Minecraft and Lilo & Stitch movies, but crucially, far outpacing Marvel’s 2025 openings so far (Thunderbolts opened to $76M and Captain America: Brave New World to $88.8M). I have a lot of thoughts about world-building and the future of the superhero movie, but today is not that day. Instead, I’m going to share a comment as seen on reader

  Tre Johnson
  left this morning in a previous post:

“I think the landing here is that it's ‘solid’ as an opener. It comes with a lot of caveats; it's the biggest Superman movie opening, but actually only just inside the top 30 superhero box office openings of all time (I want to say it’s like 22 or 27). It’s interesting, for context, that all three of Ryan Reynolds’ Deadpool movies, for example, opened higher than this one. It’s also interesting that the last iteration—Man of Steel by Snyder—only opened about $7M less than this movie.

There are some other thoughts I have too, but overall, I think this is an okay-ish opening for them. Some of the earlier projections were closer to the $150M–$170M range, and had to be adjusted.

I think this Superman is solid in terms of representation and tone, but it also means that Gunn and the WB/DCU franchise still have a lot to prove to people. IMO, those numbers suggest that Superman fans and Superman-adjacent people showed up first, but not quite enough general audiences were eager to see him.

Next weekend will be interesting; I’m curious if the word of mouth will be enough to keep people engaged and help the movie avoid the typical drop-off (which I think is around 56%). If it’s higher, it suggests praise and good will aren’t sticking—and that people still aren’t totally sold.”

I’ll add that while global box-office sales are up about 8% from last year, they are still down 27% from before the pandemic. No one is making hits like they used to, and it’s too early to tell if this a temporary dip or the new normal. Love when my readers are smarter than me.

• While private equity sinks its teeth into American sports (franchises and media rights), the ultra-rich are betting on the infrastructure and ecosystems around sports. A recent BNY Mellon survey found that a third of family offices have invested in sports-adjacent assets like pickleball courts and fantasy sports apps as an inflation hedge.

• Today I learned all about “patent cliffs” and how around $180B in annual pharma revenue is at risk in 2027–28 due to expiring patents. Now drugmakers like Pfizer, Merck, and Bristol Myers Squibb are scrambling to acquire smaller biotechs with anything promising in the pipeline—ideally something that can clear trials and bring in billions.

• David Protein is wild for this.

• To all my beauty marketers reading this. This is done. No more for now.

  

• Last week, Ulta announced that it had acquired Space NK, which makes sense if you’ve been keeping an eye on both retailers over the past year. Space NK, UK’s top premium beauty retailer, has spent at least a year positioning itself for an acquisition—offloading its U.S. operations and investing in new high end stores. Ulta, meanwhile, is focused on growing globally, with expansions in Mexico and the Middle East on the horizon. It’s worth noting that Ulta is no longer just competing with Sephora for marketplace dominance, but also with Amazon—and increasingly, TikTok Shop. But what Sephora has always done better than Ulta is buoy hero products and support newness, which I think is only going to become more of a competitive advantage.

• An Italian court has placed LVMH’s Loro Piana under judicial administration for a year after allegedly uncovering worker abuse inside its supply chain.

• Arabelle Sircardi wrote The A–Z Guide to Perfume Culture for SSENSE. Nothing sexier than expertise.

• Claire’s is considering filing for bankruptcy again in the U.S., after first filing in 2018. Sounds about right. Sad, but I see no space for them to exist in this market—not in its current form, anyway.

• Would it surprise you to know I’m thoroughly enjoying these Alix Earle Carl’s Jr. ads?

  carlsjr

  

  A post shared by @carlsjr

• Big Tech will die on the hill of making smart glasses happen. Last week, Meta announced that it had acquired a minority stake in Ray-Ban maker EssilorLuxottica for $3.5 billion, doubling down on the unexpected success of their smart glasses collaboration. They’re also reportedly planning an eyewear line with Prada for later this year. Both Apple and Snap are gearing up to release their own smart glasses in 2026, and this morning The Information reported that ByteDance is developing mixed reality goggles after scaling back AR and VR headset efforts two years ago. Third time’s the charm.

• Honeymoons are under attack.

• Harvard is exploring a new center for conservative scholarship, as it battles it out with the Trump administration. The university is already in talks with donors, with the project expected to cost between $500 million and $1 billion.

• Two top BCG executives were stripped of their leadership roles after the Financial Times revealed that a BCG team helped model the costs of relocating Palestinians outside Gaza as part of a project examining how the area could be rebuilt as a regional trading hub. This is crazy. Both surprised and completely surprised it's not getting covered more. Of course, BCG now claims they were “misled about the exact nature of the project.” Very McKinsey of them.