the future of dating apps is A.I
says your favourite dating app's CEO
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Weakened US public broadcasters will fight for their lives in 2025
Microsoft’s new sales pitch for AI: spend less money on humans
Just so you know, Bella Hadid’s cameo on Yellowstone was totally on my 2024 bingo card. It’s called an 11th-hour miracle.
It seems to me that part of the job of starting an email newsletter platform is sporadically publishing manifestos taking aim at your competitors. In an essay published yesterday titled Death by a Thousand, Tyler Denk, beehiv’s CEO, wrote, “Substack has become the Amazon of publishing. It offers the consensual hallucination of independence and ownership while deceivingly consolidating control and dictating the terms of success for sellers (i.e., you, the writers).” Naturally, Substack’s Hamish McKenzie responded with his own essay today: “Substack gives creators the power they deserve: the true independence of audience ownership.”
Looks like Lachlan Murdoch is going to have to share his father’s media empire with his three not-conservative-enough siblings after all. Rupert Murdoch will probably be appealing this decision till his final breath. Meanwhile, Semafor reported that Murdoch-owned Fox Corp. is in talks with potential media acquisition targets including possibly Ben Shapiro’s Daily Wire and Red Seat Ventures.
Love them or hate them, Bari Weiss’ The Free Press is one to watch. The media publication has hired Dennis K. Berman, former Wall Street Journal editor-turned-banker, as its first publisher and president. Speaking to Axios, Berman said, "We have very ambitious plans for meeting this moment — when Americans are rejecting their old sources and finding trusted new ones." Plans for the new year include rolling out a redesigned website, a new mobile app, and a major expansion of its live debate event series in 2025. It’ll be interesting to see if the publication remains on Substack.
The visuals for Byline’s Beauty Issue are hot. Yesterday, I asked a friend to get me a copy for Christmas because I’ve decided to become the sort of person who collects print magazines, and I love for people to get me things I asked them to get me so I can act surprised anyway.
It seems to me that centrism is the latest fixation of news media’s most ailing properties. I’m talking about The Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post. In an appearance on political commentator Scott Jennings’ radio show, LA Times’ billionaire owner Patrick Soon-Shiong revealed that an AI-powered bias meter will be attached to the newspaper’s stories starting next year. "So somebody could understand as they read it that the source of the article has some level of bias . . . And then, automatically, the reader can press a button and get both sides of that exact same story . . . and then give comments," he said. At the New York Times’ DealBook summit last week, Jeff Bezos shared that he had "a bunch of ideas" to restore trust in The Washington Post. “Trust” is the big idea at the moment. According to Gallup Polls, less than a third of Americans in 2024 said they had a “great deal” or “fair amount” of trust in the media to report the news fairly and accurately, down from about 70% in the 1970s. What’s most interesting to me is how “trust” is now tantamount to “centrism.”
The Texas Stock Exchange will open a temporary HQ this spring at Dallas' Weir’s Plaza, while it searches for a permanent home, to be called the Texas Market Center. “The TXSE is aiming to build on the state’s reputation for low taxes and a lighter regulatory touch, saying that companies that list on the market won’t need to meet environmental, social and governance thresholds beyond standard regulatory requirements,” the Bloomberg article reads. Nothing America loves more than a “lighter regulatory touch.”
For the first nine months of 2024, Reddit’s licensing revenue grew to $81.6 million, up from $12.3 million a year earlier—thanks largely to its various deals with AI companies paying for access to its data. Next week, I’m bringing in someone really smart to break down what’s happening in Search, because I can’t do it all.
You should probably read this Semafor interview with Hinge’s CEO, in which he asserts that searching for a partner in real life won’t “hold a candle to” meeting online with AI, the 4B movement is actually not happening, and he wants Democrats and Republicans to date. It’s good stuff.
Is the underrepresentation of men in the literary world actually a thing? This is a genuine question. Should we be worried?
Sabrina Carpenter’s Nonsense Christmas Netflix Special debuted at No. 8 on Netflix’s most-watched TV programs during the week of Dec. 1, reaching 2.6 million views between its Friday, Dec. 6 debut and Sunday, Dec. 8. I was not one of the millions who tuned in. Large parts of my weekend were spent binging Black Doves (debuted to 10.8 million views), a spy thriller starring Keira Knightley. It was so good. Vulture called it “everything you could want from a spy thriller.” Don’t ask me why, but I’ve been very into spy thrillers lately. I’m currently on a two-week hiatus from watching Day of the Jackal because every second of each episode has me physically tense. Why no one is talking about it is beyond me—probably because it’s on Peacock, tbh.
A24 is relaunching its membership program to include tickets to every new A24 movie on opening weekend. The original program, priced at $5 a month, included a subscription to A24’s monthly zine, priority access to live events, and an exclusive merch shop. The revamped AAA24 2.0 retains those perks and adds new benefits, partnering with cinema chains like AMC, Regal, and Alamo Drafthouse. Considering A24 releases about 20 films a year, it’s a great deal. While A24 doesn’t expect the free tickets to significantly impact opening-weekend box office grosses, it will likely boost merch sales—and who doesn’t love some extra revenue?
Is anyone even watching young adult TV anymore? It’s wild to think there was a time when Gossip Girl, Pretty Little Liars, The Vampire Diaries, Teen Wolf, and One Tree Hill were all airing at once—shows I loved as a teen and have rewatched several times as an adult. I don’t buy the excuse that modern YA shows aren’t taking off because of TikTok. That’s lazy. I think most of these shows are overly self-serious, embarrassingly self aware, and just plain bad. No one writes truly messy, pathetically foolish teen characters anymore, and that’s a shame.
This essay about culture’s rejection of sensuality in favour of aesthetic morality is one of the best things I’ve read recently. The visuals alone reinvigorated my soul. “As we’ve stripped away the burden of the male gaze, I can’t help but wonder: have we also stripped away something else? Have we lost the art of being sexy—not for anyone else, but for ourselves? In our pursuit of equality, functionality, and practicality, have we forgotten the thrill of sensuality, the joy of adornment, the unapologetic pleasure of being bold, dramatic, and alive?”
I appreciate those friends who text me tea using iMessage’s Invisible Ink feature. It feels like opening a present.
J.Crew Group has named former Skims executive Julia Collier as chief marketing officer for its J.Crew brand. At Skims, Collier ran the brand’s marketing and creative functions, the brains behind many of the campaigns we know and love. At J.Crew, she will lead the marketing team, overseeing brand marketing and brand creative. Big win for J.Crew, honestly.
some of Collier's work for skims When Nara Smith posted a TikTok adding beef tallow, an animal fat, to her homemade moisturizer, who knew it was a harbinger of the end of PETA? Kidding. It started with Glossier reintroducing their original non-vegan formulations. Mostly kidding. In case you haven't been reading this newsletter closely, animal product consumption is so very back. According to Traackr, mentions of “beef tallow skincare” are up 180% year-on-year, while mentions of “raw” and “unpasteurized” milk are up 59% during the same period. The carnivore diet is up 76.6% year-on-year on Google, with monthly search volumes averaging 477,000. Meanwhile, according to consumer research company GWI, interest in veganism dropped 29% between 2021 and 2023. In a 2025 trend predictions roundup I recently contributed to, I said that food was going to become more politicized than we’ve seen in a very, very long time. What we eat, how we eat, and where we get our groceries are now more than lifestyle signifiers—they’re political too. The impact of these trends on vegan beauty and fashion is yet to be seen, but I know where I’m placing by bets.
According to Cosmetics Design of North America, K-beauty revenue in North America is expected to skyrocket from $3.8 billion in 2022 to $9.9 billion by 2032. DieLine’s Chloe Gordon says Korean food is about to have a moment too. Statista reported that global exports of Korean food products jumped by 35% in 2023, and according to Voice of America, kimchi exports from South Korea reached 44,041 tons in 2023, a 7.1% increase from 2021, with the United States importing over 10,000 tons. Just the other day, a colleague and I were marveling at Korea’s outsized economic and cultural influence, considering how small the country is.
Plot twist: Yesterday a federal judge blocked the Albertsons Kroger merger and now Albertsons is suing Kroger for not doing enough to get their merger approved.
Olivia Jade—sometime girlfriend of Jacob Elordi, erstwhile star of the College Admissions Scandal—recently teased the launch of her new makeup brand on TikTok. After two years in development, the brand will launch with a bronzer sometime next year. Much to my surprise, the comments on the post were overwhelmingly positive. Her fans SIMPLY. CANNOT. WAIT. Clearly, no one is going to tell her. More and more, I’m finding that celebrities are just like us—starting things no one needs, in pursuit of purpose. I imagine that within their circles, being a founder is the ultimate “not like other girls” flex. What? You don’t have your own beauty/skincare/fashion/CPG brand?! You mean to tell me you’re just an actress/singer/dancer/influencer/nepo baby/all of the above? Shame.
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Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browserFinance bros are spending thousands to look good—just like the rest of us. Business Insider spoke to four men with high-paying white-collar jobs who are investing in services ranging from plastic surgery to hair loss treatments and intensive self-care routines , all to gain a competitive edge at work. John, a trader in DC, had spent nearly $22,000 to fix his hairline before turning thirty. The procedures made him more productive at work—he wasn’t worried about clients noticing his receding hairline. A recent survey from the American Society of Plastic Surgeons found that the number of men getting cosmetic procedures in the U.S. increased by 8% from 2022 to 2023. Botox procedures rose by 5.5%. One Beverly Hills surgeon said men make up around 30% of her clientele, but she has trouble getting them to share before and after photos. All this while a recent study of men aged 18–42 showed that only 54% of them brush their teeth daily. Anyway, this is me begging
to do a deep dive on the male beauty industry. (Plant Based recently did a great one.) Things are happening, and I’d love to know.Your friend pulls up wearing FREE LUIGI merch. What’s your move? I’d like to know.
The thing about literary men--it's really straight white men making the argument when there are, in fact, a lot of diverse male authors that they haven't bothered to read. Straight white male authors ruled the roost for a LONG time. The real issue is how to get boys to read--a continuous problem.
did not know olivia jade had enough superfans for a beauty brand