there’s something deeply unsexy about my generation
I have stats
Long time no see.
Today, I wrote about why Harvard, Stanford, MIT, and Cornell are freezing hiring, Martin Scorsese’s latest project, two recent literary launches, a new AI company led by the producer of the Divergent franchise, lessons from the close of Futurewise, and a bunch of other stuff.
ENJOY!
Do you think your voice can help people fall asleep faster? Headspace is looking for its next bedtime story narrator. There are few gigs hotter than this.
Gigi Hadid for Vogue sent me down an Annie Leibovitz shaped rabbit hole, and I think I can finally get over the Lupita thing now. I actually adore her work. By the way, Gigi Hadid and Bradley Cooper are an underrated age gap romance (20 years). I very much see them going all the way.
I watched a TikTok this morning about how microtrends have become a low-status signifier. Then I read this Times piece about how Gen Z—specifically high schoolers—are tired of chasing the trend cycle but seem unable to quit. I didn’t grow up in the U.S., so there's a bit of a gap in my understanding as to how these teenagers can even afford to keep up with so many microtrends. I heard the kids aren’t babysitting anymore, so who’s funding these Shein escapades?! As usual, while reading the piece, I was struck by how behind traditional media is on covering youth culture. The anatomy of the trend cycle has been talked to death on Substack, after all. Anyway, one interesting angle was the disconnect young people experience between knowledge and action: we are social media and marketing savvy and therefore aware that we are being manipulated to satisfy the bottom line of brands we are most likely ideologically opposed to, yet we remain unable (or unwilling) to act upon this knowledge. “Awareness does not equal liberation. Understanding the mechanisms at play does not always mean they can escape them—although many are trying.” This, my friends, is the plight of my generation—to know so much intellectually, to feel so much morally, yet remain subject to our base instincts. In this case, the primal adolescent desire to belong trumps all qualms about overconsumption, waste, workers' rights, and what have you. TL;DR: Hard to fight the teenage urge to be cool.
