things you'd do before admitting you're lonely

everything

QUICK HITS

• The Onion is pivoting to video

• How socks became the new status symbol

• Touch screens are over. Even Apple is bringing back buttons

• X is now worth less than a quarter of its $44 billion purchase price

• Netflix loses bid to dismiss defamation claim in ‘Baby Reindeer’ lawsuit

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• I’m choosing to believe it's a sad coincidence that LVMH announced the sale of Off-White on Virgil Abloh’s birthday. But it's weird. New owner, Bluestar Alliance, is known to buy troubled brands and license their names. This year, North Face owner VF Corp sold Supreme to an Italian eyewear company, and Champion was sold off to licensing company Authentic Group. This sale is an indication of where LVMH thinks streetwear is headed—nowhere great.

• Is Hailey letting us know she’s back or is she teasing new product?

  

• LVMH acquired a 30% stake in non-alcoholic sparkling wine maker French Bloom, marking their entry into the N/A category. The Moët Hennessy group already owns prestigious wine labels like Château d’Yquem and Château Cheval Blanc, as well as other alcohol brands including Dom Pérignon, Krug, and Veuve Clicquot. But while sales of non-alcoholic still and sparkling wine increased by 7% last year, global demand for wine and spirits dropped significantly, making Moët Hennessy LVMH’s worst-performing division, with sales dropping 12%. They’ll probably expand their N/A portfolio depending on how French Bloom performs. Either way, this is a great signal for the N/A market.

• Campari wants to make Aperol a winter drink too. Their “deseasonalization” strategy includes a concert series in the Alps during the coming ski season and boosting market spend across bars in ski resorts in the U.S. and Europe. Idk I think this is funny.

• Just learned about this CPG brand called Spicewell that makes vegetable-enhanced salts and pepper. (I also didn't know what that meant.) Anyway, they just raised $1 million. Their salt is 30% lower in sodium than regular salt and blended with 12 organic vegetables, and their pepper is enhanced with organic vegetables and turmeric, “following an ancient recipe recognized for its anti-inflammatory and circulatory benefits.” I’m sharing this to do a sense check—are you guys here for the “wellnessification” of everything, or are your eyebrows raised? Because I'm starting to feel like I’m the problem.

• Lol, Poppi and Olipop are hiring for a bunch of quality and compliance roles to meet regulations and support brand claims. This probably has something to do with Poppi being slapped with a gut health false ad lawsuit earlier this year. I wrote all about it here. They’re eventually going to have to do what they already do in Canada and drop the gut health claims altogether. VC pockets may be deep, but not deep enough to keep fending off lawsuits. (Also, the gut health craze is slowly phasing out but people will always be trying to cut sugar. Surely, “better for you because less sugar and artificial ingredients” is a more durable narrative?)

  

• I spent my morning reading this incredibly gross, very graphic, weirdly fascinating Hunterbook report on the “Diarrhetic Fallout” of Cava’s fast growth. Apparently, the Cava Wall Street location received a “C” grade from the New York City Department of Health in their most recent health inspection. The report called out the presence of filth flies, blow flies, flesh flies, as well as improper food storage, unsanitary food contact surfaces, and issues with drainage and waste disposal. A 2024 analysis found that 86.9% of New York City restaurants have “A” grades, but 18% of Cava’s 11 New York locations with a rating have a “C.” Sweetgreen got “A” grades in 36 of its New York City locations. A Cava rep told  Hunterbook they’d “brought in new leaders and added quality assurance resources, including a full-time team member dedicated solely to our restaurants in the Northeast.” Of course, Hunterbrook is short Cava stock.

• Drug developers are working on new male birth control options aimed at Gen Z and Millennial men. Last week, YourChoice Therapeutics announced the launch of an early phase human trial of an experimental birth control pill for men that could be an alternative to condoms or vasectomies. Sounds great, except 1.) you’d have to trust men to actually take the pill every day. 2.) A lot of men, even Gen Z men, are very squeamish about the idea of male birth control. Like if they turn it off, they could never turn it back on or something.

• I felt nervous publishing Monday’s Beyoncé essay, but a lot of you agreed with my takes, which was nice. As I write this, it's number one in Substack’s business section, which is also nice. Beyoncé has a new collection with Levi’s, and this 30-second video is the most fun I’ve seen her have in a while. It’s a pretty big bet for Levi’s—sales have been down for a few quarters, and Beyoncé doesn’t come cheap. The timing couldn't be worse, though. Thanks to Jay-Z’s relationship with Diddy, sentiment about Beyoncé is weird right now, and the comments on both her page and Levi’s reflect that.

• Whenever a celebrity launches a brand these days, they say, “I know the world doesn't need another celebrity brand. But…” Riverdale alum Lili Reinhart now has her own skincare brand. It’s called Personal Day, which I love. Smack in the middle of their landing page is a copy of Sense and Sensibility lying by a pool, beside a Personal Day branded float. Long live the Lit Girl. Lili isn’t an A-list celebrity, and I don’t know how much influence she actually has. But she’s been very vocal about her struggles with acne and mental health, and I already know she’s going to do that Rare Beauty thing where she makes mental health a big part of the brand. (Aka commodify mental health). People seem to like her; she seems pretty genuine. Maybe this won’t suck.

  

• ​​H&M opened its first beauty flagship store in Stockholm, and it looks a lot like Sephora.

• Love seeing Substack coverage in the wild. Financial Times recently published a story about Substack being the new home of design journalism, speaking with the authors of Snake, Ground Condition, and For Scale. Separately, I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means that Substack, particularly Fashion Substack, is getting a lot of traditional media coverage right now. My thoughts on this are far from coherent, but here are a few things I’m mulling over: 1.) Substack as home to the burgeoning taste economy. I like the idea of “taste” being expansive—not limited to stuff, but also thoughts, ideas, opinions. 2.) The growth of the “fashion influencer” on any platform is usually followed by the creation of beauty, wellness, and fitness influencers. These are still huge content gaps on Substack. 3.) It's not lost on me that the newest Substack features skew more social, less editorial. I wonder what this says about what kind of talent and content Substack s trying to enable.

• Sophia Amoruso
  just launched a Substack. It’s for people who work for themselves (or want to).

• The New York Times redesigned its app for the first time since its launch in 2008. It looks like a mega app, but they say it's not a mega app. I wish it was.

• Taylor Lorenz
  is going all in on Substack. Have you upgraded to paid yet? Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter about leaving her job at The Post, she said, “I just wanted to get out of legacy media. I feel like it’s just really, really difficult to do the kind of reporting that I want to do on the internet within these kinds of older institutions as a primary job." Her new publication, User Mag, will cover technology from the user side. “It’s about who has power on the internet and how that power is being wielded.” I have six Google Alerts; three of them are for some variation of Gen Z news, and the other three are for journalists whose writing I never want to miss. Taylor Lorenz is one of them.

• Well, of course California Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed the AI bill. I mean, imagine pissing off all those tech companies. Imagine messing with those taxes! X is already headed for Texas, and Newsom can’t lose anyone else. The first-of-its-kind S.B. 1047 would have required safety testing for large AI systems, allowed the attorney general to sue over tech related harm, and mandated a kill switch for potential mass casualties. Fifty academics sent a letter to Newsom describing the bill as “reasonable,” and Hollywood threw its full weight behind it. But Hollywood isn’t feeding California anymore, and those academics certainly never were. Newsom knows not to bite the hands that feed him, so he vetoed the bill, saying, “I do not believe this is the best approach to protecting the public from real threats posed by the technology.” God forbid America curtails anything that looks like progress.

• This is a reminder to keep your eyes on the evolving Sabrina Carpenter and Chappell Roan discourse. Both these headlines are from today.

  

• A friend sent me this article about how Bumble and Match Group (which owns Tinder and Hinge) are launching friendship products to solve the loneliness epidemic. She wanted to know what I thought. Will friendship apps become the new dating apps? Probably not. We all know the loneliness epidemic is real, but no one likes that they contribute to that statistic. It’s generally accepted that finding a romantic partner is hard, so dating apps feel okay, but building platonic relationships is something we’re just supposed to know how to do. The only times people I know have admitted to using Bumble BFF is when they’ve moved to a new city. Many Bumble BFF profiles will literally say something like “just moved here” or “new in town.” I think the most successful “loneliness economy” startups will be those that don’t position themselves as such. Part of why we have such visceral reactions to products like FriendAI is that the idea of being so lonely you need a robot to keep you company is actually embarrassing. If I were building in this space, I’d ask myself, how can I create a loneliness product that doesn’t feel like a loneliness product? How can I onboard users without them having to admit that they’re lonely? Because no one wants to admit that—not to themselves, and definitely not to strangers on the internet.

• California is banning legacy admissions at private universities. Newsom isn't afraid of academia, so he signed this one. I don’t even know that much about the U.S. higher education system, but I’m inclined to think he’s doing the Lord’s work.

• More young people want to attend college in the South anyway. The number of Northerners going to Southern public schools has increased 84% over the last few decades and jumped 30% from 2018 to 2022. Parents love it because tuition is cheaper. Students want it because the parties are bigger and the weather is nicer. They also want to pay less attention to politics, which you pretty much can’t escape in Northern liberal arts or elite colleges. One of these days, I need to write an essay exploring a more nuanced view of Gen Z and politics/activism. I recently listened to a podcast where someone said Gen Z isn’t special for being so politically active; young people have always been idealistic. I’d like to investigate this more, along with the growing political divide between Gen Z men and women, and this idea of political burnout and political apathy I can’t get out of my head.

• I hear Europe’s millionaires are taking their Gen Z and Millennial offspring to bespoke conventions to prepare them for the $90 trillion Great Wealth Transfer. HSBC surveyed 1,000 high-net-worth entrepreneurs about their plans for wealth transfer to their families. More than a third plan to exit their companies in the next five years, and half prefer to keep the business in the family. However, many expressed concerns about their offspring’s work ethic, particularly if said offspring were Gen Z. (Shocking). Also unsurprisingly, over a fifth of respondents had made no succession or wealth transfer plans. Unfortunately, HSBC didn’t have the foresight to ask them their thoughts on longevity—cryopreservation, longevity retreats, full-body scans, etc. Why let go when you could literally not?

• Adam Neumann is starting a service to compete with the company he failed to buy back. Workflow will be offered by Flow, the Andreessen Horowitz-backed residential real estate company Neumann founded in 2022. Positioned as a more “adult version” of his first startup, WeWork, Workflow will focus on creating a calm atmosphere complete with fancy furniture and fancier artwork. Instead of long-term leases financed with short-term leases, Workflow is building offices in residential buildings it already owns or partnering with landlords to manage spaces it doesn’t. “The lack of community and the disconnection that people feel is even more relevant today than when WeWork started,” Neumann said. Not everyone cashing in on the loneliness economy!

• I suggest they all go back to making rom-coms like Nobody Wants This. They’re low budget and easy to market. I’m feverishly making my way through each episode, unwilling to have it come to an end. Seth Cohen was my childhood crush, and at least once a year, I watch this montage of all Seth and Summer The OC scenes.

• CBS Studios is working on a series adaptation of Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections, and Meryl Streep is starring in it. This is one of my favorite books. I honestly don’t know how to act.

• Lionsgate is offering voluntary severance and retirement packages to U.S. employees. You can thank their uninspiring box office year—Borderlands ($32 million globally), The Crow ($23.5 million), 1992 ($2.9 million), The Killer’s Game ($5.8 million), and Never Let Go ($8.3 million). Then there’s the ongoing Megalopolis fiasco that’s too depressing to speak on. Like I said, Hollywood isn’t feeding California anymore—Disney laid off 300 employees last week, Paramount had two rounds of layoffs last month, and Sony just switched up CEOs. Pray for the studios, guys.

• All of fitness is benefiting from the GLP-1 boom, except Weight Watchers, whose stock is down more than 90% since the beginning of the year, and just fired their CEO. Her replacement is the former CEO of Shake Shack.

• I’m always keeping an eye out for L Catterton’s investments and acquisitions, particularly in the CPG and wellness space. I think I understand their investment thesis, and it interests me. Last month, they acquired a majority stake in pilates studio operator Solidcore, valuing the company at between $600 million and $700 million. Also last month, they led a $200 million funding round for Munich-based connected fitness startup EGYM, at a valuation of around $1.2 billion. I want someone to do a comprehensive breakdown of these high-growth boutique fitness brands because I’m really curious about the ways they’re changing the fitness landscape. One thing I do expect to see is more Pilates type fitness studios that focus on achieving a slender physic…

• Because as if we didn't already know, plastic surgeons are now confirming that it's in to be thin again. I don’t think it was ever out. The most popular surgeries in the U.S. last year were liposuction, breast augmentation, and the tummy tuck. People also want smaller butts, which is wild to me.