DashCon 2.0 + Gen Z mall mania
+ Wokeipedia, Spotify's new podcaster plaques, Tinder's TikTok hail mary, Waymo violence, and how WhatsApp ate the world
A snapshot of Gen Z’s priorities
Generations are a made up vehicle for marketing and no generation is a monolith, but I thought this recent Day One report/survey of 1,022 Gen Zers across the country revealed some interesting trends among different factions of consumers.
The report divides respondents into three distinct categories. 38% of responders, the largest segment, fell into a category they’re calling “internet age explorers.” These people want to live in the city, explore the world, not even think about settling down. They’re open to new experiences and 60% favor remote work. 33% of respondents fell into the category of “fluid pragmatists.” This group wanted a bit more stability, but still with flexibility. 73% reported that they valued higher income over work life balance.
29% of respondents, the smallest cohort, fell into an archetype they’re calling “neo-traditionalists.” This group values so-called traditional lifestyle choices, like homeownership and suburban living. 64% are more interested in making more money than pursuing a creative passion, 74% dream of stable, full-time employment, and 93% hope to have a stable long-term relationship.
Some of the questions and comments in the report seemed a bit off base. For instance, respondents were asked whether they valued their mental health over physical health or visa versa. This is an extremely out of date and out of touch way to frame the issue of health. As we know from decades of scientific research, so-called “physical health” is inextricably tied to mental health and visa versa. Your brain is literally part of your physical body!
Influencers as an inherently conservative demographic
There was another aside in the report that read strange to me. In the section on neo-traditionalists wanting financial stability, homeownership, and suburban living, the report says, “Turns out not every 18 to 25 year old is putting all of their eggs into the influencer basket.”
I thought this comment was strange considering that conservative influencers are one of the fastest growing segments of the influencer landscape, and there is evidence that influencing itself can lead young people to become more conservative.
The line shows how people often misunderstand *why* so many young people pursue influencing. As I wrote in my book, it’s a big misconception that young people go into content creation for fame or some sort of glitzy and glamorous lifestyle. In the vast, vast majority of cases young people are pursuing the career because it offers a level of financial stability that they feel is inaccessible to them in the traditional job market. Becoming a content creator essentially entails becoming a small business owner, and that can make young people more receptive to conservative policies and messaging.
Max Read wrote about this well back in November:
Social media overall tends to encourage users to understand themselves as small-business owners, where the business is “you,” or your brand, navigating the “market” of a platform. This has always been the case, implicitly, but the rise of TikTok and YouTube, which disconnect users from the limiting “social graph” of IRL friends and families, and which pay users directly for developing a successful small business, has made the connection much more explicit.
(1) influencers are, at bottom, small-business owners, and (2) small-business owners love Trump. He’s going to lower your taxes and limit the worker and consumer protections that hold you back (a genuine concern for medium-sized streamers and influencers!). If you’re a TikToker or a YouTuber you may even have a vested financial interest in the “anti-woke” culture-war aspects of a Trump presidency, which help protect you from content moderation and de-monetization.
Americans tend to love “small-business owners” as a concept, but as a class they’re among the traditional strongholds for fascist and reactionary politics: fearful of change from below (getting canceled by your followers), jealous of their relative social position (follower count), resentful of the larger and wealthier companies and people they see as threatening their livelihoods (real celebrities), eager to vote for a strong leader whose dictatorial authority they can identify with (fellow influencer Donald J. Trump).
The petite bourgeoisie are uniquely exposed to market forces in a way that is not crazy to analogize to an influencer’s exposure to a given platform; it seems worth noting, too, in the age of trad-influencer mania, that Wilhelm Reich famously located the core of petite bourgeois reaction in the structure of the patriarchal family, which both mirrors and is coterminous with the small business itself.
You can read Day One’s full report here.
Babe wake up, they’re trying to do DashCon again
In internet lore, few events encapsulate the chaotic energy of early 2010s online culture like DashCon. Billed as the inaugural convention for Tumblr enthusiasts, the 2014 gathering in Schaumburg, Illinois, was supposed to be a landmark celebration of Tumblr and fandoms like "Doctor Who" and "Sherlock." But the event quickly devolved into disaster.
The convention became infamous for its last-minute crowdfunding plea to cover unexpected expenses, and the iconic "ball pit" (a small inflatable pool that was offered as compensation for canceled panels) quickly became a meme immortalizing the failed event. In the years following, DashCon was used as cautionary tale about trying to translate online communities into offline events.
In the years since, there have been several attempts to bring DashCon back. Most recently, a 2024 effort failed after it didn’t garner enough interest. The 2024 attempt was not affiliated with Nessie O’Neil, the original creator of DashCon. O’Neil finally spoke about her time as the architect of one of the internet's most iconic disasters on TikTok in 2021 and did a great interview with the newsletter Garbage Day.
Now, another group is trying revive DashCon once again. None of the DashCon 2 team is affiliated with DashCon’s original organizers and O’Neil is not involved (though she posted that she’d like to attend). The new team wants to transform DashCon from a Tumblr fandom meetup to more of an internet history convention, “celebrating a very specific era of fandom culture, as well as the original DashCon event.”
“We want to bring people together to reminisce on an era long past, and to celebrate the local artists, performers, and creators of today. In short: no, we’re not a Tumblr convention,” the group wrote on their website.
Yesterday, they announced details of their plans. DashCon 2 will be held at the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre in North York, Toronto on July 5th, 2025. Tickets will go live on February 22nd and vendor Applications will be open on February 1st.
So far the event sounds like nostalgia-bait for a certain type of Millennial internet poster. I’m not sure how wide the appeal will be, but the event may be able to attract young people by playing into the growing early 2010s nostalgia among Gen Z. They can also likely tap into different fandom communities.
Already, the event seems to be encountering some planning issues. In regards to the current venue, DashCon 2 organizers write, “the JCCC wasn’t our first pick. Our first pick, who we won’t name, dropped us unexpectedly after months of negotiations.” They’ve also changed the date of the event. “We alluded to using the same weekend as the original DashCon when we first went public,” DashCon 2 organizers wrote, “but unfortunately this date wasn’t available at our venue. This does mean it’s pretty close to the American 4th of July - in our defense, we didn’t really think of that, we’re Canadian.”
The good news is that, unlike the original DashCon, the DashCon 2 team seems to be aware of what they’re in for. Several members of the DashCon 2 team have experience in event coordination and they note that, “We’ve taken our time to plan the road ahead carefully, and we have no intention of repeating DashCon’s mistakes.” I’m rooting for them!
Is Gen Z bringing malls back?
A recent report from the International Council of Shopping Centers found that between February and April last year, 95% of Gen Zers went to a mall at least once, while only 75% of millennials and 58% of Gen Xers went during that same time period.
60% of Gen Zers said they visited malls just to socialize, and luxury malls appear to be doing the best among the cohort. This has led to a slew of articles in the media declaring that Gen Z is “saving malls.” Sadly, it’s unlikely that there will be any sort of widespread resurgence in brick and mortar shopping centers. In the end, the resurgence is still driven by the internet. Business Insider reports:
Celebrity partnerships have helped position malls as destinations. In 2022, when the YouTube star MrBeast announced he would be opening the first MrBeast Burger at the American Dream megamall in New Jersey, more than 10,000 fans lined up to try his smashburgers and meet their idol. Some had slept in the mall overnight.
[But] none of the marketing ploys — the live events, the fancy restaurants, the luxury perfumes — would mean anything if they didn't show up on social media. To grab the attention of young shoppers, Simon Property Group, the nation's largest mall operator, has launched a campaign with local influencers to create social media posts from its shopping centers set to the soundtrack of "The Breakfast Club," some of which have gone viral. "Sometimes you think about old worn-down strip malls that are not very exciting places to be," says Jenny Duan, a college student in California who has partnered with Simon on influencer campaigns. "But newer malls are pretty fun."
What I’m reading
How WhatsApp ate the world
WhatsApp is already the world’s most widely used messaging app. Meta wants it to be a lot more. - Rest of World
Elon Musk’s hostile takeover
Inside the mind of the billionaire at the heart of American power. - New Statesman
The Cruel Kids’ Table
Among the young, confident, and casually cruel Trumpers who, after conquering Washington, have their sights set on America. - New York Magazine
How random, really, is Spotify’s shuffle feature?
A writer sets out to uncover if true randomness exists in the universe. - Financial Times
How to disappear completely: The internet is forever. But also, it isn’t.
What happens to our culture when websites start to vanish at random? - The Verge
Netflix won the streaming wars, and we’re all about to pay for it
The company has effectively replaced cable all on its own. And it’s going to start charging like it. - The Verge
Justin Baldoni’s Legal Team Decides To Wage A PR War Before Trial
If this is starting to sound like a flavor of the whole Depp/Heard fiasco from a couple of years ago, you’re not alone. And it seems that some of the same tactics are being employed, at least by Baldoni’s legal team. - TechDirt
More fun stuff
Wokeipedia is a database of all the things the media has called “woke.” Brie cheese, sign language, dinosaurs, and more.
Timothée Chalamet hosted SNL and did an anti-AI sketch. They also did a sketch mocking young men’s obsession with podcasts.
Hannah Neeleman, the tradwife influencer known as Ballerina Farm, has joined Substack with a newsletter called The Goose Gazette, where she plans to write about food, farming, motherhood.
Brad Pitt’s team reminds fans he’s not on social media after a woman got big-time scammed.
Big noses are back in style.
“Bicoastal” NY/LA types are fleeing back to NYC after the L.A. wildfires. Good riddance!
The drama over who will buy Paramount continues as a new bid has entered the villa.
Kroger has partnered with Microsoft to install facial-recognition technology in stores to identify individual customers, which could allow individual shoppers to see prices calibrated specifically for them. The next shopper might pay a different amount based on their profile.
WordPress is the latest tech company to kiss up to the Trump admin:
Spotify wants to be YouTube so badly they’re now awarding YouTube-like plaques to creators. Podcasters will receive bronze, silver, and gold plaques when they reach 100 million, 250 million, and 500 million streams, respectively. (Subscribe to my podcast Power User on Spotify today!)
Tinder is hoping TikTok influencers can get young people to use dating apps again.
The official trailer for Season 3 of “The White Lotus” has been released.
People in the art world have all become obsessed with running. “The high is real, it’s a euphoria similar to the adrenaline that comes with closing a deal in the first hour of a fair.”
Another Waymo was vandalized. A crowd of people dismantled the car piece by piece and then used the broken pieces to smash the windows.
Naomi Fry on Lauren Sanchez’s cleavage.
How Farmer’s Fridge took over U.S. airports. The company that put salads in a jar is eyeing sushi next.
People are losing the ability to write by hand, with more than 33% of students struggle to achieve competency in basic handwriting. Could anti-AI sentiment bring it back? Over the weekend I reported how TikTokers were increasingly relying on holding up hand-written messages on screen to avoid TikTok’s AI-driven content moderation filters.
Deepseek could be an extinction-level event for venture capital firms that went all-in on foundational model companies.
Questlove’s new documentary, Ladies & Gentlemen – 50 Years of SNL Music, opens with a seven minute-long montage that took nearly a year to put together.
The Cut’s guide to fighting online.
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