What do all these things have in common? for my new @NewYorker essay, I grappled with the burgeoning Gen Z and younger aesthetic of tacky, oozy, ugly, chemically augmented, brainrotted consumer slop — the Labubu Dubai chocolate matcha industrial complex https://t.co/468Mu2RR3Q

It makes sense that norms are shifting in this direction as Gen Z’s influence spreads. Raised on social media, with access to once illicit bad-taste touchstones like Rocky Horror just a click away, they’ve largely replaced IRL subcultures with a constellation of aesthetics—cottagecore, dark academia, Y2K—to be performed, then discarded or demoted t... See more