Finding Meaning

“we’re in a global and culturewide crisis of meaning, in which manufactured realities exert pressure on the real world and we’re being manipulated more constantly and efficiently by social media than ever before while also being more conscious than we’ve ever been of that manipulation as it’s taking place.”

Where is the male equivalent to the girly pop?

“I hear so much as a therapist that we don’t have community anymore. We don’t have gathering spaces anymore. We don’t have spirituality and religion anymore. What do we have? We have control over our own appearance. We have capitalism and an obsession with perfectionism and scarcity.”

Casey Lewis • Placeholder Partners and Frictionmaxxing Fatigue

The trend tracks with Gen Z’s broader interest in astrology, Saturn returns, and angel numbers as ways to make sense of their lives.

Casey Lewis • Normie Stores and NoHo Teens

Spiritual chatbot apps have garnered millions of downloads. These AI-powered religious apps, like Bible Chat and Hallow, mimic conversations with clergy and are shaping how people think about deeply existential ideas, like salvation. People are paying up to $70 a year for subscriptions to these platforms to access instant, personalized spiritual... See more

TREND RADAR #9

“There’s an inherent theatricality to church,” writes the critic Alissa Wilkinson, “and a furtive spirituality to theater. In form, they’re similar: Everybody crowds into a room, usually sits facing the same direction, and focuses on a central action — at least for a while.” Alissa uses those parallels to explore a number of recent shows that dance

The Morning: Our election guide

To be human is to yearn for a Sky Daddy. Something that explains the unexplainable, someone to blame. No wonder, then, that in the ZIRP-fueled 2010s, when a new gospel of creation was being spread, some people started to see technology as a kind of religion. And on the eighth day, He made a mobile app that delivered us our daily bread —that sort of... See more

Article

Intellectualizing Memes

Mama a phd behind you

Decline in education

Distrust in facts

Online PHD

Academia is struggling, lack of funding

October Articles

A wildly popular 15-year-old computer whiz is becoming the Catholic Church's first millennial saint (AP News)

Carlo Acutis, a teenage Italian computer whiz who died in 2006, is set to become history's first millennial saint, generating a global following among young Catholics and inspiring a relatable, modern-day role model. His use of technology to... See more

Silence, Brand! 09.08.25

In the face of rejection, some are turning to religion. This week, Cardinal Timothy Dolan published an op-ed in the New York Post (...so many questions) about the revival of Catholicism among young people. He points to both local and global examples: crowds of students and teenagers at events in Rome, young adults lining up for confession at St.... See more