Molly

Many young people report being unable to finish reading a news article, sit through a full movie, or let a song play to completion, describing themselves effectively as a “sample and skip” generation focused for 1-10 seconds before moving on. This is essentially a rediscovery (or rebrand) of meditation, but it’s also a self-directed course... See more

Everyone wants to _______, but nobody wants to ___________.

e.g.

“Everyone wants to be strong, but nobody wants to lift heavy ass weights.”

or my own remix of the quote: everyone wants to advertise like liquid death, but nobody wants to release a full metal album with tracks with titles like “fire your marketing guy”

I’ve often said that the role of the strategist needs to be more than just leading up to the brief. But never quite articulated when those post brief moments were. Every piece of creative work, especially commercial creative work with clients has periods of chaos followed by moments of respite. Except those moments of respite don’t feel like... See more

Our culture hasn’t yet been fully subsumed by nihilism, but you can also see it everywhere in different forms: in the mass shooters who seem to care about nothing other than performing for others online. In the influencers Photoshopping themselves into Epstein-file photos to get likes or promote their SoundCloud account. In the overnight viral... See more

“The reason for the tariffs is the same reason Clavicular hits his face with a hammer,” Aidan Walker, an online-culture researcher, told me recently. “It’s to get attention. It’s to mobilize the base; it’s to prove a point that there’s no rules anymore.”

It was the first time I had heard a TikTok joke made in real life, and it was weirdly moving to feel more together in that moment based on the time we had spent inside—unknowingly together—on our phones.

We are in the middle of not a total rejection of social media, but a correction. As I wrote back in January, “We might remember these past 10 years not as a beginning, but a blip: A period of intense social media use, born out of an excitement about our new toy.” Now we’re starting to give our old toys another chance. It was kind of weird we had... See more