Adults on Campus → Sexy Bedscapes →

Hey Neighbor. Nothing big. You’re getting a Dyson? That’s cool. Yeah, I’m sure. Just toilet paper. What’s in today’s email? Well, we got.... the Ghost of Neutron Jack, Tulumification, and Downward Mobility. Nah. I won’t be tempted to swipe it.

STATUS

→ Malls are getting fancy. Since the post-pandemic spike in 2021, mall spending among low earners has dropped 20%. Among high earners, the drop is 4%. “Mall brand” is not a pejorative.

→ Obesity rates are down (slightly) across the board and sharply among college grads, the group most likely to be on GLP-1s. The Great Thinning is following the contours of The Big Quit. The smoking rate among those who didn’t finish high school declined 39% between 1966 and 2015. The smoking rate among college grads declined 83%. And smoking, let’s be honest, looks a hell of a lot cooler [1] than obesity. Expect fat-shaming to return as sublimated classism.

→ Fashion insiders call it “SockGate.” Gen-Z shoppers are very particular about showing off high-taste in hosiery (notable, Miu Miu’s $400 gray socks). Are $25 striped crew socks from Aime Leon Dore the shortcut to the approval of the interns? Maybe. Worth it? Depends on the interns.

Last week, Substack hosted “The Hole Debate,” a series of arguments about labiaplasty, anal hygiene, and brazilians held at Duane Park, a Manhattan burlesque venue. Performative impropriety [2] aside, hosting pick-up symposia is an odd thing for a digital media platform to prioritize in a post-ZIRP world. But the evening was in keeping with Substack’s ambitions. The company, which became synonymous with single-operator newsletters in 2020, now looks hellbent on building a decentralized liberal arts college for adults.

Substack launched as a payments system (for subscriptions) tied to an email service provider (for sending newsletters) tied to a recommendation engine (for growth). A simple stack in turn lashed to chunky budget for recruiting talent. But as the platform grew on the back of the popularity of early adopters inspired by Ben Thompson’s Stratechery newsletter, including Bill Bishop and Judd Legum, it recast itself as “an economic engine of culture,” introducing podcasts, community forums, and, most recently, live video. Substack has also made a habit of publicizing verticalized leaderboards topped what are essentially start teachers – writers and thinkers like Matt Yglesias, Noah Smith, and Heather Cox Richardson (patron saint of NPR moms) – who in turn recommend less-known writers and thinkers they themselves admire. Substack remains a newsletter company at its core, but it doesn’t really promote newsletters. It promotes curricula.

But the real giveaway in regards to the company’s ambitions are the threads, chats, and events. Oberlin, Amherst, and Wesleyan don’t command high enrollment prices solely because of quality instruction. Their students pay a premium for access to their other students. Substack’s threads – lively, earnest, ephemeral mini-Twitters for hand-raisers – are a digital equivalent. But events hosted by Substack and by substackers now more literally recreate the bachelor degree experience. Popular business substacker Emily Sundberg, who writes Feed Me, makes a habit of boasting about her readers finding dates at her events while stating that Feed Me is “not a fucking sorority,” which – if nothing else – underscores her brand’s campus vibes.

And then there’s what Substack hasn’t built: a substantive ad network. By focusing on subscriptions rather than in-newsletter advertising – arguably a larger market and one being pursued by a strong competitor in Beehiiv – Substack has demonstrated the suspicion of scale endemic to the Ivys, which could let in thousands and thousands more students every year but don’t because then where would they be. There’s less gatekeeping on Substack, but definitely some. Substack Greg Isenberg runs an invite-only publication. You gotta get in.

As an evolving, VC-backed business, Substack is, of course, frontrunning demand. But for what? On the media side, it’s campus functionality; the ability to drive deeper engagement across varied forums while disintermediating relationships between people with shared interests. On the consumer side, it’s the undergraduate experience. People want expertise, explanation, reading lists, meta-textual discussion, and, yes, debate. Not only is demand strong, it seems to be growing.

Which is all to say that reports of the death of the liberal arts may be exaggerated. The liberal arts aren’t dying; they’re morphing into media. Enrollment is open.

TASTE

→ Bogg Bags are the new Dooney & Bourkes, albeit with a Croc-twist. Anti-taste as taste.

→ Trendspotter Sean Monahan offers a helpful heuristic for thinking about coolness: “scene cool” v. “internet cool.” Scene cool denotes unique taste and esoteric knowledge (unknown bands and brands). Internet cool describes ubiquity. We cannot aspire to both.

→ Turns out someone was, as Trump put it, “walking off” with geese in Springfield, Ohio. It wasn’t Haitians; it was Brian Comer, a 64-year-old white man employed by Rocky Lakes Golf Course who was toting a shotgun around on his riding mower. Here’s the thing: The meat industry killed the “Christmas Goose” in the latter half of the 20th century because the low meat-to-bone/fat ratio made it more expensive than turkey on a per serving basis, but geese taste good. All the fat, high in healthy oleic acid, bastes the meat and gives it a heavy umami. So, if we’re going to politicize goose-poaching, let’s focus on implementing more efficient contamination checks so we can all eat like a 19th-hole epicurean.

 → Sex coaches are the new career coaches. Blame Sex Coach U, the certification business quietly professionalizing entrepreneurial pervs.

 → Argentine President Javier Milei celebrated the 25th anniversary of West Wing a few weeks late by delivering a plagiarized Jed Bartlett monologue to the U.N. What’s next?

Layering season extends to the bed and provides an excuse for a bit of out-of-the-boxspring thinking. Yes, duvets are there to keep the warmth in, but duvet covers should bring some heat of their own and make getting cozy just a little bit more glamorous [3].

1. Silk: The silk duvet cover represents a commitment to cold-weather coitus (and a regular laundry cycle). Favored, for practical reasons, by folks with bad skin or frizzy hair, it’s perfect swerve for otherwise practical bedscapers. Best of the bunch? Gingerlily London’s Signature, $935.

2. Velvet: Velvet and velvet-adjacent fabrics are 1970s sexy, which means they look better than they feel. But who’s to say a coke-y vibe is wrong move? Sometimes it’s nice to turn on a Teddy Pendergrass album and get to rubbin’. Best of the bunch? Sin in Linen’s Gold Velvet, $159.

3. Leopard Print: It’s our weirdest pattern because it’s either the apotheosis of status fabrics or the déclassé-est of designs. But it’s always fun. And it goes with nothing, which means it will look better than you expect. Best of the bunch? Ralph Lauren Home’s Montgomery Percale, $400.

4. Business Casual: Suit patterns like herringbone and tweed make for unexpectedly cozy covers. And it’s nice to wake up feeling prepared for the big meeting. Best of the bunch? Eastern Accents’ Kilbourn in Rust, $1,963.

5. Floral: It’s a classic for a reason, but pop-y floral patterns can be paradoxically depressing during the gray months. The world doesn’t benefit from the contrast. Better to go with something slightly muted and slylized. Best of the bunch? Ralph Lauren’s Maren, $375.

6. Post-Fordian: The ultimate Upper Middle move is to drape the bed in Japanese denim or Indonesia ikat, or Peruvian jacquard – something that says: “We travel.” That’s fine, but it’s still wise to prioritize comfort. Best of the bunch? Pine Cone Hill’s Kodi Batik Indigo, $359.

M O N E Y

→ A new credit card allows influencers to pay for goods and services with Instagram Reels and TikToks rather than money. The On the House card allows participating businesses – several Michelin-starred restaurants included – to exchange money for attention at lower rates, putting a monetary value on relentless public positivity. Discernment keeps getting more expensive. [4]

→ Incentive-based pay schemes are becoming more popular with large companies. Some 28% of companies surveyed by the Alexander Group, a revenue-management firm, were leaning into bonuses for non-salespeople and top execs. Makes sense. Incentives defray risk as payroll costs rise. The problem – an anyone who has ever had incentive-based compensation well knows – is that this kind of pay structure isn’t solely about performance. It’s mostly about expectation management. Goal negotiating, not goal hitting, will become the most lucrative skill. That’s good news for anyone who spends 2+ hours in Excel per day and bad news for anyone who doesn’t.

→ Money market funds are at an all time high again as risk-averse retail investors decline to run with the bulls. (Super common. Nothing to feel bad about.)

NOTES & FOOTNOTES

[1] Until you have kids. That’s the thing about smoking; it absolutely looks great right up until you’re doing it in front of a toddler. At that point, it does not look great. It looks fucking insane.

[2] Substack is big on this and has a weird, edgelord reputation. In a sense, that’s counter-programming to the modern cultural discourse. In a realer sense, it’s just understanding the audience: Millennials largely didn’t attend college on woke campuses. They knew the edgelord guy (mostly a guy) and they didn’t actually hate him – until he got a few drinks deep and Nelly came on.

[3] Glamorous is a euphemism here for sexy. Though couches are generally better for sex in warmer seasons, beds make more sense when the weather turns.

[4] It’s remarkable that shame, propriety, and discernment are becoming expensive commodities. Perhaps it augurs a future in which fame is a default and anonymity is the thing one works to achieve. IDK. But hard pass on this credit card.