All Caught Up: Substack's influencer problem, the economic disruption of GLP-1s, choose-your-own-adventure psychedelics
Prune your home with The Row
Good morning! Most of what has occupied my brain space this week is my forthcoming essay on wellness. I’ve spent nearly six weeks writing this essay and lately, I’ve been experimenting with the idea of re-introducing friction into our lives.
I’ll be publishing a snippet of this essay on Substack, but the full essay will be distributed via email as a PDF. I’ll be limiting circulation to 250 emails, after that, you’ll need a referral and to DM me to get the essay.
To express your interest, go here.
Below is a snippet of the essay — it’s pretty expansive, and it covers the historical roots of wellness, Bryan Johnson, purity aesthetics:
Over the past two decades, wellness has transformed from a niche pursuit into a dominant cultural force. Once confined to alternative health circles and New Age retreats, it has now permeated mainstream consumer culture, shaping how people eat, exercise, work, and even think about their own mortality. Wellness brands, ranging from luxury health stores to biotech-driven supplement companies, have become arbiters of this movement, selling not just products but an entire lifestyle that promises self-optimization, longevity, and transcendence.
The modern wellness industry presents itself as a utopian project at its core. It offers a vision of a body and mind free from toxins, disease, and dysfunction. A world where individuals, through careful discipline and the right set of products, can unlock their fullest potential. This is not simply about health; it is about transformation. Wellness brands trade in the promise of purity, extending beyond physical well-being into moral and even spiritual realms.
Yet beneath this idealistic exterior lies a set of hidden tensions. The wellness industry is not merely about self-improvement but also about control. Control over the body, over nature, and over the forces of aging and mortality. It constructs an aspirational but ultimately exclusionary world, where only those with the means, knowledge, and discipline can fully participate. This creates an implicit hierarchy, with the “optimized” at the top and those who struggle to adhere to wellness ideals subtly positioned as lesser, a fundamentally classist distinction.
This week's picks include riff collapse, evil smoothies and ludolects.
Christina’s weekly scroll –
Substack has an influencer problem. More on this from
and .The future is coming, one injection at a time. GLP-1s are quietly becoming the biggest economic disruptor since… the internet.
Old Navy… occasionwear? S/o Zac Posen (and the recession) for this one.
Michael Imperioli (is this his arc?) and Steve Schirripa are parodying their Sopranos characters in a Sanpellegrino social series. Obsessed. Definitely part of that return to high-production-value content
mentions later on.Despite their supposed body hair positivity, Gen Z consumers outnumber Millennials in hair removal, according to Sugared + Bronzed. Tea.
You can now catch Pokémon on Google!
Completed my Pokédex! Kristen Chenoweth is now the Chief Mature Woman Officer (lol) at Laura Geller Beauty.
Are smoothies evil? While this particular story is about The White Lotus, I do think it raises broader points about socioeconomics and food.
In a single cup, the smoothie has become a symbol of so many societal ills: the health concerns that veer into disordered eating; the creep of always-be-optimizing hustle culture; the stratification of wealth that allows some to suck down $20 smoothies while others can’t buy groceries.
The smoothie, full of its supplements and powders, is a food of status and functionality — why do the work of eating when you can guzzle down calories as efficiently as possible?On the topic of food, I would be remiss not to include this (repeated) piece on desiring food vs. eating it that we featured last summer. Feels more relevant than ever.
Poppi just dropped a new flavor, Alpine Blast — a citrus soda with 55mg of caffeine. It's impossible not to see the Mountain Dew parallels here. And since Mountain Dew is the ultimate "gamer drink," it makes sense that Poppi launched their own game, Alpine Blasters, to go with it. And yes, I am on the leaderboard!
More controversy coming out of Matilda Djerf's camp. This time, she copied a photoshoot. As
pointed out, the images you (as a creative) collect should serve as inspiration, not as a blueprint. Do better!A new social platform for music superfans is on the way.
via Krista Doyle, Co-Founder & Head of Growth at Chalant, on LinkedIn Prada finally pulled the trigger and is set to buy Versace for nearly $1.4 billion.
Acne Studios pressed a (1-of-1?) vinyl featuring the original soundtrack to their SS25 show. In promoting the vinyl, Acne is actually pointing fans to Spotify rather than producing more quantities for consumers (?) which feels like a miss on their part.
ICYMI, Boy Smells is rebranding.
On Bluesky, the joke's on you if you don't get the joke.
America's gullibility crisis and “riff collapse.” Great stuff here.
Little Free Libraries have been gaining momentum for a while, but now we're seeing Free Blockbusters — a place where people can leave movies for their neighbors to borrow <3
Everyone has been talking about Fortnite this week because of Sabrina Carpenter’s appearance in Fortnite Festival Season 8 (which I, of course, purchased), but I am actually more interested in exploring the ludolects of gaming/Fortnite accent, c/o
.
i-D did an entire piece on the cultural phenomena that is slime. Real journalism is sooo back.
Lyst, the shopping platform, is being acquired by ZOZO, Inc. for $154 million.
Move over, Reformation — Verizon and Pete Davidson are now official.
Kesha is going on tour and Feeld members get early access.
lmaoooo Whether you love or hate Duo, you cannot deny that they have redefined social marketing.
We’ve been discussing a lot of AI lately, and I recently discovered Asteria — the first clean, copyrightable AI video model, trained without using stolen data.
Love that the latest Saint Laurent campaign forwent the usual photography format and commissioned Italian artist Francesco Clemente to create a series of portraits instead.
Nikita’s weekly scroll –
I really love how the good folks at Tinder said, “You know what would really help engagement in the app?” Weird AI chatbots. I mean sure, cook those numbers, babe!
The next era of choose-your-own-adventure psychedelics is upon us. Maybe.
I, for one, want off this perpetual kick-the-can-down-the-road ass ride on t*rrifs and TikTok. And here’s how beauty brands are coping.
AI foresight? Sign me up. As in, speculative thinking about AI that doesn’t seem default tech bro as a modality.
Is Jenna Lyons’s renewed cultural prominence a recession indicator? Perhaps. As a child of J. Crew chambray and sequins, however, good for her. She’s in a new Olaplex campaign.
The version of globalization we came to know/grow up with? Probably over.
Retail investors bought stocks at an unprecedented rate during this stock market bloodbath. Everything is gambling now — literally every damn thing around you. Future is uncertain, might as well full send chance.
In brighter news, I suppose, Cécred launched in Ulta and dropped their first brand campaign.
I wouldn’t go so far as to say that influencer brands ever became passé, but I would say that influencers are learning from their peers’ missteps and building brands with differentiated identities and not doing lazy licensing deals. And that’s what defines the next-gen of “influencer” brands.
Nothing feels worse than life on the leaderboard.
I’m not Gen Z, so I feel late to this, but apparently Coach has built a dozen experiential stores, and Gen Z is spending a lot of time in them.
I hope the Coffee Mate team had gotten to see the finale before they went ahead with piña colada creamers, but… wow, the business of The White Lotus sure is something! I’ve previously linked a piece on this, but here’s a refresher.
Christina note: Building off this, here are four charts that prove the The White Lotus effect is very, very real.
The Row is launching home goods. Sure.
Much digital ink has been spilled on Gen Z and their neo-puritanism, but this essay about how the cohort “performs” sex and sexuality instead of experiencing it… chin scratch! See also: teen dating on the decline.
If you’re a media brand, that shit is not a zine, it’s a special edition. Anyway, Dazed is dropping their first sport issue, Maxx, with Nike.
You’ve heard of Ozempic face. Now, brands are monetizing yet another one of your aesthetic anxieties by serving up specially formulated skincare for people who’ve used GLP-1s and felt their skin suffered as a result.
Brand social trend report! The trend in here re: a return to high-production value — I saw it coming in 2022.
˚₊‧꒰ა ☆ ໒꒱ ‧₊˚Little Treat Corner ˚₊‧꒰ა ☆ ໒꒱ ‧₊˚
Christina’s weekly report:
READING: Bestie’s piece on The White Lotus and about all the art history references in the finale—
EATING: Gluten-free burrito bowl.
PLAYING: Fortnite. What songs are y’all using for dropping in and victories?
OBSESSING: Over SuperPotionLabs gaming zine. Available April 18th!
RECOMMENDING: Seeing a movie this weekend! I’m watching DROP 🫳
TREATING: Thinking about these vegan deviled "eggs" — will be making and eating ASAP.
Nikita’s weekly report:
READING: Colored Television by Danzy Senna.
EATING: Bread Pudding from Farm to People.
PLAYING: Drank in My Cup. Not even joking a tiny little bit. Where is Kirko these days?
OBSESSING: Over getting back to my lifting schedule.
RECOMMENDING: Negotiating with confidence. Join Kim Mackenzie & Rosie Yakob’s workshop “Speak Up, Cash In” on April 24th (12PM ET/ 5PM GMT) and get $50 off as a TOL reader with code THINKING-OUT-LOUD-CREW <3
TREATING: Matcha with pistachio milk at DAE with the gurlies.
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incredible volume of randomalia
thanks for the inclusion- but now so much else I must catchup on, might just have to take the afternoon off work x