Why are Gen Z suddenly so nostalgic for 2016?
2016 was the year of Pokemon Go, The Chainsmokers, Snapchat dog filters and skinny jeans. Gen Z are currently on a nostalgia binge, with searches for ‘2016’ having increased 71% in the last year over 2024. What’s going on? We’re not even two weeks into the year, and everything already...
Current in Offbeat
2025 was the year of yearning
We couldn’t stop longing for what it didn’t have After a decade defined by hustle and optimisation, 2025 turned toward something softer and unresolved. The year of yearning. From breakout show ‘The Summer I Turned Pretty’ to Charli XCX’s viral hit ‘party 4 u’, the past 12 months of romance have...
Why are people thirst trapping on LinkedIn?
LinkedIn has become an unusual breeding ground for thirst trap content. Is this peak cringe, or merely a symptom of life online in 2025? I was just looking for inspirational quotes, I swear. The social media flex is inevitable. Whether you’re looking to temporarily numb your brain on TikTok, have a...
Beeple’s ‘Regular Animals’ turns billionaires into terrifying robot dogs
A late entry for the most disturbing art installation of 2025, Beeple’s ‘Regular Animals’ features a pen of robotic dogs bearing the likeness of tech billionaires and revered artists. They canter around, snap photos, and take NFT dumps. ‘You may live to see man-made horrors beyond your comprehension,’ declared Nikola...
Explaining the Gen Alpha ‘6-7’ TikTok trend
Are you an elderly Gen Zer? Confused about why the kids are nonsensically saying ‘6-7?’ Us too. Every so often, a moment in pop culture will arrive as a reminder that youth isn’t eternal. Hearing an in-joke you don’t understand or missing an obvious conversational reference can make even the...
Why is there a Gen Z activism stan war going on?
Stan culture isn’t limited purely to the world of music, but this might just be the most peculiar beef fictionalised by the internet to date. Pick a side and get to tweeting your non-sensical argument immediately. The latest internet beef based on precisely nothing, and with absolutely no influence from either...
Opinion – women are done with heteronormative ideas of love
As Lily Allen’s scathing account of marital infidelity resonates so broadly, it’s clear women are detaching from outdated ideals that their value can only ever truly be found within men. Maybe it’s because I’m a single woman in her late twenties – but something feels different lately. A change in energy, if you will. That shift has crystallised in two cultural moments that landed almost simultaneously: Lily Allen’s new album West End...
Considering dating an AI partner?
AI promised us a better future. Yet here we are, one step away from asking our AI therapist how to cope with our AI partner’s latest update. OpenAI is getting ready to launch a new ChatGPT feature by the end of the year, letting verified adult users have romantic or sexual chats. They are not the first to go there, but they’ve definitely turned up the heat around the conversation...
‘Trad-sons’ are now a thing
Stay-at-home sons are the latest iteration of the ‘trad-wife’ trend. We have Nara Smith to thank for the advent of the modern ‘trad-wife’. Whether Smith defines herself within these borders is another thing, but the influencer’s dulcet tones and endless couture collection ensured her cooking skills became the blueprint for housewives everywhere. Controversial though it may be, the ‘trad-wife’ aesthetic (trend, cultural phenomenon, whatever you want to call it) has...
What are lavender marriages and why are they on the rise?
Thanks to TikTok trends, a bleak dating culture, and a rising sense of patriarchal dread, we’re pining for platonic love. The term ‘lavender marriage’ originates from the ‘lavender scare’ of the mid-20th century, a period of moral panic fuelled by Sen. Joseph McCarthy and President Eisenhower that saw a widespread purge of the federal workforce. Thousands of individuals lost their jobs, livelihoods and even their lives – dismissed under suspicion of homosexuality....
