From brat summer to hot rodent men: why Gen Z love a label

Before the internet demanded our attention 24/7, television, radio, and lifestyle magazines had a very specific grip on the zeitgeist, combing youth culture to determine the next craze. Now, gauging cool is a far more democratic endeavor, and the escalating speed of digital culture means that fads can come and go before they even peak. Mediated thr... See more

In a SoundCloud landscape teeming with off-the-wall musical experiments, it makes sense that artists are anointing themselves as genre-generators. It’s a way to compete in the attention economy, a tactic to distinguish your sound from what could otherwise be perceived as another set of weird noises in a sea of bizarre bleeps and bloops.

In the span of maybe four months, we saw “mob wife,” “ballet core,” “rockstar girlfriend,” and “tradwife.” There was also the “office siren” aesthetic, which attempted to synthesize the sterility of the office with the mythological seductiveness of the siren.