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This Barbie loves memes. Happy Thursday, Future Party people. ICYMI, the internet has been buzzing with fan-made posters for Greta Gerwig’s upcoming film Barbie. From “This Barbie lost half a day of skiing” to “He’s just Ken,” the viral meme generator from Warner Bros. has completely taken over our feeds. Seriously. Just try scrolling Twitter or IG without seeing it.
In other news… Hollywood gets a diversity report card, boomers buy up the housing market, and young Americans love Chinese apps.
Top Trends
YouTube → Hypnotic
Twitter → School of Rock
Google → Lizzo
Reddit → Dana Carvey
TikTok → “Da Girls” - Ciara
Spotify → “Cannonball” - Michigander
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ENTERTAINMENT
Streaming films take the lead in diversity
The Future. UCLA’s 10th annual “Hollywood Diversity Report” found a fork between diversity and theatrical films when it comes to representation, with streaming titles more diverse and including more minorities than theatrical ones. While the new report shows a promising trend in streaming, there’s still a way to go before the share of representation in movies is equal to that of the American population… and recent spending cuts may put the brakes on that progress.
Audience mirrorStudying the 89 English language films appearing in the top 200 globally theatrically-released titles and the top 100 streaming titles released in 2022, UCLA found that…
When it came to writers, directors, lead roles, and overall cast, streaming films had a much higher percentage of diverse talent in these roles. In contrast, theatrical films had their percentage of diverse representation “backslide to 2019 levels.”
The same is true of women in film, with streaming films having 10% more female writers, directors, and lead actors.
Theatrical films are far more diverse than they were a decade ago, however — For example, in 2011, women directed 4.6% of theatrical films. In 2022, it was 14.6%.
The new majorityThe study found that, as streaming films have become more diverse, their audiences have also grown, finding new audiences that now see themselves in the movies — whether by who’s on screen or by the POV of the story being told. And that’s a phenomenon that applies to theatrical films when they’re given a shot in the international market.
While minorities currently represent 43.1% of the American population, that share is growing by a half percent each year… which means that minorities will soon be the majority in roughly two decades. So, while “minority” and “diverse” may be synonymous today, that won’t be the case forever.
HOUSING
The boomer boom // Illustration by Kate Walker
Boomers are hogging all the houses
The Future. Boomers became the biggest home buyers in America once again by taking advantage of low-interest rates, the ability to leverage equity for down payments, and the rise of remote work. While this has set millennials (who are in their prime home-buying years) back a step, the demographic shift may be a short-lived phenomenon. Boomers may have just been trying to get the best deal for their retirement property while they could.
Retirement vacuum How did boomers take control of the housing market from millennials just as it was their time to realize the American dream?
Between July 2021 and June 2022, boomers purchased 39% of all homes sold last year.
51% of those aged 68-76 were able to make all-cash offers thanks to equity they had in their previous property.
Meanwhile, millennials only scored 28% of homes and had to rely on either family or friends for down payments or take out high-interest loans. Only 6% of those under 32 paid all in cash.
Non-starter homesWhat’s making matters worse is that, although millennials represented 72.1 million Americans in 2019, homebuilders had only built 21,000 single-family homes per 1 million people each year for the past decade — half as many as the three decades before that.
A growing millennial population up against a dearth of affordable starter homes was a recipe for scarcity and insane competition… even without the demand from boomers.
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TECHNOLOGY
App imports // Illustration by Kate Walker
Young Americans love Chinese apps
The Future. Apps created by Chinese tech firms are dominating American app store charts, mostly thanks to young people. It’s one of the reasons why banning TikTok is proving such a hot-button issue in the US… and why other Chinese tech companies are trying to distance their apps from their homeland. But looking at why Chinese apps are so successful may give US tech companies clues into how to make their products more sticky.
The HitmakersLast month, four of the five top apps in the US were made in China.
Temu, an Amazon-like shopping app, was the most downloaded during the first three weeks, driven by cheap products and hauls going viral on TikTok.
CapCut, the video-editing companion app to TikTok, was the second-most downloaded.
TikTok, despite the threats of getting banned and reaching critical mass in the US, still came in third.
SHEIN, which until recently was the most-downloaded shopping app in America (now it's Temu), is still coming in fourth overall.
And Facebook came in fifth.
Under the algorithmHow have these apps become so addictive?
Chinese tech companies use a massive roster of engineers to constantly fine-tune products — dubbed “embroidery.”
They assign multiple teams the same feature or product, but with slight differences, with the best-performing version ultimately getting all the resources — dubbed “horse racing.”
Once apps are fully primed for maximum addiction through constant tweaking among Chinese users, Chinese companies then market them to US users — spending huge sums to do so. Not every app hits, but when they do, they can really hit the zeitgeist.
TOGETHER WITH POWER LIFE
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Highlights
The best curated daily stories from around the web
YouTube wants you to split your screens for Coachella
Coachella announced it’ll be beaming six separate simultaneous streams on YouTube once the festival kicks off next weekend. That’s double last year’s count, which will ensure you can see both Gorillaz and Becky G at the same time (channel hopping at its finest). The livestreams will kick off every day of the fest at 4 pm PT.
Read more → theverge
India lets AI run wild
Uh oh. India’s Ministry of Electronics and IT announced yesterday that it would not institute any policies to regulate the growth of AI in the country. Instead, it calls the sector a “significant and strategic” market for the country that will have a “kinetic effect” on business development. We guess no one wants to get left behind… even with all the risks.
Read more → techcrunch
Bacteria can now grow into some sneakers
A startup called Modern Synthesis has found a way to mix sugar from plant waste and microbes to create “microbial textiles.” The microbe, K. rhaeticus, is found in kombucha and produces a material called nanocellulose. When the microbe feeds on sugars placed around a “scaffold” (like a shoe, per se), the microbe weaves it together like a fiber — crafting a textile that can eventually be composted. Science is wild.
Read more → fastcompany
Moviegoers will go to the movies no matter what
Here’s a new finding that will confound movie studios and anger theater chains. According to a new report from UTA IQ, two-thirds of Americans say it doesn’t matter how short or long a movie is playing in theaters… if they want to see it in cinemas, they’ll see it in cinemas. Additionally, putting a film in theaters is easily the best way to build awareness for a movie before it eventually ends up on streaming. Survey respondents said only eight of the last 24 films they watched recently were streaming originals.
Read more → deadline
FBI ends Genesis
Hacker marketplace Genesis Market — known as a go-to place to buy stolen logins and credentials — was taken down by the FBI and other agencies around the world. The operation, amazingly codenamed “Operation Cookie Monster,” saw the arrest of 120 people and has identified 59,000 people that use the site. Before its shutdown, Genesis Market had stolen 80 million account credentials. Good riddance.
Read more → techcrunch
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Today's email was brought to you by David Vendrell.Edited by Nick Comney. Publishing by Sara Kitnick.