{"id":649759,"date":"2026-05-05T17:30:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-05T17:30:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/649759\/"},"modified":"2026-05-05T17:30:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-05T17:30:10","slug":"tween-baddies-and-toronto-mans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/649759\/","title":{"rendered":"Tween Baddies and Toronto Mans"},"content":{"rendered":"

Louis Vuitton names<\/a> Alysa Liu as brand ambassador; Gracie Abrams announces<\/a> new song \u201cHit the Wall\u201d; Noah Kahan earns<\/a> first No. 1 album with The Great Divide; and Lola Tung is starring<\/a> in a sapphic soccer rom-com; and I need Blue Ivy on the cover<\/a> of Teen Vogue (or WYouth<\/a>, I guess?). <\/p>\n

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THE LIFE AND TIMES OF AN AMERICAN TWEEN<\/a>, newyorker
Anna Wiener spent months reporting in San Francisco on Mira, a 12-year-old sixth grader with peach-dyed front strands who commutes alone, tracks her allowance on Excel, performs aerial hoop five days a week, reads \u201csmut novels\u201d alongside her mom, and recently swore off Shein after her dad explained Xinjiang internment camps and the global supply chain (\u201cbut only once she\u2019d bought the dress\u201d). It\u2019s impossible to choose my favorite detail in this perfect profile, but Mira\u2019s group chat called \u201c4th Period Baddies\u201d is up there:<\/p>\n

For years, Mira has been agitating for more independence. Last August, she began commuting to and from school alone, hurtling around the edge of the continent on the public bus. Since fifth grade, she has worn a silver Apple Watch, a glorified tracking device, which she pushes to the outer limits of usability. She is a member of several large group chats, including one called \u201c4th Period Baddies,\u201d and regularly consults Siri, summoning facts and images from the ether. (\u201cPhotos of hazel eyes.\u201d \u201cWhat does A.S.M.R. stand for?\u201d) Still, the watch is no phone. A phone would be much cooler; would be, perhaps, the coolest thing. An Apple Watch was a bridge from childhood to adulthood. A phone would be a portal.<\/p>\n

I SPENT 3 DAYS INTERVIEWING TEENS AT AMERICAN DREAM MALL. HERE\u2019S WHAT I LEARNED.<\/a>, thestrategist
The New Jersey retail complex has become a weekend destination for teens, with young shoppers traveling in from states like Maine and Rhode Island to spend their allowances (supplemented, in some cases, by their parents\u2019 Apple Pay) at Pacsun, Hollister, and Garage, where girls were buying \u201ctops, tops, and more tops.\u201d As for stores they wish would open at the American Dream, young shoppers named Brandy Melville, Edikted, and Skims, all of which are staples at Soho\u2019s Tween Row.<\/a> The de facto uniform among adolescent mall-goers was gray sweats and a white tee for boys, low-rise baggy jeans or sweatpants with a tank or sweatshirt for girls, a look 13-year-old Hana called \u201clazy girl or clean girl.\u201d Lululemon should hire 14-year-old Juliet, who correctly identified what\u2019s currently wrong with the retailer: \u201cI used to like Lululemon, but I think Alo has better quality and colors,\u201d she said. \u201cMe and my mom both think that Lululemon just needs a big influencer or celebrity to make a video on them, and they will come back.\u201d<\/p>\n

THE STRANGE, MULTICULTURAL SLANG OF TORONTO\u2019S TEENAGERS<\/a>, economist
Toronto teenagers are speaking a hyper-local multicultural slang called Toronto Mans, marked by TH-stopping (\u201ddis\u201d instead of \u201cthis\u201d) and rapid \u201csquawking\u201d delivery. The vocabulary borrows from Jamaican patois (\u201dah lie,\u201d \u201ctwo-twos\u201d), Somali (\u201dkawal,\u201d to scam), Arabic (\u201dwallahi\u201d), and heavily from London grime \u2014 \u201dpeng,\u201d \u201cends,\u201d \u201coppblock,\u201d \u201cwasteman,\u201d \u201cmandem\u201d \u2014 with the \u201cMans\u201d itself derived from \u201cmandem.\u201d (This phenomenon is not new<\/a>, but it is new to me and might be to you, too.) University of Toronto Mississauga linguist Derek Denis, who calls it \u201cMulticultural Toronto English,\u201d says speakers \u201cstrategically deploy certain lexical or phonological features to make certain interactional moves,\u201d and the dialect is spreading \u2014 TorontoTide social channel films teens screeching in the upscale Yorkdale mall, though Jane & Finch kids say many of the posters are just using the lingo for clout and actually come from nicer suburbs like Vaughan. I need 10,000 more words on this; the New Yorker should send Anna Wiener to Toronto.<\/p>\n

A message from Whatnot, today\u2019s sponsor<\/p>\n

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YOUNG NEW YORKERS HAVE A NEW HOT SPOT: SUNDAY MASS<\/a>, wsj
While much of the data around Gen Z\u2019s religious revival has been challenged<\/a>, churches in New York are nevertheless reporting standing-room crowds. At St. Joseph\u2019s in Greenwich Village, 22-year-old Anthony Gross and Kate DePetro started gathering twentysomethings at The Pizza Box before 6 p.m. Sunday Mass \u2014 100 people came to \u201cPizza to Pews\u201d the first week, 200 by the third, with attendees driving in from Long Island and taking the train from Boston. Gross found the parish after asking ChatGPT where to find a young Catholic community. \u201cNobody wants to go to Mass alone,\u201d he said. \u201cBetter than going to a bar and spending $400.\u201d Rev. Boniface Endorf of St. Joe\u2019s, where the post-Mass young adult discussion group has grown from 25 to 200, said, \u201cPeople are looking for more than career and consumption. What does it mean to grow up? They\u2019re looking for guidance.\u201d<\/p>\n

STRICTLY PERSONAL<\/a>, airmail
The newspaper personal ad \u2014 the back-page classified that faded with the rise of online dating in the early 2000s \u2014 is back, positioned as an antidote to image-saturated swiping. Emily Sundberg<\/a> launched a personals section on Feed Me<\/a> after readers kept sending her Hinge profiles that said things like \u201cWe\u2019ll get along if you read Feed Me\u201d; and New York magazine recently revived its 1980s-era \u201cStrictly Personal\u201d column, which is free and runs monthly with a strict no-AI policy by editor Amy Rose Spiegel, who calls herself \u201ca switchboard\u201d for romance. Spiegel said the format draws \u201cpublic-facing figures\u201d because anonymity means they \u201ccan\u2019t be screenshotted,\u201d and that submissions show such \u201coriginality and verve\u201d she\u2019s frequently accused of ghostwriting them. One recent ad reads:<\/p>\n

\u201cLANKY READER with too many hobbies, 31M, Boston, seeks creative woman 28\u201334 (readers of all shapes and lengths welcome) to talk dirty to me, by which I mean, \u2018I actually just read an article about\u2026\u2019 Let\u2019s walk fast together. And make everything harder than it has to be. And become old, hunched-over city people in a too-small apartment.\u201d It continues: \u201cKind of want like five kids, but in a non-Republican way. Let\u2019s raise a passel\u2014a large brood\u2014of weirdos.\u201d <\/p>\n

One last thought:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Louis Vuitton names Alysa Liu as brand ambassador; Gracie Abrams announces new song \u201cHit the Wall\u201d; Noah Kahan…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":649760,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[49,48,61],"class_list":["post-649759","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649759","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=649759"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649759\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/649760"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=649759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=649759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=649759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}