Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News.
Speaker 2: Hello, odd lots listeners. You are listening to another special
Speaker 2: episode of the podcast. It was recorded in New York
Speaker 2: City on July twenty sixth. In this conversation, we talked
Speaker 2: to Emily Sunberg of the feed Me newsletter. We are
Speaker 2: talking about how gen Z sees the world, how they
Speaker 2: think about capitalism, how they think about money, how they
Speaker 2: think about investing, how they think about spending it, and
Speaker 2: how they think about how nobody is coming to save them.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 4: I don't think it's a secret at this point that
Speaker 4: gen Z seems to love stock market investing and things
Speaker 4: like that, trying to make money. So take a listen.
Speaker 2: First question, I've been on my mind the last couple
Speaker 2: of days. You have a very like young plugged in
Speaker 2: like sort of business capitalism audience. What percentage of your
Speaker 2: readers do you think voted for u Zoran?
Speaker 5: A young man I think he was nineteen, a Yale student,
Speaker 5: emailed me this morning and asked if I could put
Speaker 5: that poll in my newsletter, and I didn't. It felt
Speaker 5: a little late, but I should have. I'm guessing sixty
Speaker 5: five percent. Cautiously like, yeah, can.
Speaker 4: You maybe describe your sort of average reader just for
Speaker 4: people who might not be aware, like what population are
Speaker 4: you plugged into here?
Speaker 5: So I don't know if any of you use substack,
Speaker 5: but they don't give you these analytics. So all of
Speaker 5: my data about my readership has been quite anecdotal from
Speaker 5: just looking at people's profiles in the comment section and
Speaker 5: seeing who shows up to my parties.
Speaker 3: Do any of you read it? Like if I do?
Speaker 5: Okay, so some of you that's some of my audience.
Speaker 5: I like to say that my readership is everyone from
Speaker 5: bartenders to billionaires. But I would say, like, if you're
Speaker 5: paying eighty dollars a year for a newsletter, then you're
Speaker 5: probably making a decent amount of money, or you're at
Speaker 5: least interested in making money. And I think it's a
Speaker 5: mostly New York audience thirty to forty five ish, But
Speaker 5: if you come to my parties you'll see who else
Speaker 5: there is. But I would say, like people interested in
Speaker 5: making money and somewhat interested in New York City business
Speaker 5: and culture.
Speaker 2: So the first time, several tries to get you on
Speaker 2: the podcast, but finally making it happen, and I wanted
Speaker 2: to talk about like gen Z and capitalism, because I
Speaker 2: feel like millennials and maybe Gen X, but Millennials in
Speaker 2: particular like sort of had this love hate relationship, like
Speaker 2: sort of apologized for wanting money, so ambivalent about it.
Speaker 2: And I get the impression that the younger generation is
Speaker 2: like much more comfortable with like.
Speaker 6: Yeah, we want to make a ton of money.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So I'm like, yeah, so talk about if that's correct
Speaker 2: this perception.
Speaker 5: I think one thing that's very clear about gen Z
Speaker 5: is that they've repeatedly been told nobody.
Speaker 3: Is coming to save you.
Speaker 5: You're going to graduate into a job market that barely exists,
Speaker 5: and if you get a job, you might not even
Speaker 5: have a desk or an office to go into.
Speaker 3: A lot of.
Speaker 5: Them were home during COVID, and they're also seeing like
Speaker 5: shootings and schools all the time, and they're seeing their
Speaker 5: capital getting sworn like there it's nobody's coming to save them,
Speaker 5: and it's sort of up to them to make the
Speaker 5: most of this world while it's still in existence. And
Speaker 5: you hear this sense of like get the bag while
Speaker 5: the world is still here for.
Speaker 3: You to make some money out of it. What was
Speaker 3: your question?
Speaker 6: No, that was basically it like that's kind of overwhelming.
Speaker 3: Sentiment that I hear from these people. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think it was like some survey and they asked
Speaker 2: all the generations, like what do you need to have
Speaker 2: a good life, and there's something like seventy thousand whatever,
Speaker 2: and then gen Z was like five hundred thousand dollars
Speaker 2: salary or something like that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean you're even seeing like if you're a creator,
Speaker 5: even at like Goldman Sachs, you're probably making more money
Speaker 5: as like making day in the life tiktoks than you
Speaker 5: are from your salary. And like there's this growing creator economy,
Speaker 5: and your role model might be somebody who's like made
Speaker 5: millions and millions of dollars a year from humiliating themselves online,
Speaker 5: and like there's all these possibilities and tools from entering
Speaker 5: the creator economy. Like I think Bloomberg published a story
Speaker 5: last week that even just the market for creator marketing
Speaker 5: is like thirty three billion dollars.
Speaker 3: Now, it's massive.
Speaker 4: This idea that no one's coming to save you. We've
Speaker 4: talked about this on an episode before, but it does
Speaker 4: feel like that kind of translates into people making these
Speaker 4: lottery ticket type bets. Right, So I'll buy into crypto
Speaker 4: or I'll make a ridiculous options trade or something like
Speaker 4: that and hope that I just get lucky and save myself.
Speaker 5: M hmm, yeah, I think like something with crypto. There's
Speaker 5: this online sort of sportsmanship and camaraderie around it as well,
Speaker 5: So there's like this fun competition and making the money,
Speaker 5: and it's all very public as well. To me, like
Speaker 5: you're seeing out how much your peers are making and winning,
Speaker 5: and you're almost like seeing how much they're taking home
Speaker 5: each week, which is stressful.
Speaker 6: How much of the nobody is coming to save you.
Speaker 2: Mentality is like AI dread like jobs as we know
Speaker 2: them might not exist.
Speaker 3: I think a lot of it, Yeah, Moore.
Speaker 5: I mean back to this idea that say you graduate
Speaker 5: from college last week on a one hundred degree day
Speaker 5: and you don't have a job lined up yet, or
Speaker 5: maybe you do have a job lined up, and you're
Speaker 5: entering a very flat company where there's not like a
Speaker 5: clear ladder for you to climb, and not only is
Speaker 5: your timeline there, it probably feels somewhat flat, but the
Speaker 5: end is like whether you're a copywriter or if you're
Speaker 5: working in finance, there's like the end of it might
Speaker 5: be a replacement with mass layoffs and AI coming in
Speaker 5: to take that job.
Speaker 4: I'm going to ask a completely self interested question, but
Speaker 4: does gen Z truly hate the millennial generation?
Speaker 3: Is that a real thing?
Speaker 5: I'm not gen Z, so like, I'm not like the
Speaker 5: speaker of the generation. I'm I guess maybe how I'm thirty,
Speaker 5: So yeah, there's like but I never identified as gens.
Speaker 5: I'm definitely identify more with millennials. I don't think they
Speaker 5: truly hate millennials. I don't think that's the case. I
Speaker 5: think that there's like a lot of parts about there's
Speaker 5: like this tweetness to millennials that is like cringey, but
Speaker 5: that's fair.
Speaker 2: I agree.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I'm really actually.
Speaker 2: I've actually been thinking about this phenomenon of like really
Speaker 2: flat companies for a while, so I thought it was
Speaker 2: like really interesting that you said that, because.
Speaker 6: It really feels like and we actually did.
Speaker 2: An episode recently with the economist Ricardo Houseman where he
Speaker 2: sort of talked about like companies their structure is just
Speaker 2: they have a lot of different people who are like
Speaker 2: the talent, but it doesn't feel like they're just sort
Speaker 2: of normal jobs at a lot of companies for people
Speaker 2: who are just sort of normal to get.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I worked at Meta for a few years and
Speaker 5: there were like these Roman numerals next to your position,
Speaker 5: and you knew how much everybody at the company was
Speaker 5: making if they were like a three or five, And
Speaker 5: when you moved from a four to a five, it
Speaker 5: was like twenty thousand dollars more year, like not life changing,
Speaker 5: like maybe you're taking an extra few ubers like a
Speaker 5: year or something like that. And it felt very flat like.
Speaker 5: And it's also hard to look at somebody who you're
Speaker 5: working with who's two levels higher than you and necessarily
Speaker 5: aspire to that, Like you're not going to stay an
Speaker 5: extra two hours at night.
Speaker 3: It's not inspiring.
Speaker 4: So just going back to Momdani. So one of the
Speaker 4: theories about why he's kind of resonating with the younger
Speaker 4: crowd nowadays is this idea that Okay, they don't really
Speaker 4: have a stake in capitalism necessarily, like they don't feel
Speaker 4: like they're being rewarded by the capitalist system, and so
Speaker 4: they're voting for change. Is that something you kind of
Speaker 4: observe in your day to day interactions.
Speaker 5: Well, I work alone, so I'm not like observing many
Speaker 5: interactions from people, but like online. I think the people
Speaker 5: who gravitated towards him the strongest felt more religion like hope,
Speaker 5: Like it was like this idea of hope and something different,
Speaker 5: and it was like a salve after such a rough
Speaker 5: beginning of the year with like Trump coming into the
Speaker 5: White House. But yeah, I don't I think it was.
Speaker 5: It felt more emotional and almost religious to me than like,
Speaker 5: at least from what I've been observing, and and why
Speaker 5: people attach themselves to that message so strongly.
Speaker 2: What about we're talking about, Okay, you have this desire
Speaker 2: to get the bag, make a bunch of money and
Speaker 2: like a lottery ticket metaphorically with crypto or whatever. How
Speaker 2: does this mentality how would you say it changes consumption
Speaker 2: patterns and like the impulse to just like save or
Speaker 2: like how does it affect what people buy?
Speaker 3: That's a good question.
Speaker 5: I was talking to a friend the other day who
Speaker 5: said that she was at her younger sister's graduation on
Speaker 5: the West Coast and all of the young women were
Speaker 5: wearing Gucci sandals, like all of them at this school.
Speaker 5: It was in the Bay Area, and she's ten years
Speaker 5: older than her sister, and she was like, this is
Speaker 5: not something that I witnessed, and it's not like everyone
Speaker 5: there is loaded to afford this this like specific sandal.
Speaker 5: And I know that a lot of you might have
Speaker 5: read that story in New York Magazine a few weeks
Speaker 5: ago about the West Village and this sort of homogeneous
Speaker 5: looking young person in New York City, and I'm realizing
Speaker 5: that that's kind of a phenomenon across the whole country.
Speaker 5: It's like everyone is wearing the same buying the same,
Speaker 5: like fitting into this.
Speaker 3: And millennials back to that.
Speaker 5: It's like everybody wanted to do their own thing and
Speaker 5: listen to their own music and have their own style
Speaker 5: and have their own tumbler or whatever.
Speaker 3: Like it was annoying.
Speaker 5: It was annoying, but it created like diversity of opinions
Speaker 5: and the ability to have like small shows that sold
Speaker 5: out and stuff and small brands that existed in small
Speaker 5: stores that existed. But and I haven't fully baked out
Speaker 5: the thought, but I started realizing it like a week ago,
Speaker 5: like the West Village thing has quickly turned into like
Speaker 5: if you live in them in a flyover state, or
Speaker 5: you live in the West Village, you might be wearing
Speaker 5: the same exact outfit and be just as obsessed with
Speaker 5: like the macha thing whatever. So that's like definitely part
Speaker 5: of the consumption conversation. It's like you're checking off boxes
Speaker 5: of like small things that you're buying, whether it's at
Speaker 5: Starbucks or Gucci, to like kind of form this perfect
Speaker 5: life of what it means to be a twenty five
Speaker 5: year old, And like, Okay, now I'm happy I figured
Speaker 5: that out. Something else that I've been reading a lot about.
Speaker 5: I have some young readers, and I do a lot
Speaker 5: of surveys in my newsletter, which is awesome that my
Speaker 5: readers are even willing to spend like fifteen minutes on
Speaker 5: that because I wouldn't. There's a real sentiment of, like,
Speaker 5: the world is burning, so why shouldn't we enjoy the
Speaker 5: things that we can. And I don't know what the
Speaker 5: savings accounts of these people look like or the credit
Speaker 5: card bills look like, but I know that a lot
Speaker 5: of these people are spending money that they do not have,
Speaker 5: because I understand that the jobs that usually facilitate that
Speaker 5: are a lot they're paying a lot more than what
Speaker 5: these young people are making.
Speaker 4: And I imagine there's a sense that I'm never going
Speaker 4: to make enough to buy a house or for sure, and.
Speaker 5: Then there's like the whole buy now, pay later conversation
Speaker 5: which you can buy now, pay later, you're seamless, like
Speaker 5: it's crazy. Yeah, So I think it's like you make
Speaker 5: the money, you spend the money, and they're probably not
Speaker 5: even thinking about what about my kids because that's the
Speaker 5: dating apps don't even work.
Speaker 3: So I don't know where the kids come in.
Speaker 2: Now, this is bleak, there's weak actually, you know, but
Speaker 2: there's it's I'm enjoying this. So I lived for many
Speaker 2: years of my life in Illinois. My dad was a
Speaker 2: physics professor at a very small college, and really it
Speaker 2: always strikes me like that he was totally fine moving
Speaker 2: to a fairly small, large town in Illinois. When you
Speaker 2: said flyover states, is there this aspiration that like you
Speaker 2: have to get to one of the big cities that
Speaker 2: like you have to get to like New York or
Speaker 2: LA or San Francisci.
Speaker 3: I think as much as I don't think that's like
Speaker 3: a new thing.
Speaker 5: I think it's like, well, we'll get to the West Village, like,
Speaker 5: but I don't think that everybody there's like a new
Speaker 5: grind to do that. I think that there's just as
Speaker 5: many young people in New York living with four roommates
Speaker 5: in a one bedroom with like weird home depot walls.
Speaker 3: Everywhere as there were when I was young.
Speaker 5: Where they're working, I mean, the three of us are
Speaker 5: all like in the creator economy.
Speaker 3: I'm sure that there's a whole micro group of young
Speaker 3: people doing the same trying to do the same thing we.
Speaker 2: Are in the creator economy.
Speaker 3: Just on the hey, there's a Mike.
Speaker 6: This is what else are we doing? We're creating?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 6: Did I disagree? No, Okay, we're creators.
Speaker 4: Just on the West Village girl thing and the idea
Speaker 4: of homogeneity among fashion and consumerism. What do you think
Speaker 4: is driving that? Is that like a lack of community
Speaker 4: or I don't know, Like.
Speaker 5: That was one of the most shocking parts of the
Speaker 5: story to me, Like I feel so silly. If there
Speaker 5: was one person in this room with the same exact
Speaker 5: outfit as me, I'd be like, ga, wait a second,
Speaker 5: how what happened? Like I thought I was putting something together,
Speaker 5: two white pieces of clothing, But it is it's really
Speaker 5: weird to like, I don't know if you've ever been
Speaker 5: in one of those workout classes, but it's like they
Speaker 5: all have this set.
Speaker 3: It's I'm not sure what it is.
Speaker 5: I have to do some research, because it's an extreme
Speaker 5: comfort with having the an identical life. And I think
Speaker 5: part of it is probably like the Amazon storefront and
Speaker 5: they're all following the same influencer who's promoting the same
Speaker 5: product and everybody buys it immediately. There's this piece of
Speaker 5: clothing I guess it was a dress from a Tory
Speaker 5: birch a few weeks ago, and I posted it because
Speaker 5: I saw like five people at the at different weddings
Speaker 5: on the same weekend wearing it and it's a very
Speaker 5: distinct like hot pink dress with mirrors all over it.
Speaker 5: And I said, this is going to be the wedding
Speaker 5: guest dress of the summer, like this is going to
Speaker 5: be everywhere. And it sold out the next day, Like
Speaker 5: people were not like then, I'm not going to buy it.
Speaker 5: Everyone bought it, Like everybody clicked the link and then
Speaker 5: bought it. Like there's this I think when you're all
Speaker 5: following the same people and the same brands and having
Speaker 5: the same excitement about the time people follow what time
Speaker 5: like clothing drops come out at these brands too, Like
Speaker 5: what time the sites get updated. There's a lot more
Speaker 5: likelihood than that you're all going to buy the same thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really weird, Like you'd think, Okay, people want
Speaker 2: to be distinct. But I remember my wife and I
Speaker 2: went out to a comedy show a couple months ago,
Speaker 2: and everybody was dressed the same, and both of us
Speaker 2: were like sort of flabbergasted.
Speaker 3: It was the same.
Speaker 2: It was just like sort of black, like a sort
Speaker 2: of black shirt. I mean, you know, it's New York,
Speaker 2: so people have always worn all black. But it was
Speaker 2: really weird. There was no color in anyone's clothes in
Speaker 2: the entire audience that night, and it was very strange.
Speaker 2: How much do those Gucci sand goals cost.
Speaker 3: Eight hundred?
Speaker 5: I don't know, man, I don't wear I don't have, okay,
Speaker 5: but like a lot of money for a pair of
Speaker 5: shoes and then for everyone to feel comfort. I mean
Speaker 5: we see it all the time with bags and stuff,
Speaker 5: but it is sort of funny when it's an entire wardrobe.
Speaker 4: You talk about the burken what.
Speaker 3: Part I don't talk about, just talk about it. Do
Speaker 3: people still buy burkins like as an investment? I don't know.
Speaker 5: Bethany Frankel said she's made like a ton of money
Speaker 5: on flipping her burcands.
Speaker 3: But god, flip is crazy. Yeah, she's a flipper. She did.
Speaker 3: She's bought some new houses too.
Speaker 2: One of the things that I always like reading in
Speaker 2: your newsletter is like you're always talking about new brands
Speaker 2: that are launching, new restaurants, et cetera. There's been we
Speaker 2: talk about volatility in the market, all this uncertainty due
Speaker 2: to trade and whatever else. Do you feel any slow
Speaker 2: down it all in sort of new entrepreneurial endeavors on
Speaker 2: account of all this uncertainty that's going on. Or is
Speaker 2: it just like people just powering through.
Speaker 5: It a slow down of new economic endeavors like from young.
Speaker 2: People, yeah, or just like like new business launches. Has
Speaker 2: that slowed down at all in your view with all
Speaker 2: the economic question marks?
Speaker 3: No, I think people are doing it differently though.
Speaker 5: I don't think people are as excited to take on
Speaker 5: like venture capital, and they're more likely to like bootstrap
Speaker 5: or attach themselves to a friend and like try something
Speaker 5: and have it fail and sort of quietly brush it
Speaker 5: aside and be like I didn't start that weird vodka.
Speaker 3: Company that it's like that.
Speaker 5: Don't do that anymore, you know, where I think like
Speaker 5: I can speak to the girl boss very well, like
Speaker 5: the girl boss of of my When I was like
Speaker 5: coming up in my twenties, was like taking these huge
Speaker 5: checks from whatever fore runner, a general catalyst or whatever.
Speaker 5: I never really thought about the implications. And then I
Speaker 5: think young people have sort of learned what that means
Speaker 5: at the end, which means people are gonna want some
Speaker 5: return and often they don't get it.
Speaker 4: So I know you were talking in your newsletter. I
Speaker 4: think it was just this week about another article in
Speaker 4: New York mag which was about the Hamptons and the
Speaker 4: sort of like existential stress. I guess that rich people
Speaker 4: in the Hamptons feel about their lifestyle and they feel
Speaker 4: competitive with one another, and I think you said that
Speaker 4: people were kind of like batting that away and saying
Speaker 4: that's not so much of a thing. But then on
Speaker 4: the other hand, you also wrote about weddings and how
Speaker 4: much everyone is spending on weddings nowadays, how expensive it
Speaker 4: is to be a guest. I guess my question is, like,
Speaker 4: what pockets of the culture, whether it's New York or beyond,
Speaker 4: are are the most consumerist or wealth obsessed for you
Speaker 4: right now?
Speaker 5: Women, The thing is, it's all happening, all the cameras
Speaker 5: are always on. So like, let's take weddings, for example,
Speaker 5: Hampton's are a different story. It's like a different There's
Speaker 5: so many different facets going on there with the weddings.
Speaker 5: It's like it used to be about the bride and
Speaker 5: now it's about every individual at the wedding and the
Speaker 5: photo that they're getting and where the photo is going
Speaker 5: to end up after. I'm speaking from the point of
Speaker 5: view of a New York woman who's like, I don't
Speaker 5: know if this is the case for everyone. But something
Speaker 5: else that I identified this morning with my husband that I
Speaker 5: think is that I think that the definition of friend
Speaker 5: who qualifies for wedding is sort of like expanding as well.
Speaker 5: So there's this weird gift culture going on where if
Speaker 5: I invite you, then I have to invite you, and
Speaker 5: I'm expecting that you're going to invite me to yours.
Speaker 5: And I also think that there's something happening with like
Speaker 5: dms and group texts where people are getting closer faster
Speaker 5: and like that also events the wedding guest lists.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this resonates someone in want I think that someone
Speaker 2: in a group chat recently now they're getting married, and
Speaker 2: I was like, what the heck, why didn't I get
Speaker 2: an invite?
Speaker 6: We're in a group chat together, so I could see
Speaker 6: like that stress totally.
Speaker 5: I was talking to somebody before my wedding, which was
Speaker 5: two months ago, about my wedding and they were like,
Speaker 5: so am I invited?
Speaker 3: And I was like, no, I'm just telling you something
Speaker 3: about my life right now. But there's also an etiquette epidemic. Wait,
Speaker 3: what does that mean?
Speaker 6: What does that mean?
Speaker 5: An epidemic like people not holding the door for you,
Speaker 5: people posting photos of your wedding before you do, like
Speaker 5: things like that.
Speaker 6: I think we're at time. That was so good. There
Speaker 6: was really I love your newsletter, I love.
Speaker 2: Finally getting a chance to chat, and I think we
Speaker 2: at some point we should do another longer episode just
Speaker 2: on like the group chat at Connor.
Speaker 6: There are so many facets. Thank you so much, Emily,
Speaker 6: thank you.
Speaker 4: This has been another episode at the Audlots podcast. I'm
Speaker 4: Tracy Alloway. You can follow me at Tracy Alloway and.
Speaker 2: I'm Jill Wisenthal. You can follow me at the Stalwart.
Speaker 2: Follow our producers Carmen Rodriguez at Carmen armand Dash Oll
Speaker 2: Bennett at dashbot and Kilbrooks at Kilbrooks. For more Oddlots content,
Speaker 2: go to Bloomberg dot com slash odd Lots, where we
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