It's ~Screenshot Saturday~

A trend report from my camera roll to your inbox

Feb 17, 2024

In Screenshot Saturday, I’ll share the top 10 screenshots from the most unfiltered and unhinged album in my personal camera roll, along with a little background on why I saved this image, and what it tells me about trends I’m seeing and keeping tabs on.

Let’s dive right in.

1. Samyoukilis fatigue.

Instagram etiquette is changing again. Low exposed photos in 2-4 slide carousels are replacing short, vibe-y :02s videos and 10-slide photo dumps. For the last year or so, the cinematic short film style popularized by samyoukilis dominated. His approach dictated good Instagram content: close-up mini-films of intimate human moments shot while the phone stays still but life dances beautifully on. Carousels in 2023 were packed with copycats of this Instagram cinema vérité. But, as is the case with many trends, once large brands or media companies co-opt it, the death knell sounds and the pendulum swings again. I felt it and then my friend Carolyn DMed me with a GrubStreet post styled this way to acknowledge it. She’s right. That era is over. Still photography, short carousels of slight variations on the same image, and mixed media are in.

2. HEALTHSPAN.

*Top:* A post I saw while scrolling through LinkedIn about optimizing sleep as a proxy for optimizing life (but with a real sleep apnea diagnosis). *Bottom left:* Glucose Goddess book posters in the Paris metro. *Bottom right:* Linda Wells’ Airmail article about how sleeping well is in fashion among the wealthy.

New wellness gurus focus on the science of sleep, glucose spikes, full body MRIs, Dexascans, and saunas. The Goop-ian era of wellness, with its crystals and energy, has been replaced by the Silicon Valley ethos and its medical doctors and researchers, who come bearing extra-long podcasts and actual data. Huberman. Attia. Glucose Goddess. It’s the hyper-optimized life applied to physical processes of the body and longevity. Optimizing sleep conditions. Optimizing nutrient intake. Optimizing “healthspan.”

3. This is so us (except we’re a brand).

The Saks Potts’ Instagram model features are great examples. The exact balance between scrappy and produced. Seems breezy and accidental, but in order to capture that much footage, it’s clear there were cameras everywhere and there was a lot of behind-the-scenes coordination, including having the models hand-write their answers to give it that personal touch. It’s less about brands saying, we’re speaking directly to you in your language (like Glossier did), and more about them saying, this is so us, join us. Like when alimentariflaneur reposts saying, “that’s so alimentari.” It reframes the brand as the cool clique; it makes you want to be part of what they’re already making, instead of the brand being the outsider trying to break into your inner circle.

4. Collages 🤝 maximalism.

Middle school folders on the left. A collage I made on Landing while testing it out on the right.

The TikTok hauls and flat lays, the Pinterest companion app Shuffles, and other newer apps like Amo and Landing reintroduced digital collages in the last few years. Now the collages appear denser and more maximalist, with a style that reminds me of the greatest era of school supply shopping. Long live Lisa Frank. And may we all remember the psychedelic seascapes that held our homework worksheets. This chaotic aesthetic is back.

5. Showcasing your camera roll.

I’ve seen several posts this week alone that start with the camera roll reveal and then dive into individual thumbnails. The first camera roll grid screenshot previews the way the rest of the carousel or story arc will proceed. The camera roll is pure iPhone id, and showing it publicly says, I have nothing to hide. It’s also the inspiration for this lil Bokeh series.

6. Kitschy 1970s American interior design.

Photo taken by @raphael_brion on Instagram at Burdell in Oakland, CA (left); the back of the menu at Bad Roman in New York.

My friend Raphael, the restaurant editor at Food and Wine, took this photo on a research trip eating around the country at Burdell in Oakland and it reminded me of the avocado green and pink menu pattern at Bad Roman in New York. Pink, green, orange, kitschy and nostalgic. Back then, it incorporated psychedelic motifs to push back against the angular, space-age sparse and modern interiors; now, it’s a backlash against minimalism, AirSpace, and an embracing of a generation that’s slipping away.

7. Skincare+.

Face yoga. Lymphatic drainage massage. “Holding grief in your nasolabial folds,” according to a TikTok I saw. First it was skincare trumping makeup. Then it was reducing stress to promote general health and wellness. And now, they’re combined to re-sell you a joint offering: de-stress your face to improve skin health and avoid any indicator that you might get older one day. This cafe opening in Paris was making the rounds on social media. We’ve reached peak facial-as-therapy-as-reducing our anxiety about the inevitable negative externalities of living.

There are entire films and TV shows (Mean Girls, Young Sheldon, etc.) that Gens Z and Alpha have watched beginning to end on TikTok. Savvy brands and filmmakers are embracing this behavior by creating their own video series with cliffhangers and recurring characters native to the platform.

9. Analog devices.

My friend

Jennifer Bin

wrote a great newsletter post about the anxiety that came with obsessive tracking and year-end reports from the many digital services she uses. Alongside many others, she is escaping it this year by going analog—the “Unquantified Self.” No more Spotify Wrapped, because she found a vintage iPod to listen to music with instead. The cofounder of Morning Brew mentioned on LinkedIn that maybe the Dry January phenomenon should be replaced by a month of disconnection with dumb phones—Flip Phone February. It feels like this topic trends every few years as people get overwhelmed with life online infiltrating the private corners of our existence—now our minds, emotions, and habits. It’s happening again.

10. Titles that are sentences.

Products are being named with wistful stream-of-consciousness settings instead of one or two words. It’s vibes marketing! Cult natural wine maker Anders Frederik Steen famously does this with his wines; for example, “C'était le premier jour des vacances d'été. J'avais 16 ans…” (It was the first day of summer vacation. I was 16…). Or this wine bottle I spotted my friend Lane Nieset drinking in South Africa this week: “If you love coal, it will love you back.” Or every track on the Andre 3000 flute album, which starts with “I swear, I Really Wanted to Make a 'Rap' Album but This Is Literally the Way the Wind Blew Me This Time.”

Honorable mentions

LinkedIn is hot hot hot. It may be cringe, but it’s effective. And it’s evolving into a certain kind of blogging platform among tech and business professionals. If I see another LinkedIn post announcing that the author will “be posting more here this year”…