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They made things exciting. You thought you were in love. And now a week has gone by with no reply. Odds are theyre not getting back to you. But dont take it personally: Were all ensnared in a ghosting epidemic. According to the Thriving Center for Psychology, one in four Gen Zers and millennials have been ghosted after just a few dates. And to twist the knife even deeper, one in ten report being ghosted after a couple of months of dating. Tragically familiar, isnt it? Brands like Sweethearts have been quick to capitalize on the reality of today’s dating landscape. In 2024, the heart-shaped candy brand launched “Situationship Boxes,” featuring candies stamped with intentionally misprinted messages that capture the ambiguity of modern relationships. This year, the brand is unveiling “Ghosted Sweethearts.” The all-white conversation hearts are as blank as that text thread youre still waiting on, the brand says. Sweethearts arent just for Valentines Day anymore, said Evan Brock, vice president of marketing at Spangler Candy Co., the 119-year-old confectioner behind Sweethearts. With Ghosted Sweethearts, were poking fun at one of datings spookiest phenomenons and staking our claim on Halloween. Why are brands diving into Gen Zs miserable dating world? The answer lies in the bigger picture: Unrelenting rejection is feeding a generation-wide panic. As reported by Business Insider earlier this year, Gen Z has already been labeled the most anxious, stressed, burned-out, and lonely generationand now its members are facing historic levels of romantic rejection. Infinite possibilities are just a click, swipe, or DM away, but so is infinite rejection. Young adults have more doors to knock on than ever beforefrom jobs to friendships to loveand more doors slammed shut in their faces. Last year, a Hinge survey of 15,000 daters found that 90% of Gen Z respondents want to find love but fear of rejection is holding them back. Nearly half admit they have little to no dating experience. More than half say worrying about rejection has stopped them from pursuing someone, and theyre 10% more likely than millennials to report having missed their shot entirely. Rejection is intimidating for everyone, but Gen Z daters seem to feel it more acutely, said Logan Ury, director of relationship science at Hinge. Sweethearts isnt the first brand to get a laugh out of Gen Zs somber dating scene. In fact, brands have been capitalizing on the struggles of swipe-based dating for years. In 2016, Doritos ran a Super Bowl campaign called “Swipe for Doritos” that poked fun at online dating and rejection. It seems brands have caught on to the despair woven into the tragic love stories of digital-first datersand they’ve wasted no time entering the chat.
Category:
E-Commerce
Want more housing market stories from Lance Lamberts ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. Fresh data shows that as of August, 25 of the 50 biggest U.S. metro areasrepresenting half of the countrys major housing marketsare seeing prices fall compared with last year. That share has steadily climbed from just 14% in late 2024, underscoring how soft demand and rising active inventory for sale have coincided in greater downward pressure on prices across much of the country. Back in November 2024, seven of the nation’s 50 largest metro-area housing markets (14%) had falling year-over-year home prices. In February 2025, 12 of the nation’s 50 largest metro-area housing markets (24%) had falling year-over-year home prices. In April 2025, 20 of the nation’s 50 largest metro-area housing markets (40%) had falling year-over-year home prices. In May 2025, 22 of the nation’s 50 largest metro-area housing markets (44%) had falling year-over-year home prices. In June 2025, 25 of the nation’s 50 largest metro-area housing markets (50%) had falling year-over-year home prices. In July 2025, 25 of the nation’s 50 largest metro-area housing markets (50%) had falling year-over-year home prices. At the end of August 2025, 25 of the nation’s 50 largest metro-area housing markets (50%) had falling year-over-year home prices. While some major housing markets are still seeing mildly positive year-over-year appreciation, the rate of appreciation has decelerated almost everywhere over the past year. The biggest exception is the New Orleans metro area, which is showing signs of tightening after passing through a correction over the past few years. On a regional and local level, home price shifts vary significantly right now. Some regional housing markets in states such as Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Louisiana, and Texaswhere inventory has risen above pre-pandemic 2019 levelsare experiencing mild home price corrections. Meanwhile, tight-ish inventory markets in some pockets of the Northeast and Midwest remain resilient-ish, with home prices pushing up a little this year.
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E-Commerce
These days, you cant swing a vintage pair of Doc Martens without hitting a new study or article describing why Gen X wont live up to its retirement potential. Prudential warned us in 2023 that more than a third of Gen Xers had less than $10k in retirement savings. In 2024, Natixis Investments found that 48% of Gen Xers said it would take a miracle for them to retire securely (up from only 41% of Generation X counting on divine intervention as of 2021). Even the much-lauded great wealth transferthe $124 trillion in assets that baby boomers will pass along to their heirs by the year 2048will largely skip over Gen X. The wealth management firm Cerulli Associates anticipates that millennials will be the biggest beneficiaries of the wealth transfer, inheriting $46 trillion over the next 25 years. While none of this is good news, Gen X has been preparing for this challenge our entire lives. As the generational middle child, we Gen Xers have spent our lives quietly taking care of ourselves, figuring out new technology as it appeared, and basically getting on with it while everyone else bickered amongst themselves. Heres how the Gen X core competencies, which weve honed over decades, will allow us to seize a secure retirement from the jaws of financial instability. Gen X is known for self-reliance Since elementary school, we have known we have to take care of things on our own. In our youth, American society wrung their collective hands over parents abandonment of latchkey kids. Not only did TV stations air guilt-tripping PSAs about what kinds of drug use we were up to while Mom was working late, but columnists also bemoaned the fate of lonely, frightened children coming home to empty houses. Meanwhile, educational, medical, and psychological journals found that the lack of supervision didnt seem to harm latchkey kids. Instead of falling into drug use la Go Ask Alice, most of us learned to independently handle homework, chores, and little siblings. Being left unsupervised after school was just the start of the Gen X trend of self-reliance. We also came of age at the same time pensions disappeared, meaning we were left to our own devices to navigate a new world of retirement planning. The IRS had just introduced defined contribution retirement plans (i.e., 401(k) plans) as the eldest Gen Xers joined the workforce, meaning there was no map or precedent available to guide us. Its little wonder that Gen X didnt necessarily start contributing to retirement right away. Creating a latchkey retirement We may have learned self-reliance because we had toboth when we were responsible for starting dinner after school and funding our own retirement after pensions went poofbut that skill will continue to serve us as we face an uncertain retirement. Since we know we can only count on ourselves, we can tap into that quiet, competent independence we are known for to make retirement work. That starts by looking at what you can do to lower your costs and increase your income to help you set aside more money for retirement. For many Gen Xers, the answer is entrepreneurship. A recent survey by ZenBusiness found that 40% of Gen X respondents plan to start or have already launched a business as part of their retirement plan. Even if the idea of being a small business owner gives you hives, making a personal financial plan that puts the power in your hands can help you feel in control. Gen X is known for tech savviness Millennials and Gen Z may be digital natives, but Gen Xers were the kids who were around when the technology was new. This gives us a better-than-native perspective since we not only remember the breathless optimism of every new technological advancement (remember when we thought computers were magic?) but we also have had the dubious privilege of troubleshooting misbehaving tech until we have a clearer understanding of its real uses and limitations. This means we embrace new technologies as they appear, but keep hold of our skepticism about their potential usefulness until weve seen it for ourselves. (Were also the ones who have to tell our kids and our parents not to get taken in by AI slop.) Troubleshoot your retirement Because we were lucky enough to live through the tech boom of our youth, we are comfortable with technology and we have the patience to learn how to use it, rather than simply assume it will work without our input. (Digital natives have never had to blow on a Nintendo game cartridge and it shows.) AI is the technology is magic du jour, and our generation is skeptical about the promises that it will increase productivity, replace professional workers, and even make julienne fries. But we learned to use personal computers, even though they cant actually create Kelly LeBrock out of magazine images. So we can make large language models and large reasoning models work for us, even though they cant replace human thinking. Specifically, Gen X may want to consider using AI to help with budgeting. In addition to apps that use AI to help you budget, you can alo ask chatbots like ChatGPT or Claude.ai for help. If youre comfortable doing so, this could mean giving the chatbot your monthly income and expenses and asking for help creating a budget or savings strategies. Alternatively, you could ask open-ended questions like: I need to contribute more money to my 401(k). How can I find some money in my monthly budget to send to my retirement accounts? I currently spend $600 per month on groceries. What are some ways to reduce that amount by 20%? My energy bills last winter averaged $250 per month. How can I reduce my costs to $175 per month? As with any AI response, you will need to make sure you double check the answers to make sure theyre not an AI hallucination. But using these models to help you see different financial options is a good way to embrace the real opportunities offered by AI. Its not slacking when you get the job done Generation X were labeled as slackers for a number of reasons. Our priorities were different from those of our parents, which the establishment saw as laziness. Pensions went extinct when we started working, so our dearth of retirement savings seemed like a lack of foresight on our part. We learned early on not to count on anyone but ourselves, which can look like not being a team player. But Gen Xers have never been slackers at any point in our lives, least of all as we look toward retirement. Were former latchkey kids who know how to create an independent plan to take care of ourselves. That may mean entrepreneurship or simply taking the reins of retirement planning. Were tech savvy digital troubleshooters who understand the limitations of new technologies and use them creatively throughout our lives. Currently, that means harnessing the power of AI to help identify ways to set aside more money for retirement. We are the quiet, cynical, creative, competent generation. It would be a mistake to underestimate us.
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E-Commerce
The way we edit images is in the midst of a massive reinvention right now. Adjustments that once required costly software and professional-level know-how are suddenly at our fingertips 24/7with instant results and not even an ounce of skill required. And yet, for all the fantastic feats these fancy new AI image remixing genies of ours can accomplish, there are still times when a simple specialty tool can save the day and make your life instantly easier. Todays Cool Tool is a perfect example. Its an incredibly useful photo-editing resource that does one specific thing and does it insanely well. Andoh, yesits completely free to use. This tip originally appeared in the free Cool Tools newsletter from The Intelligence. Get the next issue in your inbox and get ready to discover all sorts of awesome tech treasures! A bulk image editing powerhouse For full disclosure: The tool were about to talk about has been at the top of my mind lately because its one of the many advanced resources I share in my recently updated Android Photography Master Class. But it isn’t relevant only for Android users. And it’s just too darn useful to keep behind closed gates and not share more broadly. The tool is called PhotoStack, and its a web-based app that makes it entirely effortless to edit images in bulkfor instance: Resizing a bunch of images to specific dimensions Making an entire set of images sharper Adding a specific sort of border or even watermark onto a lot of images at once Or removing the data (including, at times, location info) thats often baked into photos before you share em somewhere It couldnt be much easier to use either. You just open up the PhotoStack website . . . Click or tap the Edit images button . . . And then either click or tap the Import button or just drag and drop images directly onto the page. Editing images in bulk is refreshingly easy with PhotoStack’s simple web tool. You can then use any of the options on the screen to adjust your images as needed, and any changes you make will be applied to all of the images at the same time. When youre done, all thats left is to click or tap the Export button, and all of your edited images will be saved back onto your device. Told ya it was easy, right?! PhotoStack is open source and completely free to use. And, critically, your images are never uploaded anywhere. All of the processing happens in your own browser, on your own device, without any privacy compromises. In a world filled with AI sorcery and the endless asterisks that accompany that, its a simple, supremely useful tool thats well worth your while to hang onto for the right occasion. PhotoStack is 100% web-basedno downloads required. (Though you can install it as a progressive web app for easy ongoing access, if your browser offers that ability; look in your browsers main menu when the site is open to see if the option is present.) Its free, with no limits or catches. You can opt to make a donation to support the developer if you like, but its never required. And the app doesnt collect or save any images, require any sort of sign-in, or ask for any manner of personal info. Its privacy policy is almost shockingly short and simple. Treat yourself to all sorts of brain-boosting goodies like this with the free Cool Tools newsletterstarting with an instant introduction to an incredible audio app thatll tune up your days in truly delightful ways.
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E-Commerce
For 50 years Saturday Night Live has been poking fun at popular culture, making audiences laugh, and opening its stage to exceptional music artists. The show was created by Lorne Michaels, and original cast members included the likes of Chevy Chase, John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, Gilda Radner, and many others performing 90 minutes of sketch comedy that would go on to permeate the zeitgeist. This history was celebrated in February with a three-hour special. But now its time to move on to Season 51, premiering October 4. Heres everything you need to know, including cast changes, hosting duties, and ways to tune in. SNL cast departures SNL has launched the careers of many comedians over the years, including Tina Fey, Will Ferrell, and Eddie Murphy. Naturally, cast members come and go; the show’s schedule is very demanding and the series is just a small part of many performers overall career trajectory. (Kenan Thompson, who has been with the show for 22 years, has earned the title of longest-serving cast member.) After the historic Season 50 wrapped, it was announced that several cast members would not be returning. That’s as Michaels told Puck in August he was facing the pressure to reinvent. Cast members Heidi Gardner, Michael Longfellow, Emil Wakim, and Devon Walker are all out, as well as writers Celeste Yim and Rosebud Baker, according to reporting by Rolling Stone. Ego Nwodim was listed as active for Season 51 but announced her decision to leave the show in early September. During her appearance at the Fast Company Innovation Festival, she explained the move.SNL is always meant to be a stepping stone, Nwodim said. There are so many ideas I havent had time to create, and Im looking forward to doing that. Things like directing and writing in a different capacity. Returning SNL cast members Not everyone is leaving. Thompson will continue his long reign, and Michael Che and Colin Jost will continue to anchor the popular Weekend Update segment. They will be joined by familiar faces James Austin Johnson, Chloe Fineman, Sarah Sherman, Andrew Dismukes, Mikey Day, Bowen Yang, Marcello Hernández, Ashley Padilla, and Jane Wickline. SNL cast additions There will be five new faces gracing the screen this season, including Veronika Slowikowska, who is best known for her internet comedy sketches and her appearances on Tires and What We Do in the Shadows, and Kam Patterson, known for her bold stand-up comedy. Also joining the cast are Jeremy Culhane, who is TikTok-famous and has appeared in American Vandal and The Sex Lives of College Girls, as well as Tommy Brennan, who was named Just for Laughs’ New Face of Comedy in 2023 and has also opened for Nikki Glaser and Taylor Tomlinson.Ben Marshall, who was previously in the writers room and part of the video-producing trio “Please Don’t Destroy,” will make a move to join the cast. Please Don’t Destroy will no longer be affiliated with SNL, but the group is staying together. As for the other members of the trio, Martin Herlihy will stay on as a writer for SNL, but John Higgins will leave to pursue other creative avenues. Host and musical guest for the Season 51 premiere The first host of Season 51 is Bad Bunny. He is no stranger to SNLs Studio 8H; he previously hosted during Season 49, and was the final musical guest of Season 50. Its been a big week for the star: It was also announced he will headline next year’s Super Bowl LX halftime show. The first musical guest of this season is Doja Cat. How to tune in SNLs Season 51 premiere airs October 4 at 11:30 p.m. ET on NBC. Traditional cable subscribers, and those with an over-the-air antenna with reception, are already all set for the laughs. Cord-cutters can access the show on the Peacock streaming service, as well as a few others. YouTube TV, Hulu + Live TV, Fubo, and DIRECTV Stream all carry NBC in most cases, but make sure to double-check the services’ regional differences.
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E-Commerce
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