💬 Group 7 and the "social experiment" that 75 million people joined

In case you missed it, we took our Culture Chats series to Substack live this past Friday! 🎉 For those who may not know: every week, the M.T. Deco team dives into the cultural trends and moments that are catching our eye for a free-flowing conversation—usually over Google Meet. Now, we’re bringing those weekly chats to Substack Live.While our Substack live conversations will always be free for anyone to tune in, on-demand access to these conversations and transcripts are exclusive for paid members. Here are the topics we dive into:* The Halloween costumes that will be taking over our feeds this year - Google Trends Frightgeist is using Google Trends data to identify the most popular and trending Halloween costumes nationally and by region. Megan Collins shares her prediction on the role that trends will play in this year’s costumes and how retailers are leaning into curation. * For further reading, check out Megan’s Halloween deep dive: Halloween is to Gen Z what Christmas is to Millennials* What Group 7 can tell us about the desire for community online - To promote her song “So Unfair,” artist Sophia James made a series of seven TikToks assigning viewers to groups under the premise of a “social experiment.” The last video, assigning viewers to “Group 7,” went viral, wracking up over 75 million views. The team discusses why Group 7 struck such a cord with audiences and the growing desire for community online. * Are family photos on Instagram over? - A recent article by The Cut explores the evolving dynamics between parents and their teenage children regarding the sharing of family photos on Instagram. We discuss how Gen Alpha kids [the ultimate digital natives] are pushing back against their parents, the content creators who are keeping their kids offscreen, and how iMessage and private groups may be the future of sharing family moments. * We’ve been tracking this for years. Check out our write-up on ‘sharenting’ [the practice of parents sharing their kids’ lives online] and resources on how to safely share you kids online. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit mtdeco.substack.com/subscribe