ZINE Matt Klein

Originally published via Future Commerce
Have you heard of the infamous “Betty Crocker Egg” story?
It goes:
During the 1950’s, sales of instant cake mixes were struggling. A worried General Mills, owner of the Betty Crocker brand, brought in consumer psychologist Ernest Dichter (creator of the focus group) to conduct interviews with housewives.
In his discussions, he learned that housewives’ guilt from the effortlessness of the instant cake mix made using the product “too simple.” The process (or lack thereof) was self-indulgent “cheating” compared to the more rewarding process of baking from scratch. Therefore, the mix was a problematic buy.
An insight and opportunity: “What if we left out the powdered eggs from the mix and allowed people to add fresh ones themselves, increasing participation, decreasing guilt, and ultimately increasing sales?”
It worked. Once the new cake mix requiring fresh eggs was released, sales of the product began to soar — a win for both the baker and brand.
This story reveals the seemingly irrational consumer mind and is a case study of the importance of in-person qualitative research. Only by looking beyond market data could we learn about “premium friction” or that the opposite of a good idea (e.g., more work, not less) may also be a good idea. For this reason, marketers, strategists and innovators alike love sharing it.
The Betty Crocker tale supports “The IKEA Effect,” a cognitive bias coined by behavioral economist and author Dan Ariely. As proposed in his study, by putting together our furniture (rather than buying it pre-assembled), we create a unique, more personal relationship with it, increasing the perceived value of our creation. Like requiring fresh eggs, our participation changes perceived value.
But here’s the problem:
The “Egg Story” as we know it is bullshit.
Critical Omissions and Confirmation Bias
Why is it b******t? It’s missing critical nuance.
There are five missing details which re-tellers leave out:
First, Dichter’s findings include, but no one acknowledges, that fresh eggs produce superior cakes.
Author and historian Laura Shapiro confirms this overlooked truth in Something from the Oven: Reinventing Dinner in 1950s America:
"Chances are, if adding eggs persuaded some women to overcome their aversion to cake mixes, it was at least partly because fresh eggs made better cakes."
The original dry egg mix produced cakes that stuck to the pan, burnt quickly, had a shorter shelf life, and tasted like eggs. We knew fresh eggs made for better cakes because...
Second, a patent for fresh eggs in cake mixes was first filed in 1933, decades before Dichter discovered their “psychological importance.” The original patent reads:
“The housewife and the purchasing public in general seem to prefer fresh eggs...”
Companies were debating dry vs. fresh eggs since the very inception of the cake mix product, not just when “sales were struggling.” (More on that in a second.)
Paul Gerot, CEO of Pillsbury during the time called the egg mix “The hottest controversy we had over the product” from the get-go. The story makes it seem like fresh eggs were this novel discovery. In reality, these companies had been debating them for years.
Third, around this time, cake mixes were actually selling incredibly well, but only when they weren’t flying off of shelves did it cause worry.
Between 1947 and 1953, sales of cake mixes doubled. The concern only arose during the late ‘50s, when there wasn’t a “decline,” but just a modest +5% growth — a “flattening,” if anything.
Cake mix sales didn’t suddenly flatten at once because of a mass onset of guilt... especially after years of excitement and growth. There are endless explanations for a flattening such as novelty wearing off, market saturation, product competition or evolving tastes.
The story makes this seem like a brand problem when in fact it was a shared category problem. Which brings

To forecast our future, we have to identify patterns of change early. But rather than only seeking out collections of signals representing growth, it behooves us to simultaneously study what’s crumbling – signals of decay.
After all, growth stems from deep fractures.
One of today’s most glaring fractures worthy of our attention is higher education. The changing landscape of higher education is ground zero for radical social change and required innovation.
Good news!
TVs, toys and software have never been cheaper in human history.
Bad news: College tuition and textbooks have never been more expensive.
This is according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics which has been tracking the prices of consumer goods and services relative to inflation for the last two decades.
College tuition — second to healthcare — is the most “increasingly expensive” buy in America.
How coincidental that these are two of the most important purchases one can obtain, and certainly the sort which more should have access to, not less?
According to the National Center for Education Statistics, in the 1968 academic year, it cost $1,545 to attend a public, four-year institution (including tuition, fees, room and board).
In 2020, it was $29,033.
For the fifth of college students attending private schools, that figure is significantly higher.
Noteworthy as the cost of (manufacturing) education and textbooks have not risen at the same rate.
Is it any more expensive to “produce” education today?
This is perhaps why NYU, among many schools across the country, are developing “Schools for Professional Studies” — certificate program alternatives dedicated to furthering education during a moment when traditional degrees are slipping.
According to a report from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, the number of students who earned undergraduate degrees fell by -1.6% in 2022, reversing nearly a decade of steady growth.
As of last year, only 51% of Gen Z are interested in pursuing a four-year degree, down from 71% a couple years earlier. The pandemic and Zoom screens have put things into focus. And students’ parents are on the same page: nearly half of parents don’t want their kids to go straight to a four-year college.
Graduate degrees are falling out of favor just as dramatically.
For The Wall Street Journal, Lindsay Ellis reports,
“At Harvard, widely regarded as the nation’s top business school, M.B.A. applications fell by more than 15% [in 2022]. The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania recorded more than a 13% drop. At other elite U.S. programs — including Yale University’s School of Management, as well as the business schools at the University of Chicago and New York University — applications dropped by 10% or more for the class of 2024. Cost was the biggest factor blunting demand.”
Meanwhile, this decline is about to worsen — not just because of prices and attitudes, but because of significant demographic change.
Kevin Carey, VP for Education Policy at New America, a think-tank, wrote for Vox:
“[In 2026] the number of students graduating from high schools across the country will begin a sudden and precipitous decline, due to a rolling demographic aftershock of the Great Recession. Traumatized by uncertainty and unemployment, people decided to stop having kids during that period.
But even as we climbed out of the recession, the birth rate kept dropping, and we are now starting to see the consequences on campuses everywhere. Classes will shrink, year after year, for most of the next two decades. People in the higher education industry call it ‘the enrollment cliff.’”
Like any business facing disruption, many are pivoting to diversify revenue.
Earlier this year I learned NYU was growing its Marketing certificate program for those seeking to enter the field or gain more experiences from practicing experts. I raised my hand and began the process to volunteer as an Adjunct Professor at night.

The following is a summary of my 2023 SXSW Talk: Movements > Trends. Here’s Part II.
Firstly — there is no such thing as “online culture” vs. “culture.” That’s the digital dualism fallacy kicking in.
It’s just one in the same.
But for the sake of common understanding — “online culture” in this instance is the fast culture memeified online discourse, which organizations are too often obsessed with.
It’s a shift that occurred ~15 years ago.
2007 was a monumental year for marketing.
Facebook introduced Pages.
Brands suddenly looked exactly like our friends.
They weren’t.
But nonetheless, brands saw the opportunity. And it was a glimmering one.
“What do we have to do or say to feel like a friend?”
Ever since the 00’s, brands have been seeking out material and excuses to join in online discourse across social — the perceived “hotbed” of culture.
“If we win these discussions, we win culture... and then sales.”
It’s uncertain if this notion has even been measured or supported, but was — and often remains — the collective hypothesis.
Regardless, “trending” headlines and the meme of the moment became the focus for “friendly relatability.” Attempts to resonate and cut through, optimizing for attention, has resulted in an obsession: scan, track, measure, understand and activate upon whatever’s “trending."
Brands say bae, express nihilism — are they depressed? — and are now seemingly... horny?
Hashtags, challenges, and aesthetics have replaced the original intention of a “trend”: a meaningful social shift in human behavior.
We’ve come to conflate “trending” with “trends.”
In the process of chasing cool, most discussed “trends” are really just frivolous entertainment.
We’ve lost the plot.
Meanwhile, two other macro factors have helped further reverse the figure and ground.
In a moment of chronic uncertainty, trends have become our “answers” — comforting explanations of what comes next.
And simultaneously while culture also feels stagnant, trends have become our “progress” — comforting change.
As a result, the number of published trend reports have roughly tripled since 2016.
Trends are trending.
And the trending is seen as trends.
It’s a mess.
Yet in primary research when asking 1,500 people globally if they’ve heard of ten “trends” — from Cottagecore and Barbiecore, to Indie Sleaze and Permacrisis — 43% haven’t heard of a single one.
Utter “vibe shift” to the general public, and they’ll think you’re speaking a foreign language.
...Because you are.
And meanwhile, for the 57% of people who have heard of one of the most discussed “trends,” less than half of those people have actually participated in any capacity.
The vast majority of people have not heard of what cultural thinkers and strategists obsess over, and the general public isn’t doing anything with it.
“Trends” as we currently know them are really only for ourselves. That’s fine... but for as long as we recognize they’re untethered from the real needs and desires of real people.
These are empty vessels for us to fill whatever explanations we wish into them. They are our Rorschach tests. Cottagecore is whatever we want it to be... because it doesn’t actually exist.
If our foundational task is to understand people, we’re way off the mark.
For this reason, we need to break up with trends as we currently know them. It’s a toxic relationship.
The critical caveat here is that understanding culture remains a priority, but the nuance is mistaking “trending” with substantial ideas worthy of strategy and investment. We must continue to study these signals, but with a dose of skepticism and healthy distance.
If anything, they’re signals in themselves, not substantial shifts.
Cottagecore as a viral, idyllic aspirational aesthetic is one thing. A sensibility. But we have to hold that in conjunction with the reality that this “trend” only applies

Meet Liver King.
He’s a media personality caricature repping the “all meat diet.” He chomps animal brains to win big in the attention economy, as much as he fights for the reassessment of what a more nutritious diet may entail.
His success primarily lies in the former: attention.
Many dismiss his honesty. There are countless videos “exposing” his regimen and potential steroid use. But it’s moot. Controversy only adds to his hyper-masculine mythology.
His Carnivore Diet has been around for as long as the internet has. The pitch ranges from weight loss, increased energy, higher testosterone, and mental clarity.
But several more drivers are now giving this “lifestyle” newfound energy.
Firstly, it’s never been easier to get in touch with a tribe of like-minded thinkers. Often exposed via algorithmic means, an odd practice effortlessly reaches millions today. A video — or the mere thumbnail of one — is an invite for new, potential inductees. With this, we can now choose our own adventure of truth and determine what’s healthiest for us.
Secondly, the attention around the all meat diet has risen with the larger adoption of veganism — also coincidently driven by health benefits. The blossoming of plant-based diets has allowed a counter trend to enter and thrive. It’s no surprise that we see the Carnivore Diet rage in a moment when meat-alternatives are increasingly finding their way onto menus.
After all, many cultural trends are just tensions. Equal and opposite reactions. Trend. Counter-trend. Cause. Effect.
Further, meat consumption also symbolizes status and mastery over one’s domain — one which is currently aflame and we’re hastily losing. Promoting one’s machismo dominance is also quite timely as we simultaneously evolve beyond a gender binary.
Again: Trend. Counter-trend.
Back to Liver King... A six pack, grizzly beard and bloody goat intestines appear to run counter to animal rights, environmental decline and gender fluidity.
And here lays the ultimate overarching pitch and final driver to this all meat diet: identity and the community which comes along with it.
You don’t even have to consume the raw liver.
You just have to consume the content.
The all meat diet is a starter pack of values.
Worship him or ridicule him — either gives you the opportunity to express your beliefs, find a vocal role in this world, and bring you closer to those who feel the same about animals, the environment or gender.
Modern Religions
In Tara Isabella Burton’s book, Strange Rites: New Religions for a Godless World, she reminds us that religion is more than places of worship or mere deities.
Religion can be anything that provides us meaning, purpose, ritual and community.
An all meat diet is a religion.
And Liver King is our high priest.
Burton reports:
“Back in 2007, 15% of Americans called themselves religiously unaffiliated, meaning that they didn’t consider themselves to be members of any traditional organized religion.
By 2012, that number had risen to 20%, and to 30% when it came to adults under thirty. Now, those numbers are higher.
About a quarter of American adults say they have no religion. And when you look at young millennials — those born after 1990 — those numbers reach almost 40%.”
But while younger generations claim to be “less religious,” that’s not to say they aren’t rabidly seeking spirituality, answers or belonging.
Definitions and modern examples of religion just haven’t caught up to the surveys.
Outside of entertainment fandom, more glaring today: politics and social justice have become our loudest religious replacements.
Helen Lewis, staff writer at The Atlantic puts it,
“Many common social-justice phrases have echoes of a catechism: announcing your pronouns or performing a land acknowledgment shows allegiance to a common belief, reassuring a group that everyone present shares the same values.
But treating politics like a religion also makes it more emotional

Part I:The Tension
There’s a new dilemma.
Only it’s not that “new” of a dilemma.
At the beginning of this summer, decades of glacier-paced cultural change was captured perfectly in a single weekend. The top of the charts revealed our endangered media ecosystem.
You’ve heard this song plenty before. Thanks to inclusion in Netflix’s fifth season of Stranger Things, Kate Bush’s 1985 song “Running Up That Hill (Make a Deal with God)” found itself back in the zeitgeist. It went from 22,000 streams per day to 5.1M. Momentarily, a 37-year-old track was the most streamed song on Spotify.
Meanwhile, Top Gun: Maverick, a sequel to the 1986 original, broke box office records, banking $156 million the same weekend. This was right before Jurassic World stomped in — the seventh installment since 1993. Then came Minions 2 — a sequel and a spin off to the Despicable Me franchise, which in itself already had three installments.
Further, in video games that weekend, 9 out of 10 best selling titles were from franchises. And the New York Times Best Sellers list saw James Paterson, the Guinness World Records holder for the most #1 New York Times bestsellers, taking up two of the top five spots in fiction.
It was the summer weekend for big premieres. But in fact, nothing about these releases were particularly that new.
Most noteworthy though, this pattern of mega-successful reboots stood against a backdrop of another story...
These titles were released at a moment when more people are creating more content than ever before in history.
Spotify boasts 70,000 tracks uploaded every day. YouTube is uploading 30,000 hours of new content every hour. Nearly 3M unique podcasts exist. Twitch is broadcasting +7.5M streamers, indie game releases and play are both growing year over year, and roughly 4M books are published annually in the U.S. — nearly half of those self-published, a +250% increase over just five years.
On one hand, we have a booming Creator Economy, with an ever-expanding democratization of tools for production to anyone with an idea. So much so, that according to 1,000 surveyed Americans by Zine, 86% of people believe there is an overwhelming amount of entertainment available today.
Yet meanwhile on the other hand, we seem to have also found ourselves culturally stunted. Our box office and streaming platforms are soggy with the same regurgitated franchises. Reboots rule the roost, and familiar faces hog our charts, while notable newcomers redefining genres feel few and far between. With this, 64% of people declare they are getting fed up with today’s reboots, sequels and remakes.
What gives?
How is it that during a moment of radical creator liberation and audience frustration, we’re finding ourselves with the same tropes and hooks?
Chris Anderson’s 2006 optimistic Long Tail vision promised us that “specificity” — the shallow and obscure — would be economically feasible as the internet would connect the niche to its audience. Aggregators will win, the odd would thrive, and those on the edges would celebrate. Creators could finally connect to their 1,000 true fans.
But as seen from the macro view, a diverse, bottom-up media ecosystem is in fact not thriving.
Instead, the inverse is happening.
Homogeneity is winning.
Part II:Sameness Everywhere
In an analysis by Adam Mastroianni, a postdoc scholar at Columbia Business School, “the same” keeps rising to the top — across all media.
Simply, there are fewer winners.
Mastroianni calls this our Cultural Oligopoly. “A cartel of superstars has conquered culture,” he writes.
“Until the year 2000, about 25% of top-grossing movies were prequels, sequels, spin offs, remakes, reboots, or cinematic universe expansions. Since 2010, it’s been over 50% every year. In recent years, it’s been close to 100%.”
“Since 2000, about a third of the top 30 most-viewed shows are either spin offs of other shows in the top 30 (e.g., CSI and CSI: Miami) or multiple b

The META Trends are invaluable in identifying where the collective, trend forecaster psyche is at.
But as we learned in a five year look back: biases thrive, agendas direct, risk is feared, quantification is scarce and toxic optimism influences.
Deeper, as we learned in a series of exercises with AI: analyzed cultural data reveals what we humans think is most important, may not actually be the case.
All of this META Trend work is predicated upon industry trend reports... which, as we’re learning, may not be as dependable as we once hoped.
The META Trends are insightful, but they and the industry reports used to get there, leave us with an incomplete picture of what’s driving culture forward.
Only with friction, daringness and originality, can we analyze the sharp edges and fringes of culture that have influence. The weak, the uncomfortable and the complex help color our picture of the future.
As we uncovered, AI can be helpful in discovering overlooked micro-trends which were hidden within the one million words of analyzed reports. However, many of these discoveries are things: Gut Health, Fluid Fashion, Privacy Enhancing Tech, etc.
What we also need to augment is our ability to identify more nuanced, emotional overlooked trends. But this is a task a human can do best. Creative extrapolation is our superpower.
So to identify the overlooked, we can use the META Trends as filters seek out what’s not surfaced.
But we can also use these META Trends in another way...
Sarah DaVanzo and I created a framework to spin out unique perspectives of any existing trend.
4X Interrogative Questions_ To Identify the Overlooked
* Outside = What is an outsider’s POV or experience?
* Other Side = What is the inverse or contradictory tension?
* Dark Side = What is the malicious or distressing angle?
* Back Side = What is the devious or inappropriate twist?
Interrogating non-obvious dimensions of even the most trite, overly reported trends can reveal new ideas, threats and opportunities.
For example, let’s use the most reported trend for 2022: Eco- Everything: a continued obsession with sustainability and an integration of green-thinking into all products and services.
Applying the 4X Interrogative Questions we get:
Outside =
How are those on the equator signaling new norms of climate migration? → What does this reveal about the effects of climate on the less prepared, mobile or privileged?
Other Side =
How do consumers reckon with still opting in for two-day shipping amidst climate marches? → What does this reveal about a fear of sacrifice and collective cognitive dissonance?
Dark Side =
How are therapists managing to counsel those with onset climate anxiety, a new diagnosis? → What does this reveal about the spillover, emotional toll of something once believed to just be a physical crisis?
Back Side =
How do we account for the carbon footprint of online porn? → How can we speak to the stigmatized and uncomfortable drivers of humanitarian risk?
By using this framework, we can open the door to new, often overlooked components of any cultural discussion.
We net out with valuable trailheads to then explore.
Call them insights, counter-trends, or just components of the original trend itself — it makes no difference. These are simply elements of culture that should be acknowledged.
To continue this exercise, let’s go through all 14x 2022 META Trends to reveal some critical, often overlooked pieces of the puzzle.
01. Eco- Everything ♻️
Overlooked = Sustainable living is unaffordable for many, climate migration will be unachievable for a growing elderly population, and paper straws and PR plays are jokes to Gen Z
02. Digital Default 🌐
Overlooked = 27.6M U.S. households still don't have home internet, motion sickness and wanting to know what’s behind us still curbs VR adoption, and our desire to experiment with identity runs deep
03. xX~VIBES~Xx 🍄
Overlooked = Indigenous communities are being destroyed from drug tou