The Profile: The companies gamifying truth & the parenting guru who built a massive business
This edition of The Profile features Becky Kennedy, 'Clavicular,' Alysa Liu, and others.
Good morning, friends!
🚨 If you’ve emailed me in the past month and didn’t hear back, there’s a reason.
For a while, I noticed that editions of The Profile would go out, and the usual stream of reader replies had completely vanished. Normally I hear from dozens of you after a post. And now … nothing. Total silence.
Support told me everything looked fine on their end, which only made it more confusing.
After some more digging, I finally discovered the issue: my domain had essentially blacklisted Substack, which meant I wasn’t receiving any Substack-related emails — including reader replies.
So if you wrote back to a recent newsletter and I never responded, please accept my sincere apologies. The issue has now been fixed, and I’m looking forward to hearing from you again.
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PROFILES.
— The anthropologist reviving Coach
— The face of the ‘looksmaxxing’ movement
— The parenting guru who built a massive business
— The Olympic figure skater who won gold
— The companies gamifying truth [**HIGHLY RECOMMEND**]
PEOPLE TO KNOW.
The anthropologist reviving Coach: Coach, which was once dismissed as a safe suburban brand, has staged an unlikely comeback, winning over Gen Z and pushing annual revenue to $5.6 billion. Leading the revival is CMO Joon Silverstein, an anthropologist-turned-marketer who studies young customers the old-fashioned way: by visiting them in their homes and observing how they live. Her insight that Gen Z sees identity as fluid shaped Coach’s strategy by selling products like the Tabby bag as tools for self-expression rather than status symbols. (WSJ; complimentary link)
“A lot of brands mistake data for real insight. You don’t learn about people or culture by reading research reports or by studying them afar.”
The face of the ‘looksmaxxing’ movement: A 20-year-old streamer called Clavicular has become the face of the internet’s “looksmaxxing” movement — a subculture obsessed with hacking male beauty for status and success. He’s built a massive following by livestreaming extreme self-optimization, rating people’s looks, and turning bizarre slang like “mogging” into viral memes. The result is part performance art, part manosphere spectacle, and part commentary on the anxieties of young men online. In the attention economy, Clavicular may be less a fringe character than a sign of where internet culture is going. (The New York Times; alternate link)
“On one level, he’s funny. But on a deeper level, he’s kind of a demon.”
The parenting guru who built a massive business: The Dr. Becky Kennedy turned simple Instagram parenting videos into a full-blown company. What began as reassurance for overwhelmed millennial parents has grown into Good Inside, a profitable business with 3.4 million followers, 100,000+ paying members, and $34 million in annual revenue. Instead of relying on social media alone, Kennedy built a broader ecosystem — digital memberships, workshops, community forums, and even an AI chatbot — to “professionalize” parenting. Her core pitch is that parenting, like leadership, is a skill you can learn. (FORTUNE; If you want more, check out my Profile Dossier on Becky Kennedy here.)
The Olympic figure skater who won gold: Olympic champion Alysa Liu is focused on protecting her joy. After becoming the first American woman since 2002 to win Olympic figure skating gold, the 20-year-old celebrated by going home, eating Chinese food with friends, and ignoring the noise. Liu’s career has been defined by boundaries (she retired at 16 before returning to win gold on her own terms). She skates out of pure passion and joy, and that freedom is exactly what makes her so compelling. (Teen Vogue) “I pick hanging out with my friends over a session, and if that makes me a worse skater, so be it.”
COMPANIES TO WATCH.
The companies gamifying truth: Prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket are exploding by turning everything from elections to Jerome Powell’s word choice into tradable bets that claim to “price” the truth in real time. Big money and big media are piling in, pushing those odds onto TV screens and trading desks. But the boom also brings manipulation fears, messy rule calls, and lawsuits that could decide whether this is finance or just gambling with better branding. Can they really become a useful signal? (Bloomberg; alternate link)
“Nothing is more valuable than the truth.”
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