Get stuffed! Why The Beanie Bubble is 'a joyful funeral for the American dream'

When Damian Kulash and Kristin Gore were growing up – back when they were friends in high school, two decades before they reunited, got married and had twins – there was, he says, “this basic feeling that the world was really screwed up in the past but would get much better in the future, and we were somewhere on that curve: lots of things weren’t yet fixed, but we were inexorably going towards somewhere fairer.”

Next to him, Gore nods. Sunny optimism was, she says, “a very 90s thing”.

“People who are 19 now don’t feel that,” continues Kulash. “I wouldn’t if I were 19. I don’t myself. Because it’s just as bad or worse!”

“It’s total bullshit that there’s a level playing field,” agrees Gore. “It’s all completely skewed.” What today’s teenagers needed,