What's Really Going on With Those Elaborate (Parent-Decorated) College Dorm Rooms?

First: WE’RE DOING A BIG FUN CULTURE STUDY SURVEY! What do you like; what do you want to see more of; how can we better bundle the newsletter + podcast; what were your favorite recent topics….we want to hear from you! YOUR ANSWERS SHAPE THE FUTURE OF CULTURE STUDY (and the survey will take you like 5 minutes tops). Click here to tell us your thoughts (and thank you to everyone who’s already submitted your answers, you’re the best).

Second: LET’S GO MARINERS! Let’s go PLAYOFF BASEBALL! And let’s go listen to this wonderful podcast conversation featuring me [MARINERS FAN], Melody [ROYALS FAN] and the hilarious *and* brilliant Ali Liebegott [METS FAN]. Dad Culture! Pitch clocks! How Queer is Baseball? MR. MET!?!? LET’S GO!!! [Let’s especially go if you want to hear me, a casual fan, explain the Homer Hanky to these newbs….or, I guess, allow them to explain the Ghost Runner to *me.*] We have opinions and we have analysis and we have a lot of laughs. Click here to listen. (And if you missed the podcast subscriber-only episode on The Showgirl and the Swiftcourse, go listen to that, too)

If you watched any of Rushtok, you’ve seen them: lavishly decorated dorm rooms that look nothing like the spaces we occupied in our late teens. The beds are almost always “vaulted” to make space for storage underneath; the walls are often painted or covered in stick-on wallpaper. Other existing furniture (desks, dressers, wardrobes) are either covered with matching wallpaper/fabric or replaced with “better” items (where does the furniture go? Usually into a storage unit, paid for by the student’s parents). There are THROW PILLOWS and MANY DIFFERENT TYPES OF RUGS and BED SKIRTS. It’s just a lot — and it’s also very, very easy to scoff at the entire thing.

And because this is Culture Study, I wanted to do more than just say it’s the latest sign of the consumerist intensive parenting apocalypse. So when Meagan Francis wrote for The Atlantic about her own experiences in the Facebook groups that often serve as the guiding inspiration for many of these transformations, I knew she needed to come explain the larger dynamics at play in the newsletter.

I’ll just say that yes, obviously, this is about intensive parenting (and turning the consumerist impulse on a new space) but