Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

If you haven’t heard of Shop Jeen, that’s because you’re not a 19-year-old with pastel-pink hair and an iPhone plastered in emoji stickers. Crop tops are probably not your favorite separate, and four-inch platform sneakers are not your go-to footwear. The Generation Z–whispering web shop, founded three years ago by a New Yorker named Erin Yogasundram, now 23, from her George Washington University dorm room, should come with a seizure warning — and maybe even a trigger warning.

Type in shopjeen.com, and a Japanese music video for a band called Ladybaby might automatically start blasting, while the home page quivers with GIFs of LED-lit high-tops and tank tops that say ASK YOUR BOYFRIEND HOW MY ASS TASTE.

This is what cool looks like right now for a particular subset of 14-to-22-year-olds. It’s a visual language that’s basically early-internet clip art on crack — like the work of artists Cory Arcangel and Ryan Trecartin brought to the masses via Tumblr, co-opted by the storeVFiles, and now sold to young people in the form of $32 hats that say YES, DADDY?...