Will 2026 be the year of intellectuality? Does anybody know of a good performative book club?

Does 2026 mark the end of brainrot trends?

In early December, the official Instagram page Italian Brainrot published a reel featuring the graves of all the protagonists of one of the most nonsensical gimmicks of recent years. Characters like Tralalero Tralallà, Bombardiro Cocodrilo, and Tung Sahur disappear before tombstones showing their date of birth and death: both 2025. Taken at face value, the reel marks the official death of Italian Brainrot one year after its birth, detaching 2026 from these mindless trends and projecting the coming year into a world, apparently, free of idiotic trends. If the 2024-2025 biennium was the era of brain rot and doomscrolling, 2026 is shaping up to be the beginning of a more sophisticated period.

The success of book clubs and Substack

The data is clear: according to NBC News, book club-related events on Eventbrite increased by 31% over the course of 2025. Silent book clubs - events where people meet to read in silence before socializing - have more than doubled, and 79% of Gen Z and Millennials surveyed by Eventbrite stated they are looking for events that increasingly combine intellectually and manually stimulating interests. It's no longer just the classic reading club, but evenings that, for example, mix books with wine tastings.

Another indicator is the steady and impressive growth of Substack. By March 2025, the platform had surpassed 5 million paid subscriptions, with total active sign-ups reaching 35 million and more than 50,000 writers earning from the platform. This success seems to suggest that cultural depth and long-form content are actually paying off, so much so that according to an analysis by Social Media Pro, longer content is outperforming short content in the metrics that matter (namely completion rate: comments, shares, and saves).

Intellectual trends

Adding further grist to the mill of 2026-style intellectualism is the performative male phenomenon, which exploded last summer and is already a candidate to become one of the most discussed archetypes of these years. The guy with the independent bookstore tote bag, an iced matcha in hand, wired headphones (never wireless), and a Bell Hooks or Sally Rooney book strategically in sight has literally gone viral, partly as a meme and partly for real.

In the United States, actual contests for the performative male have been held, complete with bookstore vouchers for the winners. The phenomenon goes beyond satire, revealing something deeper about contemporary masculinity and how intellectualism has become a way to position oneself socially. It matters little if the book is actually being read or if it’s just there for Instagram; what matters is that it is present.

Pop culture and its protagonists have obviously contributed to the social media intellectualism boom. Dua Lipa, for example, launched the Service95 Book Club, a literary podcast where she converses with authors like Margaret Atwood, Emma Cline, and David Szalay, while supermodel Kaia Gerber launched Library Science. Jacob Elordi is often photographed by paparazzi intent on reading or with a book in his pocket, while TikTok has announced plans to publish books.

The question arises spontaneously: does all this represent a genuine return to cultural depth, or is it just another trend? After years of total chaos, of Italian Brainrot and skibidi toilet, of content designed to last 15 seconds in memory, it seems that the cultural pendulum is swinging toward another extreme. Not necessarily toward a genuine hunger for knowledge, but toward the timeless charm of posing with a book in hand. Then everyone will likely continue doomscrolling in silence, but with a New Yorker tote bag on their shoulder.