The Love Hypothesis proves true on Amazon, Match goes all in on a Christian dating app called Upward, and a civil lawsuit against Cornell raises hard questions about rape culture. But first:
Song of the Week: “Patient Zero” by Taylor Swift
Against a fiddle, Swift performs the equivalent of a “hey girlie” text—a common practice where one woman warns another about her partner’s toxic behavior, often cheating. The song quickly became Spotify’s most-streamed song by a female artist in a single day this year. The music video—which Vulture described as a cryptic thriller—stars Dakota Johnson as a woman married to a charismatic man. As the relationship begins to fall apart, Swift visits her as a ghost, warning her about “the devil on his shoulder under his halo.” Swift premiered the music video last weekend at the VMAs, after receiving the inaugural “Artist Director Honors” award, making her the most-awarded artist in VMAs history. For the lyrics, click here; for a lyric video, click here.
And now for our three conversations..
1. The Love Hypothesis
What it is: The Love Hypothesis, a novel beloved by BookTok, has been made into a movie. It follows two awkward scientists pretending to be in a relationship; it currently sits at #2 on Prime Video in the US.
Why 70,165 people are currently reading the book: Known as “Dr. Evil” around Stanford’s campus, Adam Carlsen (Tom Bateman) and third-year PhD candidate Olive Smith (Lily Reinhart) begin to fake-date. It’s all to convince Olive’s best friend Ahn that she is actually over her crush (whom Ahn wants to date). (You can probably guess what happens next.) The adaptation scored 76% on Rotten Tomatoes, and reviews on TikTok are largely positive. The neuroscientist-turned-author, Ali Hazelwood, is betting on the same success for the sequel—a book and a movie—which she announced less than a week after this film’s release. The book and movie include sexual harassment, language, and depictions of sex. Read the content warnings here.
Continue the conversation: What do you think is the best book-to-movie adaptation?
2. Match Goes Trad
What it is: Upward, a dating app originally aimed at Christians, is relaunching—leaning into a wider audience and a concept some might call “chivalrymaxxing.”
Why it’s more than just marketing: Upward is owned by the Match Group, the same company that owns Hinge and Tinder. Its own 2026 Singles in America study depicts Gen Z as starry-eyed romantics who want to get married, but don’t know how to get there. Match hopes that positioning Upward as a place for “modern courtship” will give those singles a roadmap to marriage. The retooled app now allows users to access features including “chivalry mode,” in which only men can send the first message, “marriage timeline” so that expectations are aligned before a relationship begins, and the ability to list “core values” in one’s profile, including faith beliefs. Match’s chief marketing officer told The Atlantic that Upward users have been having success with long-term matches because their target demographic knows whether they share the same vision for the future before they ever swipe right.
Continue the conversation: Do you think Gen Alpha will use dating apps to meet their future spouse—or ditch them altogether?
3. The Cornell Seven
What it is: A new civil lawsuit from a Jane Doe alleges that she was drugged and assaulted by seven fraternity brothers at Cornell University in 2024, sparking questions and outrage over how Cornell and the district attorney handled the incident when it was first reported.
Why it’s a mess: The impression many have online is that Cornell and the DA of Tompkins County, New York were complicit in minimizing an experience of sexual assault by one of Cornell’s students. One detail in the civil lawsuit alleges that some of the accused “were afforded the opportunity to mitigate their conduct by submitting essays.” Where this gets complicated is that according to the district attorney, the lawsuit alleging assault differs substantially from the original sworn statement by Jane Doe, which “described her participation in drug use and sexual conduct as voluntary, conscious, and consensual.” As such, the conversation online has centered around topics of trauma, memory, rape, consent, and justice.
Let’s translate this one further…
Due to the complicated (and still unfolding) nature of this story, here are seven facts and a reflection on the case, rather than our usual format.
- It seems possible that it took Ms. Doe time to fully recognize the gravity of what happened that night. If so, this would be true to the nature of how survivors often recall traumatic experiences.
- “Nonconsensual sexual contact” is not a rarity on Cornell’s campus. In a 2025 survey of 926 Cornell students, 35% of women said they experienced it during their time at the school.
- The presence of consent is essential for healthy sexuality, but consent by itself is a woefully inadequate way to determine whether sexual activity was healthy. Christine Emba has argued that there are “many situations in which a partner might consent to sex—affirmatively, even enthusiastically—but having said sex would still be ethically wrong.”
- Even if Jane Doe literally signed a document saying “I consent to all of this” in the midst of the abovementioned events, the kind of power dynamics represented here (alongside extreme intoxication) make it impossible to guarantee that such a statement would have been made freely.
- There was a city in the Old Testament where sexual aggression by multiple men simultaneously was clearly a part of business as usual. That city was called Sodom, and God eventually burned it to the ground.
- When Jesus speaks about lust and adultery in the Sermon on the Mount, he puts the fault of lust entirely on the ones doing the lusting. It is their responsibility to, figuratively, “gouge out their eyes” and “cut off their hands.” Jesus does not put the responsibility on the objects of lust.
- We must emphatically convey to our daughters that they deserve more than what happened to Jane Doe, and to our sons that they must demand more from their fellow men.
Having said that, to a generation raised in the post #metoo era, it can be utterly discouraging to see men simply calling for other men to “do better.” It’s not working, and it’s not going to work, because it’s not enough. Our anemic understanding of justice and our incoherent definition of consent stand in the way.
Legal nuances of the new civil suit aside, Christians have a framework for understanding the tragedy of what happened to Jane Doe. We know that even if everyone involved woke up the next morning feeling fine about what took place, it would have still been wrong. Intoxicated group sex, even with “consent,” is morally corrosive, exploitative, and a sin against our body. We can’t teach our sons and daughters how to participate in such activity “the right way,” because there is none.
In Psalm 78, the warriors of the tribe of Ephraim are immortalized as cowards. They approach an enemy, armed with bows and ready for battle, and then they decide together to just leave. But, as the psalmist notes, their courage was never there to begin with. They’ve spent a lifetime questioning God, despite an avalanche of blessing. They turned back on the day of battle, because they couldn’t see God’s grace or fear His judgment.
They knew what God was asking of them, but the earthly army was scarier than the eternal consequences—perhaps the Old Testament equivalent of hanging out in the group chat and saying nothing while your frat brother asks “shop still open?” about the poor soul in the room upstairs.
A post #metoo, post #cornell7 sexual ethic for our kids has to go beyond hashtags, memes, and even social media mob justice. It starts with seeing God as the arbiter of our actions, commander of our bodies, decider of our goings, and our only and ultimate judge. Until we live like that’s true, our boys will just keep turning back on the day of battle—to their, and our, great shame.
For more context and nuance, check out our Roundtable podcast on Spotify, Apple, YouTube, or wherever you listen to podcasts. In the meantime, here are three questions to help you continue the conversation with your teens:
[wrap}- What’s one thing the online discourse about this lawsuit gets right? What’s one thing it’s missing?
- Why do people think “consent” automatically makes something healthy?
- What would someone have to believe if they were to stop their fraternity brothers from taking advantage of someone?
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Parenting together,
Evan Barber, Kate Watson, and the Axis Team
In Other News…
- An AI influencer named Jean Philanthrope has been going viral, and large swathes of the internet seem to believe that this ridiculously haired shadow-boxing character is real. He (it) also recently began promoting a cryptocurrency meme coin.
- The US Senate approved a bill to help regulate the wild world of the NIL (Name, Image, and Likeness) era of college sports.
- YouTube now has streaming rights to Coachella through 2030. So in the future, if you want to watch Justin Bieber singing along to his old YouTube videos, you’ll also have to be on YouTube.
- The MTV VMAs took place this weekend. The New York Times said the entire show begs the question, “Remember when MTV still mattered?” Ouch.
- Now that he has conquered the medium of writing with the help of James Patterson(’s ghostwriter), MrBeast continues to diversify his brand. Next up, he has filed a trademark application for “Beast Bands,” which are wearable activity trackers à la Oura rings or Fitbits.