TR.BIZ: 10.16.2025
Your late-mid-week check-in, where we cover Mr. Beast banking and the loss of veganism 💫
Welcome to The Trend Report: Business Edition™, a midweek look at top stories, trends, and more of what’s happening online and off by Kyle of The Trend Report™. Today, we explore Kim Karadashian’s merkin line, Real Housewives sneakers, and some proof that the witches are working.
Don’t miss the next How To Be Creative™ *free* chat next Thursday, on music writing with Pitchfork critic and writer of Futurism Restated, Philip Sherburne:RSVP here!!!!
👹 The Thing: The SKIMS merkin
Victoria’s Secret who? This week’s skimpiest attention seeker went to Kim Kardashian’s SKIMS for selling panties with pubes — a la: merkins. Where to begin? With these being very poorly made? Their being very poor Galliano ripoffs? Their nostalgia-baiting gamified porn commercial? The meaning here is twofold: this is designed to be intentionally “taboo” while also playing into a larger Kardashian-approved narrative of fashion fueled female inadequacy. The taboo of it all is that it has sent the right wing into a tizzy, designed to rage bait for attention — and it worked, as many pointed out that one can grow their own bush instead of buy this shit. But can they really? Thus, the second item: fashion now is pushing a form of misogyny that requires changing or obfuscating the female body, a model the Kardashians made famous via BBLs and fillers that made trend-based FOMO into an issue of dysmorphia. “The entire family has been talking about lasering and waxing and using permanent hair removal techniques for years,” Mandy Lee @oldloserinbrooklyn explained on TikTok, highlighting how the Kardashian’s business model is to model a body that is sold — and manipulated to align with inadequacies, to sell solutions, to enforce a less-than state. “They know how to sell people things — and that is what the fashion industry is very good at: preying on your insecurities.” Business as usual, it seems, as Kim herself goes on a press tour to humanize herself amidst such stupid anti-woman antics.
📲 Tech Talk, I: Mr. Beast banking?
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before but Mr. Beast might be getting into banking, which feels like the center to Gen Z buy now, pay later gambling and technofascism. Business Insider explains: “The application, filed with the US Trademark and Patent Office on October 13, lists plans for a ‘mobile app and online services for a range of banking, financial advisory, crypto exchange, and other services.; It would exist under the ‘MrBeast Financial’ brand.” As the story points out, creators and celebrities in fintech is nothing new — just ask Hawk Tuah girl. This could be nothing but might also be a scheme leveraged at his points of sale, creating an infinite money loop of his own, just like a certain other scamming presidential family currently ruining the world.
📲 Tech Talk, II: Dispatches from the AI culture war
