TR.BIZ: 10.28.2025

From this year's "it" costume to moldy Always pads, this is your early-mid-week check-in ✨

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’re exploring Trisha Paytas’ Hollywood ascent, a series of self-control trends, the political pivot to influencing, and what gay guys, kids, and parents wore to go trick-or-treating.

🏛️ Politicultural: Are politicians officially influencers?

The idea came to mind when GOP senators were spotted last week with Trump swag bags, which I assume is from the Trump Oval Office swag station. Then I started thinking about AIPAC buying politicians and George Santos’ return to Cameo and Justin Trudeau dating Kating Perry and Dem politicians like Aftyn Behn and Kate Abughazali and Abdul El-Sayed (along with the Platners and Zohrans) folding in their not taking corporate donations as a statement against the state of things, you start to see the picture: politicians are influencers now, the shift having somewhere between when TMZ swapped celebrities for politicians in the late 2010s alongside the rise of social-first politicians like AOC and — increasingly — Gavin Newsom. This is less that social media is becoming politics (Ahem, Thursday’s TikTok deal.) but more that everything is sponcon now, which becomes literal politics as a purity test is going on: are you being bought by corporations and other rich bad actors? Or are you free range, organic? That’s why and how this gets sticky, especially as Trump is the ultimate influencer politician. This is a big test for culture, as the winners will define how we shall continue, be that abiding by old forms of social media or detaching from such sticky influences (which the stepping away from AIPAC signals some movement toward, at least for one party).

🩹 Branded: AI hate as advertising

I knew this time was going to come but, as AI continues to pivot toward being more overtly fascistic while stealing jobs and killing creative works, brands and businesses are becoming very vocal about hating AI — and it’s being used to advertise. See Polaroid, who has a new campaign about what AI can’t generate. Heineken went viral for their ad parodying the viral Friend ads, signaling how to really make friends. Laika’s new movie trailer is a more subtle but still direct jab at AI, as it focuses on the craftspersons involved in the film, who they deem “a brilliant team of puppet fabricators, animators, and visual designers” that are making the movie happen, an intentionally exhaustive way of going behind the scenes to connect a project with real people. Guillermo Del Toro keeps speaking out about how bad AI is, most notably at a recent screening followed by an NPR interview where he said he’d “rather die” than use AI (So me.), all of which is promo for his new movie Frankenstein. Selena Gomez went viral for speaking about the models she uses for Rare Beauty, going on record to say they use “people...who could be your best friend” instead of professionals, instead of non-people, all a point of view she’s “doubled down on.” Then there’s Bernie Sanders, who went on Twitter yesterday to call out the “STOP HIRING HUMANS” ads, to wonder what will happen to displaced workers from the rise of this tech. This is all to say: like the class of politicians betting on your wanting them to be corporate-free, brands are aligning with growing anti-AI sentiment. It’s a good bet too — whether this is all signalling or not — considering a Pew study from the summer that found “57% of U.S. adults say AI poses high risk to society,” alluding to worries of diminished connections, loss of accurate information, and loss of control. This is food for thought, as it collapses many recent trends like BTS as proof of one’s work and making claims that their work is AI-free: “no AI used” is quickly becoming the new “organic,” (especially as OpenAI recently admitted to AI psychosis).

👀 Trend Watchers, I: 2025’s costume psychology

As we’re between Halloweekends, let us collectively consider what the 2025 Halloween breakout costume actually is, less specifically and more vibe-based to understand where culture is.

• This is obvious but feels unique: kids costumes are almost exclusively Netflix-oriented. Kpop Demon Hunters and Wednesday and Gabby’s Dollhouse are seeming breakouts, alongside Minecraft and Wicked. This certainly illustrates the banality of streaming, at least for kids. It’s so far beyond novel at this point.

• Obviously Labubus, most notably done by Lizzo. Speaking of, Kim and North and Kris Kardashian were Jay Guapo and friends, which — when paired with Lizzo — pushes forward the banality of the digital: celebrities are just like us in that even they aren’t interested or concerned with “old” Hollywood but “new” Hollywood culture (TikTok).

• The NYC dog costume contest happened, the winner being a take on the “Chihuahua or Blueberry Muffin?” meme.