TR.BIZ: 10.9.2025

Your late-mid-week check-in, where we cover how the LA fires were sponsored by big tech and the death of the hashtag 💫

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 two very recent political interview flubs, Instagram’s attempt to create digital Oscars, and a very tall lip trend.

ALSO: Save the date for October 23, as music critic and writer Philip Sherburne of Futurism Restated will be joining me for a talk on music writing. Learn more and RSVP here! Also? It’s free too!

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🏛️ Politicultural: A tale of two flubs

Who says news bloopers don’t still slap? There were two fairly bad ones that happened in the last two days that are of note, from two opposite ends of the political spectrum, both the result of two very different behaviors. They include —

• Stephen Miller was caught on camera admitting Trump has “plenary” authority, which was a confession of their agenda for absolute power. A normal person would have continued after such a slip but Stephen did the most incredible thing: he stopped talking, pretending it was all a technical glitch. While that could be true, he was the one talking — and to just stop speaking as the speaker is not how this works, as someone who worked in live news for a few years. Unsurprisingly, Google searches went wild as articles defining the word popped up too. All this as AOC kicks her feet, giggling with glee.

• Katie Porter is being slaughtered for getting mad on camera when questions of her claims of winning came up, which turned into a battle between a politician and a journalist. This inspired a wave of thought, confirming long-standing rumors that she is cruel while illustrating how to not to do an interview and even inspiring a meme. This is a gift to the right, who are using this to push sexism and prove Democrat insanity, while essentially nuking her gubernatorial bid as it starts. This incident has inspired other videos to leak or become exhumed, all of which could have been solved from the start by Katie keeping her cool when facing the smallest challenge.

These are both bad and, while Stephen Miller’s is existentially frightening, Katie Porter’s is a gift to both the right and the left, creating a pile on that is eclipsing the former’s flub. You would think we’d all be this media trained in 2025 but we ain’t! The loser here are the Dems, but such is the trend for them as of late.

• What can you do about this? Please get media training. It is 2025!! Even I’ve gotten media training — and I am no one.

📲 Tech Talk: Palisades fire was Silicon Valley sponsored

The man who started the Palisades fire earlier in the year has been identified — and there’s a fascinating twist. “Among the evidence that was collected from his digital devices was an image he generated on ChatGPT depicting a burning city,” explains acting Central CA US Attorney Bill Essayli. The images are absurd but let’s take the techno-talk a step further: he is being tied to his work as an Uber driver, that the fire started related to a trip he was on. “Two of his passengers later told law enforcement that he appeared agitated and angry that night,” the Los Angeles Times notes. The story continues, noting more tech ties: “Rinderknecht used his iPhone to take videos at the Hidden Buddha clearing and listened to a French rap song ‘Un Zder, Un The,’ according to the affidavit. The music video for the song, which the affidavit described as about despair and bitterness, shows a trash can being lit on fire. Rinderknecht had listened to the song nine times in the four days before he allegedly set the fire, the affidavit said.” So Apple and Spotify are also accomplices here, if not Google Translate too. As AI cleaves water and desertifies landscapes, as Apple and Google prop up fascism, this situation seems to turn the horrors of tech-based environmental and political disasters into a Mad Lib horror that Black Mirror could never have autofilled properly. Not that this man isn’t guilty, but the picture portrayed here is of a person driven to the brink, much of which is shaped and in response to our techno reality.

🤩 Hollyweird Insider: Will Instagram Rings work?