TR.BIZ: 11.11.2025

From Joyce Carol Oates vs Elon Musk to Yankee Candle’s rebrand, 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 talking words of the year, the Black media bubble as an all media bubble, and Yankee Candle’s rebrand woes.

🚨 REMINDERS 🚨

Two upcoming (Free!!) events happening to share, for any aspiring writers or those hoping to hone their craft.

• 🌈 Happening November 22 at 10AM PST / 1PM EST / 7PM CEST, Rax Ishida Will will be talking queer narratives and translating identity into writing: RSVP here!

• 📖 Happening December 3 at 9AM PST / 12PM EST / 6PM CEST, Sarah Labrie will be doing a deep dive into memoir, essay, and beyond: RSVP here!

---

👀 Trend Watchers: What words will define 2025?

As if by surprise, we’re already within the end-of-year season. That means best of lists and ongoing drops of “BLANK” of the year, from Time’s Person of the Year to Fox Nation’s Patriot of the Year (which recently went to Melania Trump of all people). My favorite entry into this genre? The Word of the Year economy, where big books from Webster Dictionary to Oxford encapsulate the past twelve months in a single word. We’re starting to get a taste of how the year will be represented as two 2025 Word honors have dropped: Dictionary.com named “67” the year’s word (“It’s meaningless, ubiquitous, and nonsensical,” they said, noting it best represents brain rot culture.) while Collins named “vibe coding” this year’s word (“This year’s list also reveal a society grappling with authenticity in an increasingly performative world,” they explained, which is fascinating.). As we await further lexicological recaps, I wanted to brainstorm other options as they rarely overlap or repeat as to enable novelty in the season. Here are five-ish words I’d suggest suggest to the various juries—

• “Clanker,” as this would encapsulate a year of pro- and anti-tech and AI sentiment so well given the domination of tech-is-bad as a theme this year. “Broligarchy” could also fit this bill but “clanker” seems more of the moment. See: various iterations of the word, alongside talk of how uncool tech has become.

• “Layoff,” which isn’t new but seems to sum up shared fears and the grim economic reality that many of us experience. There’s a case to be made that something like “polyworking” or even “996” taking the title, which speak to being overworked and underpaid. See: stories of networking and strategic nightmares.

• “Recession indicator” or “bubble” or perhaps even “crashing out,” as these words encapsulate the will-it-or-won’t-it feeling of the year, that we’re teetering toward a disaster, the vibe shifting in ways we’re all holding our breath to finish. See: my culture and fashion recession stories.

• “Unc” or, if we want to go more direct, “performative,” both slang words tied to people trying and failing to fit in, both reflecting straight male antics as expressed through (cultural) capitalism. See: various stories on broken maleness and try hard culture.

• “Dolls” feels very obvious, but I don’t think any brand will be so bold to take such a stance on the fall of DEI and rising prejudices not only around trans persons but around immigrants and persons of color worldwide. I’d love to see this word picked! See: coverage of protecting dolls and rising self-dehumanization.

If lil old me had to pick a word? I’d actually go along the lines of the directly above: “dehumanizing,” ideally “self-dehumanizing,” even if that seemed to be a word that only I used. From voting against your interests to deceiving yourself into believing you’re of a different social or economic status, from AI eating away at so much of human life to our casual callousness of mistreating each other, something in the “dehumanization” space sums up how conflicting and complicated this year is. What word do you think defines the year?

📲 Tech Talk: Geriatrics versus tech billionaires