TR.BIZ: 11.25.2025
From Charli XCX's newsletter era to Twitter's failed locations feature, 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 turkeys that pee on you, Google’s new AI image generator, and what may come of the celebrity anorexia trend.
🚨 REMINDERS 🚨
📖 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!
🤓 The next Trend Report Live™ is happening is December 7 at 5PM in Barcelona! We’ll likely treat this as a Trend Report™ holiday party too so…come on through, Barcelona! RSVP HERE!!
👹 The Thing, I: Wet and gushy turkeys
It’s Thanksgiving week and this year’s absurd food trend is turkeys that take a literal piss, taking moistness to another level. When sliced, these turkeys literally spray their juices, always with a man tenderly caressing the bird as it’s sliced: take that visual metaphor as you will. What’s happening here is that it has turned the injecting versus brining debate into a wet-and-wild sport, taking what Masterclass advises as “inject liberally” to an eye-popping level, to add “bussin, bussin” juice. This plays into a larger 2020s theme of food content turning sexual (“goon-baiting,” as Jaskaran put it — and see videos like this to see how far it can go), suggesting all content online eventually becomes sexual if you wait long enough. I’m not sure if people are getting turned on by this, but it’s definitely not appetizing looking. To each their own!
👹 The Thing, II: Paper chains for Christmas
Recession indicator? While many were focused on #RalphLaurenChristmas and the “Hob Lob garland,” another trend emerged on TikTok as people have been furiously crafting holiday chains out of pretty paper. Paper crafts have a moment every few years, with chains popping up around the holidays — but this year is seeing a very pronounced spike. The sensation is definitely DIY-by-necessity as many are keeping their hands busy to make spirits bright, a distraction to give yourself meaning during increasingly chaotic times. It’s also sustainable! Or easily recyclable, unless you’re filling it with staples. We’ll see where this goes, as the K-economy enters its holiday era.
👁️🗨️ Listen In: What does Charli “Substacker” XCX mean?
charli xcx’s viral Substack post (and general platform presence) has inspired a lot of thought not only on this platform but also on Twitter, where people are buzzing and booing about the idea of it. It’s rich food for thought — and I’m curious what others think about it. “I enjoyed where Charlie XCX arrived at,” strategist and advertiser James Whatley shared, using the thoughts presented as a means to reorient yourself as a working creative. “‘I don’t know what I’m doing, but I’m just knowing that I’m trying to push things forward.’”...As a creative provocation, to take back into your workplace, what am I doing? What’s the impetus of driving me forward? I’ve got to hit the KPIs for this brief, but am I trying to move things forward with this work that we’re delivering? That it’s interesting.” Indeed! For Ben Dietz, there was something about the mundanity of celebrity. It reminded him of an experience nearly twenty years ago, waiting to see a movie at the recently opened — and first American — Soho House. “Lou Reed was in the line,” Ben said. “The guy that was talking to him as we walked past, he said to Lou, ‘So, Lou, why’d you switch to Verizon?’ And and I was like…’Why does Lou Reed even know where his cell service comes from? This is a god among men. Why would he be aware of that?’ The thing I thought that was funny about this Charli post was she was just like, ‘Yeah, you know, sometimes riding in in limousines and yelling out the top and all that cliched shit is awesome and other times you’re in liminal spaces.’” And me? I think it’s great — but complicated and performative. What does it mean for a pop star like Charli to now “be a newsletter” writer, on the social platform where people go to pretend to be smart, where perception of intelligence is a social currency? That was a specific choice, as she could have started a Ghost or done like Lorde or Florence — but she came here. That is a choice, one that raises and lowers the ways and means of this game. Alas: all of social is the same gamble. James, Ben, and I chat this, why Minecraft beats Wicked, and the appeal of Kelly Cutrone in our latest podcast, out now on Spotify and YouTube.
📲 Tech Talk: Tech’s bait era
There’s much mumbling about tech entering a new era, mostly centered on the internet entering obsolescence due to AI. That’s true and not, but I want to point out a few things that feed in and out of that theory. We’ll go from least AI to most AI, looking at Twitter as a place where this thinking coalesces.
For the past month or two, memes and jokes that drive you to look at someone’s profile, to look at their pinned Tweet or header has been making the rounds — and it’s all engagement bait. It started with the “How do I fit this in my header?” meme from months ago and has risen to a very viral “lore behind your header” Tweet that people and brands are using to steal some attention. It speaks to the loss of community and shared culture, that talking about the functionality of a platform is the rare thing to bring everyone together. Sad!
