TR.BIZ: 11.6.2025

From Zohran's meaning to soft clubbing's collapse, this is your late-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 Zohran’s significance, how Charlie Kirk is the new 9/11 meme, a new clean girl aesthetic, and the IMDB for kids.

🏛️ Politicultural: What Zohran’s win signals

If you didn’t hear, let me be the first person to tell you a full day later: Zohran won!! Which means a whole economy of “What does this mean??” has opened up, which we will be subjected to through next year’s midterms, as everyone and their mother’s journalistic outlet is theorizing about this. I’m interested in a few things though, less of what it means “for Democrats” and more what the win is signalling, going beyond politics and into culture. My top takeaways are —

• Muslim-Americanism: This is obvious but, from the “Shakira law” leftist jokes to the great racism (a la: “New York forgot” statements), the idea of what it means to be a Muslim American is swelling again in a way we haven’t seen since the early aughts. This is raising both Islamophobia but also pride, offering a moment for the community to see themselves represented on one of the biggest American stages possible.

• (Democrat) Socialism: Obviously this is coming up, from it becoming a new right wing monster to getting a big explainer treatment, both of which speaks to a political shakeup based in trying to do right by as many people as possible. No wonder it resonated with so many!

• City vs. Country: However, a huge lesson here that people are parading around as a “Gen Z thing” is a misnomer that simplifies this moment as a “kamala IS brat”-esque situation: this is a moment that considers city culture versus non-city culture, which is as much of a geographical concept as it is a mental aesthetic. What Bratmala didn’t consider is that the idea of “brat summer” had a huge appeal for the coasts hence why it conceptually was isolating ad wasn’t necessarily a winning strategy given all the explainers that popped up. What Zohran did was tap into something that was local and offered FOMO in a way taht suggested those not-in-NYC could recreate this moment, inviting them in while offering a road map to be adapted. That’s the lesson here: how can you bridge the local to the national and international? Which strategies and messages work for both populations versus prioritizing one over the other?

• Anti-AI: Cuomo ran an AI slop campaign, which felt both dated and aligned with the evils of the White House (which it literally was). I know I say it again and again and again but this is a huge signal of not only what AI is aligned with but that it’s a losing, anti-person bet — and makes you look bad, perhaps not on an individual level but certainly on an organizational level. “There was no chance that the actual Cuomo could outcharm Mamdani, so out came the AI Cuomo,” Futurism explained yesterday. “Instead of a symbol of a hopeful future, [AI]’s become a fount of the toxic and bizarre — the stuff of dying campaigns and spiteful, decrepit avatars like Cuomo.” Voila.

• Anti-Loneliness: Zohran’s campaign was so incredibly man-on-the-street, as if he were remounting a new version of Billy On The Street. That wa refreshing! Arriving to a debate by bus, sitting in the 212 seats at a Knicks game: this is a man of the people, which is a reminder and inspiration to get outside and be with people — especially if you’re a politician. He is NYC at its best! Thus, this was not only an anti-billionaire, anti-division, anti-hate campaign but one of egalitarianism and togetherness, anti-loneliness as a key takeaway.

• Woke 2.0 & Meme Supremacy: “Woke 2.0” chatter has gone around a lot and I will leave other outlets to explain that. Yet, this is a taste of how far the pendulum will swing once we’re out of these fascistic woods. This goes hand-in-hand with something else: meme supremacy, which is that Zohran didn’t wield memes at all but instead enabled a fandom to create a meme soup that built buzz, constructing “Woke 2.0” without his having to actually do much. From Mamdanistan to “Shakira law,” email pronouns to Floptropica, the meme world isn’t the real world — but it’s the mycelium that informs so much of culture, which he didn’t touch but enabled. That will be studied!

What’s your Zohran takeaway? What do you think he signals? Drop thoughts in the comments, etc.!

👀 Trend Watchers, I: Charlie Kirk is 9/11