TR.BIZ: 12.16.2025
From a few final EOY lists to Tony Chocoloney advent dramas, 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 doing a review of end-of-year reviews, analyzing Zohran’s latest stunt, and understanding what happens when someone unalives on a TikTok Live.
Real quick: make sure to share your thoughts in the annual Trend Report™ Reader Poll by filling out this form, and mark your calendars for December 28 and January 11 as I’ll be doing some LA events. Read about them and RSVP here. In NYC? I’m headed there after!
👀 Trend Watchers: The dregs of 2025 analysis
More will come, but we’re in the homestretch of year-in-review and forecasting content. We got our Pinterest Predicts, we got Wikipedia’s Most Read, and I wanted to close our review of reviews with a few other curious items you may have missed. Lots of interesting stuff!
Merriam-Webster dropped their word of the year — and somehow was the only one who went with “slop.” This reflects a word that spiked in searches, according to AP, as explained by the dictionary’s president, Greg Barlow. He doesn’t see this all as a bad thing though, as people looking up the word are seeking truth. “It’s almost a defiant word when it comes to AI,” he explained. “When it comes to replacing human creativity, sometimes AI actually doesn’t seem so intelligent.” The other words that made their list are exactly what you think they are.
You likely saw this as I mentioned it Sunday but both TIME and FT gave AI tech leadership their top titles. These are both to be expected but, as we’ve seen in many of the other end-of-year awards, most things — including these two titles — are AI critical. This seems like the beginning of the end (Bubble pop?) or a shifting into a new technofeudal dark age.
Spice maker McCormick offered their 2026 flavor forecast, which I thought would be silly but is actually super interesting: they named black currant as 2026’s flavor of the year, a sweet-tart fruit that feels right for now, which they pair with ideas like “attainable opulence” to use food as escapism, “simple to spectacular” to hone in on elevating simple ingredients, and “sauce from somewhere” to express how global access to flavor (GHC, anyone?). This “isn’t political” but when you squint you can see how this is almost a subtweet of the world now: these trends emphasize how united the world really is despite division and, while the internet informs what we eat, it’s real people who can make real food really good. A lovely surprise from a culinary classic!
Stitch Fix offered their trend forecast which has few surprises, as 90’s revival and sporty looks and “modern varsity” are boasted, all things we know (alongside Taylor Swift as style inspo lol). Clearly this is for a specific audience, but where this gets interesting is their color of the year: Chili Red, which they find as a response to customers requesting pops of bold color to express confidence and optimism. Sure! Naturally they tie this to their AI styling tools, which is when we pull the plug.
Both NiemanLab and Columbia Journalism Review offered great journalism predictions that I highly recommend perusing, the latter of which includes celebrity journalist commentary. The theme across both is the future of journalism is little: think not only the Substack of it all but newsrooms shifting toward consultancies while collaborating across organizations, all underlined by things getting more personal with touches of delight. Most interesting? A growing acknowledgment of the critiques of journalism and audience apathy. The dinosaur awakes, it seems!
Two items that feel of-a-kind that both come from Friends of Trends™: Jaskaran and Mara Dettmann linked up to say 2025 was alt-2016, in that debate was a core theme of the year (Labubu or Lafufu? Is Addison Rae authentic? Is Sydney/Friend.com/Coca-Cola AI rage bait?); Adam Bumas at Garbage Day posited an alt take one year prior, that 2025 was the year when we longed for 2015 (“Everyone wants to go back to 2015. Before Facebook’s original pivot to video more or less destroyed the entire media industry, for the sake of fake numbers, and took American monoculture with it.”). Both great analysis, both accurate: it’s increasingly feeling like the future is the past but worse, which we’re experiencing in the present.
Lots! A follow up on Pantone: the brand addressed the flack for their white supremacy and it’s as dumb as you think it would be. They claim to not be political and are trying to conjure blank pages and looking up at the clouds. Add some salt to your toes as you cram them further down your throat, Panty.
🩹 Branded: The Tony Chocolonely Advent Calendar
Dutch chocolate maker Tony Chocolonely is having a mini-drama tied to their advent calendar: the tenth day didn’t include any chocolate. Why? The brand is taking a stance on exploitation and slavery in the chocolate supply chain, leaving the blank space as an opportunity for consumers to think critically about where chocolate comes from and the real people putting their life on the line for momentary sweets. A lot of people got the message but many were mad, saying they got ripped off and that it is rage bait. This isn’t the first year the brand has done this, but the situation did inspire the (US) TikTok to explain the intention. This is a great stunt that appropriately used rage bait, but a reminder that consumers may be too stupid to understand that their inconvenience is the point. This is another example proving the essay I wrote about over the weekend, that it is by design that people are non-critical and blithely disinterested in where their goods come from and who they harm in the process. Me, me, me as hands that suffocate the world.
📲 Tech Talk: Is bullying on live a crime?
