TR.BIZ: 12.18.2025

From ICE nativities to PetSmart Santas, 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 talking about ICE nativities, where Hollywood is and isn’t going, the future of young journalists, and what comes after gloving.

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🏛️ Politicultural: ICE goes the nativity

So-called “woke” churches are putting ICE call outs in their nativities, which is such a brilliant way to connect the Trump regime’s attacks on local communities with the teachings of Christ. An “ICE was here” sign was placed in a Boston scene, a baby Jesus had his hands zip tied in Chicago, agents arrested the holy family in Charlotte: this is the moment when churches are standing up in the name of the vulnerable — and this is such a smart (And simple!) way to express discontent. It’s ruffling feathers — the Boston item got heat from other churches while the Charlotte one was victim to viral vandalism — but the critiques have been made, thus solidifying this year’s defining religious holiday trend. “Keep politics out of religion!” people will cry, while entirely missing the point.

🤩 Hollyweird Insider: Which way, performing man?

Entertainment is in a bit of crisis, is it not? It’s not just that the right wing has entered the building (See the very smart Bari Weiss in Hollywood story.) or that tech has remade the industry in its image (Hello, Warner Brothers saying no to Paramount in favor of Netflix!), but that the two are combining in new and awful ways (Your comment, Amazon Melania doc?). None of this is to mention the fires, nor the post-strike non-bounce back: it would take an incredible exorcism to save Regan MacNeil at this point. Sad! What are performers to do with this? What is the industry to do with this? A few thoughts, given a few things percolating in the world—

• This just broke yesterday: The Oscars are headed to YouTube in 2029. Along with Netflix’s “The Actor Awards” thing, it’s so very obvious the future of TV isn’t the TV at all but some techno streaming vomit. Lest we forget the Golden Globes has a podcasting award now! And the Grammy’s have an album artwork award. Talk about an identity crisis.

• News came out this week that the cult, off Broadway favorite Titanique is headed to Broadway this spring. This may seem non-Hollywood, but it indicates a few key things. First, Broadway is officially in its shitpost era, paving the way for more niche-and-not breakouts in the space between Oh, Mary! and Death Becomes Her, an area for weirdos to play in on stage versus on screen. (See also: Julio Torres’ Color Theories moving from off Broadway to HBO, versus starting at the network given his ongoing relationship with them.) Second, “major” entertainment like television and the movies and even streaming are simply not where innovative ideas go: theater and the internet is where innovation happens — especially when it comes to comedy. See caleb hearon for proof! (Also? This shows how decidedly unqueer Hollywood is now, that queer people now mostly exist on stage and the tiniest screen. Says a lot about the industry!)

• The trend of celebrity “TikTok alter egos” is a big red flag, these is-it-or-not performances by stars like KJ Apa, Kevin James, and Timothee Chalamet who play characters (Mr. Fantasy, Mr. Taylor, and EsDeeKid, respectively.) that serve as subtle marketing for them served up in a different way. Regardless of if these celebrities are or are not “these characters,” or if these characters are part of a larger vision, this tension reveals that they — like us — are forced to do the monkey dance online to make a dollar. If these stars have to do that shit? Good luck to us all.

• Given the success of the Minecraft and FNAF movies, it’s unsurprising that a new Mario movie, a new Street Fighter movie, and a new Mortal Kombat movie are coming next year, following the Fallout show, which follows season two of The Last of Us. In addition to a lot of other video game projects, you can see that video games are to the 2020s in the way horror and Marvel was to the 2010s. There were mumblings that this moment would happen for anime — but that idea seems to be collapsing under a giant multi-generational controller. This is “fine” but shows the intellectual and creative vacuousness in the industry: this isn’t just recycling but a deal that gives gaming a better payout, as these projects are commercials for experiences on platforms or at amusement parks that are far more exciting than an hour and a half in the dark: the finitude and labor of movies and TV as a medium prove why gaming is of greater interest to audiences and the medium of the 21st century while film was the medium of the 20th century. This is why people like Lea Seydoux and Norman Reedus and Sophia Lillis, Hunter Schafer, and Udo Kier (and Jordan Peele) are getting into games: it’s the future of Hollywood.

• This one’s about music, but I want to point out a delay we’ll continue to see: after 25 years of beefing, the Rolling Stones officially collabed with Fatboy Slim to release a mashup-bootleg of “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” and “The Rockafeller Skank” from 2000 called “Satisfaction Skank.” The song is a relic from a simpler era, but the delay is a very good example of how industry kills creative momentum as expressed by such moves being anti-contemporary. Does that mean something like AI should be used by Disney? No, but it does mean that hiring fan editors is the future versus trying to lawsuit them out of existence.

If I had to put money on the future of Hollywood, I would not: I’d put it on the all the various adjacent spaces mentioned. Hollywood as a place and an idea is becoming decentralized, which is a fascinating and terrifying state to be in. Good luck to us all!

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👁️‍🗨️ Listen In: Young journalists need your help

Cami Fateh very well may be the future of media, less because she is the associate editor at Feed Me (Slay.) but because she represents what the trajectory of a journalism career will look like for writers just starting out. I say this given a conversation we had on the latest 🦿HIP REPLACEMENT🦿 where Cami had two very interesting observations.

• First, The Free Press has a popping party culture full of young people, which Cami noticed given her nightlife reporting. I suspected that this is because the outlet is in the money with CBS — but she had a better idea: “There’s a lot of kids who maybe felt — I don’t know — alienated by wokeness,” she explained. “Or they wanted to be in an upstart media publication. It’s a lot more exciting to be somewhere that’s new and on the up than a dying dinosaur.” Very fair point.

• Second, Cami’s a fairly recent journalism school grad — and she feels like she’s one of the few success stories given how terrible the jobs market and media market is now. “For people my age who want to work in media, we don’t have a lot of choice,” she says, before sharing where her peers have ended up, from working off-beat beats or voyaging to distant locations to maintain career momentum. “If there’s like an opportunity in front of you and The Free Press is saying ‘We want to hire you.,’ I think a lot of kids would take that.”

This signals a lot, but mostly that young journalists are in search of work and finding no one to take them in: there isn’t a talent drought but indeed an opportunity drought. Things change, sure, but we must do better for young talent instead of letting them get swept up by the right. Come on, anyone in leadership reading this! How can we fix this? Listen to the full conversation on Spotify or YouTube.

🩹 Branded: PetSmart’s imperfect Santas

PetSmart is having a TikTok moment thanks to a very funny thing: their very imperfect Santa Clauses. Santa Classic, Santa Chola, Santa Big Naturals: you dream it, there’s a Santa for that — but that’s not a bad thing. Consider then that the kids seeing Santa — iguanas, geese, chungus bulldogs, tantrum dachshunds, diva dalmatians, scaredypoos — are just as imperfect and you see why this works. Charming! Lofi! A great way for locals to connect, all thanks to holiday hijinks so wrong they’re right.

👀 Trend Watchers, I: Corporatetrainingcore

People are making jokes about corporate training, which is funny but reveals how off our work-life balance has become, that people can and do and will make their own parody “HR trainings” from having to do repeat such trainings for so many years that they’re memorized. They’re funny! But a sure signal of worker brain rot that continues to be a growing conversation in culture.

👀 Trend Watchers, II: Gloving? Sliders? Naw, let’s get niche

TikTok is experiencing a war between glovers and sliders, two micro-communities of the people who dance with lit gloves and the people who slide with kneepads on. This is a joke, Gen Z poking fun at what we’d consider dorks, which is a lil mean but has moved beyond making fun into a culture of its own. Here’s where it gets good: it has spawned the celebration of other “communities” that are completely made up(-ish) and being shared, like hat mouthing, bird balancing, gurning, and fleshmorphing. In a world where you can do anything, have anything, and know about anything, niche community continues to serve as a testament of connection: by existing in the unknown, away from cameras and doing your own thing.

🧰 Tool of Note: Read Aloud

People often ask me how I “read so much” and the answer is: I do and I don’t actually read a lot. My process includes a lot of literal reading, with my eyes, but also a lot of listening too — literally. For stories I’m not really interested in but find necessary, I use the Chrome extension Read Aloud to turn any link into an audio story, so I can multi-task as I “read.” This is the same way I read books too: Books I don’t care for or that are buzzy? I read via audiobook from the library. Books I’m actually excited about? Hard copy. It’s a good model for “reading more” without wasting your time. It’s also super accessible too!

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