TR.BIZ: 2.10.2026
From Epstein memes to the Staples baddie, 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 CorePower Yoga losing it over ICE, Anthropic killing jobs, the AI Olympics drama, Epstein’s Kirkification moment, and more.
🎪 Eventful: Quick thoughts on Bunny Bowl
The Super Bowl was Sunday and I will try to keep this quick: lightning round stray thoughts from the sports thing —
Bad Bunny’s “little boy” moment says a lot about leftwing brain rot, in that a rumor spread online that the boy Benito handed his Grammy to was the Ecuadorian child detained by ICE in Minnesota. This has long been debunked but offered a very open window into the waking dementia of some. Why would a traumatized child be in the halftime show??
The Paul Brothers exemplified another brain rot: the public politics of weighing-less-evils in a year like 2026. Is this an example of how Woke 2.0 will settle such scores?
Was it not weird Bad Bunny wore Zara? Not because it isn’t an “affordable” option for many (Sure, sure.) but because it’s a Spanish fast fashion brand — which essentially is the colonial beast from which we found ourselves in this situation to begin with. It felt like that grandma’s womb meme via strange Stockholm syndrome. Yes, it was a cultural/political triumph — but why not collab with a Puerto Rican studio? Or uplift a Latin American brand(s)? Clearly, messaging only goes as far as a paycheck.
The Puppy Bowl puppy death curse strikes again, as the last event marked the second time a dog appeared on the show only to die shortly after. The circle of life comes for another sickly sweet pea <3
It truly was the slop bowl, given everyone from Svedka to Jasmine Crockett made a pass at this. As if ads weren’t already heartless!
As if AI ads weren’t bad enough, the panopticon ad(s) made it worse — namely that Ring ad, which almost instantaneously contextualized “video” doorbells as the tool of the state that they long have been.
TikTok viral acts reached their end, as both the Funeral Stud and the jingle lady had brand tie ins that feel like the last breath of their respective “bits.”
The future is being fat-then-not on camera as we saw with two former athletes, Serena Williams and Mike Tyson. It feels like we’re about to have a discourse sequel around this that taps into a 2010s body politic.
📲 Tech Talk, I: Anthropic’s war on law
KRF NOTE: Via Olivia Choi, who shared this news item with me that I completely missed. Pour one out! And seems like we have an idea of who might actually win the AI race before things pop.
Did you enjoy Sam Altman’s crash out after Anthropic’s Claude ad? Well, here is something for you to crash out about: Anthropic’s new Claude Cowork wiped out approximately $300 billion in market value from software companies in a single day last week. Why? Wall Street panicked because AI is now doing the work that people used to pay software companies for, proving that software used to be the “middleman” for humans, a “job” that is rapidly being replaced. Why pay for a hundred software accounts for a hundred employees when a single AI whatever can do their jobs for the price of a sandwich? From London to Amsterdam, data giants like Relx and Sage are getting “disintermediated” into oblivion as their margins evaporate faster than Sam Altman’s composure. At this rate, the only thing left for these tech CEOs to do is join the millions of office workers they’re replacing — though I doubt a chatbot will feel bad about taking their jobs either. Although: chatbot, please have mercy on my future job :(
📲 Tech Talk, II: The Olympic’s AI lesson
The Olympics are happening and, aside from the JD Vance booing while causing traffic and some interesting opening ceremony images, the biggest breakout has been state sponsored Italian brain rot given what feels like countless instances of the current games boasting the use of generative AI. This has caused a big stir, playing out as one of the first major cultural examples of such “art” being used to craft the visual vibe for an event — and it’s going over not-well, inspiring people to amplify the BBC’s handcrafted spots while pointing out the stolen references. This seems really bad, but I wanted to ask an expert: I messaged master marketer Jaskaran of The Social Juice to weigh in. Here’s what he had to say —
First, I know brands will bend the knee and use AI for a lot of their marketing, if not today, then tomorrow. And it will be slop, because brands generally don’t put in the effort to create good content.
Knowing that, I have two options, should I just let it happen or hold them to a higher standard? I speak against AI slop because my job is to push for better marketing. I really don’t care whether it is AI or non-AI. I have always done that.
Now, you have the Olympics. The standard for them is higher than for most brands. Graphic design and art have been the next big thing for the event, every nation has brought a piece of graphic design history to the table. Check Wikimedia, and you will find how you can trace the progress of art through Olympic posters and stamps.
And suddenly, they are airing an AI slop ceremony and made a post using AI, which we can debate was AI slop or not. But it was Olympic slop because it was the lowest standard of graphic design we have seen from the Olympics.
If not the Olympics, who are we supposed to hold to a higher standard? That’s the place where we celebrate human excellence. If they fall to AI slop, everyone falls.
It’s true, which is why the use of this tech from legacy entertainment figures through haute couture is troubling: it’s not just a standard is being lowered but that it sacrifices real talent and real intellect in favor of laziness that fondles facism. “I am personally not that anti-AI,” Jaskaran adds. “There are things it can do better than humans and that can actually lead to social good. But I am not pro-AI when it comes to creativity and marketing.” Hear, hear. Your comment next, Chance The Rapper.
🩹 Branded, I: CorePower Yoga’s ICE lesson
