TR.BIZ: 3.26.2026
From the death of Sora to the return of remote work, this is your late-mid-week check-in š«
Welcome to The Trend Report: Business Editionā¢, a midweek look at top stories, trends, and more of whatās happening online and off by Kyle of The Trend Reportā¢. Today, weāre covering a new fascinating dating survey, what comes after Dubai, why remote work is gonna get pushed, and those damn tissue dress boxes.
š©¹ Branded: BLK digs into the dating mindset
Ask anyone in the dating world and theyāll tell you that the market stinks, both as far as persons in the pool and the options available to swim with. Much of this is rightfully blamed on dating apps, which is why the space is attempting to disrupt itself with the trend of dating apps turning back to lo-fi questions. In keeping with the questioning, BLK ā a dating app for Black singles ā recently released data from a poll of 5,000 singles that emphasized the complicated mindset of daters now: 75% of respondents had a serious marriage-mindedness, versus an interest in the casualness of a hookup or situationship; almost half (44.4%) cited apps as the reason why people arenāt serious about relationships; which is complicated by 36% of users being open to non-monogamy with 78% open to non-traditional two-parent child rearing, as Gen Z leads a more conservative slant to dating given 57.1% are celibate (!!) and opting out of the messiness of hooking up to protect their mental peace. You can explore the full findings here, which are a fascinating window into a long simmering process of making tech human again that is happening in an obvious place: dating life. Of course, we can take this with a lil grain of salt as people are probably projecting their best selves in such a poll: of course youāre on an app to get married! But that doesnāt negate the theme: people want to be people again, craving not āthe old timesā but core tenants of human being that feel increasingly stolen from us. Such is what happens in these greatly dehumanized times!
š² Tech Talk: The AI crash-out countdown is on
An evil has been defeated: OpenAI is pulling the plug on its video generation app Sora, which is raising alarm bells around AIās future. This also means OpenAIās big Disney investment is dunzo too. This isnāt entirely surprising given reports in this year of the appās struggling to maintain interest after a buzzy start ā but this puts the writing around AI in huge letters on the wall: is this tech bubble about to burst? Or undergo yet another massive pivot? āEven the API, where they can charge whatever they want, is getting shut down as well,ā Riddanceās Jeremy Carrasco explained. āThat means even if they could charge $5 or $10 per video, it wouldnāt be competitive with the rest of the market and the opportunity cost is not worth itā¦The more significant thing here is you have an example of a company looking at the market and saying, āThis isnāt a market we wanna be in.āā Such a realization along with the branded push to declare human creation could be why someone like the AI fruit Love Island creator has been crashing out: the āHollywood is cookedā mentality of recycling content via AI reanimation isnāt that sellable, either for consumers or the industry. Thatās an issue, even if people are willingly consuming the content, but highlights how AI video generation of this ilk will never make money because the tech is now āfreeā to use in the same way everyone has access to a camera now: the devil was in scaling too fast, not keeping niche to maintain cash flow. Or thatās my theory! Paired with the Strait of Hormuz energy crisis for AI, this may be the first gasp of many for the tech. I am buying a bottle of cava to pop when things burst ā then holding on for dear life. (Meanwhile, Hollywood is banking on human-driven animate reanimation it seems. Sigh.)
šļø Politicultural, I: You want us toā¦work from home?
