TR.BIZ: 4.30.2026

From the new Gaga/Doechii to chicken ceasar wraps, 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 looking at the new Lyst Index, why conservatives are obsessed with shitty rock, the loss of Claire’s, and a really cool pen.

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📰 NEWS NEWS NEWS: HIP REPLACEMENT wants to hear from you

For those who are unfamiliar, Ben Dietz and I run a lil podcast about generational differences called HIP REPLACEMENT that explores Gen Z, Milllennial, and Gen X cultural overlaps and differences, to help encourage more generational cross-pollenation. While the main podcast looks downward, speaking with younger guests to better understand what twentysomethings-ish are into, we’re piloting a companion podcast which looks upward, that brings on guests over forty to share insights and advice on life stages. But! We need your help by sharing your thoughts on the stages of life, via filling out this little form. It should take five minutes! We’ll likely use some of the thoughts shared in the show so listen in for a shout out. Also, if you have an idea for a guest, hmu as that’d be great to have in mind for the future.

🤩 Hollyweird Insider: Death by yas diva slay bae servitude

I thought the stupid Lady Gaga and Doechii music video for “Runway” was cute. The costuming and set pieces were funm even if the song feels algorithmic, something AI spat out as a product intended to honey trap gay people. It’s a really bad song that not only feels dated but unnecessary as it continues to mine spaces that have been mined so deep that all we hear is deafening echoes of better things we’ve already heard, things from actual ballroom and queer and fashion culture: it’s a trope so tired it feels like Weekend At Bernie’s any time someone conjures such an intersection. Even more odd is that the symbology doesn’t change, that the pop girls are cribbing ancient iconography (Madonna? Grace Jones? Kylie Minogue? Janet Jackson? Gaga herself?) instead of crafting their own, hence while it all feels so stale: “Runway” uses the same staid work-the-runway motifs that someone like Tate McRae has desecrated into a heterosexual nightmare, which Tyla tries to play with by being a one dimensional product placer, which Ariana Grande adds a blaccent and Broadway swish to, which Dua Lipa then nibbles on, all of which leads to Katy Perry fully clogging the mother toilet with a smile. It’s exactly what we talked about on Tuesday in regards to Meghan Trainor: while it’s cute when she, the ecstatically suburban, plays in this space it’s very obviously an ad when so-called icons — Gaga! — parodies herself. I’m tired of the heel grabbing and strutting, as are most other people too: “obvious gay-bait,” “gauche and parodic of her own better music,” “sterile corporate pride slop,” “some of the worst lyrics i’ve heard this year,” “katy perry slop,” and “written by a white gay man on twitter” are just some of the reviews for this canon. Worse, it reveals a new genre of burn: it feels so spiritually Target, as was raised again and again and again and again, entering a Netflix-lighting adjacent admonishment of new cultural products that feel both lifeless and old, a product of an era passed that we’re eager to escape. 2016 vs 2026, culture recession, etc.: nothing is new anymore and, when queer icons start cribbing themselves, we’ve got problems. Brain rot has decayed every part of the culture pipeline, turning every stage into a product, junk food raised on junk food raised on junk food.

🏛️ Politicultural: Why do conservatives love shitrock?

We can blah blah blah about Kid Rock at the Pentagon and the military doing Make-a-Wish style antics for the “star” but we have to understand that this is all of-a-kind for conservatives, that being a shitrock star is one of their greatest pursuits and greatest audiences to pander to. This isn’t American-specific either as sniffing around many a conservative leader will reveal similar antics: Argentine president Javier Milei has not only performed a rock show in his home country but just last week, after fucking the Wailing Wall, he rocked out for Benjamin Netanyahu; Japan’s conservative nightmare prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, once played keyboard in a Deep Purple tribute band and recently met the band, telling drummer Ian Paice that he is “her god” before giving him a pair of signed Japanese drum sticks; Nigel Farage’s boomerslop crate digging are one thing and, while he may favor Jackson 5, his antics are repeatedly lumped into the same language as rock stars (despite rumors of his once being a punk rocker). Rock isn’t cool, it’s a very “old” form of (white) music that recalls the past and feels good alongside something like Lord of the Rings, fantasies from the past that no longer grip culture in the way they did. That very obviously is why conservatives love shitrock and its various expressions and adjacencies, which is a lesson to the left: maybe don’t go all in on club music or Charli XCX or even rap next time but find something more present and ideologically basic that appeals to more center popular culture. Perhaps a space like rappers-turned-country stars? Who will clinch the coveted Post Malone endorsement?

👠 Aesthetically Pleasing: What’s the Lyst indexing now?

Despite some drama being posed by Louis Pisano, that Lyst just makes shit up (which I’d believe), the Q1 Lyst Index finally dropped. Some thoughts —