TR.BIZ: 5.14.2026

From Gen Z's role models to World Cup pre-flops, 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 checking in on the World Cup, looking at personal cooling devices, visiting some Solidcore drama, and playing a trending game from 2005.

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🏛️ Politicultural: Gen Z’s prison of the future

My Gen Z angels…I’m worrying about you! According to a new Yahoo/YouGov poll led by okay zoomer’s kelsey weekman, we have an idea of who under-thirtysomethings are looking at as role models and what their dream jobs are. The results are…woo wee. I’d attribute this to a taste drought, or the fault of older generations being poor leaders: you tell me. The two main takeaways are —

• When it comes to public figures they admire and want to model life after, “13% of respondents chose Zendaya” which was followed by Elon Musk, LeBron James, and Mr. Beast. It’s not all bad, as AOC got 4% — but then again: Beyoncé got 3% and Timothee and Kylie got 2% and 3%, respectively.

• When it comes to job-types to model life after, 18% picked “tech entrepreneur who isn’t famous” (Good lord.) followed by 17% choosing “respected intellectual or professor” (Sure, Jan.) followed by 14% saying doctor and 11% saying full-time parent.

• What’s most fascinating — or distressing — is the highest rated in both of these realms were nothing: of the names mentioned and offered as far as role models, 36% of Gen Z picked “none” while 10% picked “unsure” while, for job types, 12% picked unsure.

Perhaps the options offered were ass, but this feels like a shared ennui at the state of things crashing into a limitation of imagination, that money-buys-happiness brain rot has infected the young that I would argue is less economically motivated but more a byproduct of wanting to fast forward to being rich without the work, an antsy-ness to leap over youth to “be old” when your problems are solved. As I wrote last weekend, dealing with the shit that comes with youth is exactly how you end up at your winning ending: pushing fast forward robs you of both your present and future by opting for get-rich-fast schemes instead of working smarter and preparing for the future. This is certainly what happens to a mind when stressed by fight/flight instincts but don’t take the bait: take a breath, make a plan, and work toward it. Look beyond the frame of this moment and the peer pressures of the social panopticon to figure out what’s next. You got this. We got this! And please stop simping after tech goons for the love of god!!!!!

👹 The Thing: Personal cooling devices

I’ve noticed something that clearly is a trend but also is post-trend given we have products arriving to fill a need: welcome to the era of personal cooling devices, a very dystopian means to solve climate crisis by adding more shit to comfort you instead of working to stop or undo climate change. Three main players are emerging here —