TR.BIZ: 6.18.2026

From Snapchat's ugly glasses to a new Disney animated AI drama, 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 Snap’s ugly smart glasses, a Lululemon culture drama, the new Obama portraits, and right wingers thinking chocolate is gay.

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📲 Tech Talk: Snap’s big ugly Specs

Discontent watching Meta eat their nachos, Snapchat decided to reheat their 2016 Spectacles smart glasses with a new version: meet their revamped Specs, a pair of thick near aviators that cost $2100+. The glasses promise AR capabilities with lenses designed to show you stuff along with “audio and video playback, AI assistance, Bluetooth notifications,” and more. While capabilities are pretty minimal at the moment (Gizmodo notes a virtual measuring tape and directions as a few.), the biggest breakout here was Snap CEO Evan Spiegel modelling the glasses and looking like a huge dork, inspiring questions of sunk costs, critiques of the “sleek” ad campaign, and general commentary on how bad they look. “Why do they keep thinking this time we’re gonna like this,” someone says, which is calling into the picture of unflattering peers like the Meta glasses and Apple Vision Pro. While the smart glasses moment has definitely arrived, it feels pretty easy to diagnose what’s happening here: dislike of these glasses isn’t just on a design level but a vibe level as this hate rises in parallel with anti-AI and data center discourses, proving the point that tech is no longer cool (or, at least, it has a big culture and credibility problem to leap over if such companies and tools want to be seen as not-evil and for-the-people). Along with Ring’s fall and kid social bans, something like Specs posits further that tech is no longer innovating but spinning a wheel that it hopes will get you spending a fortune; thus, such underwhelmed — and outright antagonistic — responses. It’s harder than ever to get normies to like you in tech these days.

📰 NEWS NEWS NEWS: A few new projects for you

A few quick announcements, about cool items I’ve been working on that I think you’d like to check out!!!

• First, I edited and helped launch Culture Slop, a new publication that investigates the overlaps and tensions between tech, art, and culture. The publication features writing by big brains I love like Cy Canterel on slop, Nikita Walia (and Elliot Vredenburg) on culture movement, Marcus Bösch on ambience, and Nicolas Cevallos on heirlooms along with interviews with people like writer Kyle Chayka and artists Tom Sachs, Barry McGee, and Mario Ayala. My favorite story? An interview with Internet Archive’s Brewster Kahle. Peruse the issue online here, with physical copies available very soon and in select cities. You’ll also find a very special piece from me too 👀

• Second! Ben Dietz and I have a special HIP REPLACEMENT podcast announcement as we’ve teamed up with harry to include an episode on aging as a part of his project called Tranche. It features interviews people I love like Kel Rakowski, Deborah Copaken, and Mike Bryskier sharing insights on getting older and life in general. Check it out here via Metalabel, which features entries from Emilie Friedlander, Minh Tran, and Eddie Averill too.

Enjoy!!!! And back to regular programming, babes 🫡

🩹 Branded: Lululemon’s Great Wall disaster

Move over Starbucks in Korea because Lululemon in China has a cultural disaster for you to be aware of: the Canadian athleisure brand did a big stunt on the Great Wall, featuring a Taiko drummer as a part of a big yoga event. The problem? Taiko drums are Japanese. The brand owned up to the fuck up, saying in a Weibo apology, “Due to limitations in our professional knowledge, we were unable to identify potential controversies.” We would think in 2026 that marketing teams would understand how to do regional events correctly — but here we are! At least this drama is based solely on human stupidity instead of AI induced mania.

🤩 Hollyweird Insider: Sorry, Disney, all animated movies are slop now