TR.BIZ: 6.25.2026

From Reddit lusting to sexy Italian brain rot, 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 Hollywood’s new love for AI, drag queens playing board games, giant oysters in London, an anti-tradwife battle, and Lupa Zalupa.

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🤩 Hollyweird Insider, I: Hollywood loves AI now

I have to stop believing that — or caring about — an industry like Hollywood is interested in saving itself. That ship has sailed, somewhere between Sandra Bullock going “AI ain’t bad!” and Ben Affleck’s AI-start-up getting a Netflix acquisition. The industry, at least the power brokers, have done the unthinkable: attached themselves to fast moving technology, after having missed the social media train and the streaming train, instead attaching themselves to a train that is headed off one going off the biggest cliffs imaginable. But alas! This is their siren of a boyfriend that they have decided to wed very openly now. Let us count the ways, none of which consider the little people: the biggest drama was Amazon dropping Luca Guadagnino’s OpenAI movie Artificial, likely due to conflicts as Amazon is investing $50B in OpenAI, thus setting off a domino effect of cowardice as the film is getting turned down by Focus Features, Warner Bros., A24, and Netflix; speaking of A24, the Camila XCX aesthetic “indie” production company has received a $75M investment from Google to co-develop AI “new tools for movie production and distribution,” reminding that A24 is larping around being cool, taking Kushner family investments so they can pretend to be the underdog, a strategy that has worked well for them — and Timothee Chalamet; ahead of the Christopher Nolan Odyssey, an unrelated — but very clearly tethered together — audio book with the voice of Michael Caine is coming that is all powered by Matthew McConaughey’s AI company. There are plenty of other concerning propaganda items (Largely from Hollywood Reporter, who gleefully are covering a “vibe directing” platform while glazing a non-profit worker they deem as the AI age’s Charlie Kaufman.) but these are some of the most egregious, showing how quickly we’ve gone from striking in support of human industry talent years ago to human-first acting campaigns earlier this year to this. Most of these are happening at a business level, illustrating not just the thought that tech kills art but that Hollywood has officially abandoned the arts as its core to become a tech industry, a capitalized system that cares not for art or artists but for power, oligarchy, etc. This also is a signal that they do not care what viewers or people like you think, that the customer (Audience.) will never be right anymore considering it is choosing these values while the majority of people are deeply disinterested in this tech, revealing a different type of coastal elitism that will doom them all. I’ll leave you with the words of the sage and almost always right John Waters, who recently shared thoughts about AI with Billboard. “I saw something that was written supposedly for me by AI, and it was just like a really bad first draft,” he said. “I think I always thought it would be good for pornography, but you can tell. It looks too good. I thought I would like it but I don’t. It looks too good.” Let that be our barometer: if AI can’t do porn in a satisfying way, why would it do anything else in a satisfying way? The great bubble in the sky continues to blow bigger and bigger. How might fashion and design help it pop?

🤩 Hollyweird Insider, II: What’s up with drag queens and gaming?

A little trend that might represent a very specific niche (Nichecific?) that has been building for years: drag queens and gaming, especially long-form board gaming. It was recently announced that Bob The Drag Queen would be hosting a steampunk murder mystery show for Tubi where they play a game called Blood On The Clocktower, which builds on Bosco and Irene The Alien’s Spell Slayers, a weekly Magic: The Gathering show, which builds on a drag-themed spin-off of Dropout show Dimension 20 where Jujubee, Alaska, and Monet X Change along with Bob played Dungeons and Dragons. Queer people and gaming have long trended together (“gaymer”), but this trend is so specific, showing how board games are their own form of live theater — and drag queens are well suited for such roles as entertaining game players, offering an almost radio show vibe. Should this go beyond a niche-y niche offering? Probably not, as a drag queen game would be great but land somewhere in antique stores alongside games like Twinks & Trolls. If you’re in board gaming though…start folding drag queens into your culture as they’re naturals as far as evangelizers!

📲 Tech Talk: Everyone wants what Reddit has