TR.BIZ: 6.4.2026

From an AI writers psychosis to a streaming service going indie, 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 an AI writing scandal, Pride’s off-step start, fans rioting against the artists they love, and an expression of exasperation.

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📝 Media Matters: Writers are going crazy from AI

Did you read the Wired story about the writer whose book about AI warping the truth was previewed, flagged for misattributions as a result of AI, resulting in the writer caving, admitting AI use while coming to the conclusion that most writers use AI and that such a process is typical? It’s crazy work, the sort of story that makes you go crossed-eyed because it’s so off-the-walls and boldly wrong. “If the only way for me to not end up with a mistake ever again is to literally stop using AI, that’s just not realistic,” the author, Steve Rosenbaum, told Wired. “If the answer is to stop writing, that’s not out of the realm of possibility.” It gets not-better, as New York quoted the author with the following statement: “Anyone who is a working writer today who sits in front of a computer, either doing longform or on deadline or at magazines, whatever the cadence of your work is, you’re using AI one way or another at least in part because it is not only seductive as hell but it’s really incredibly valuable.” As was observed on Twitter by Moira Donegan: actually, Ellen, that’s not true. Certainly some writers are using AI and certainly many tech resources force the tech upon us unknowingly but, if the Hachette AI book cancellation and the reaction to book club proponent Reese “AI” Witherspoon are indication of anything, it’s that writers and readers are not fans of AI. The story about the story, about writers and AI, has become a hot debate, one that represents not only the mania of the tech but that every industry and every community is “dealing with this” in one way or another. No matter who is debating the subject, one thing is certain: all of this is a credibility killer, which makes all writers and all creatives look worse, as one person invoking such an excuse, means we are all besmirched as the generalization within the community becomes a generalization outside of the community. Not-doing-your-job of due diligence as a writer because of AI is bad but fortunately not new. For example: in Naomi Klein’s 2024 Doppelganger, she shared a deeply cringeworthy moment about Naomi Wolf, where a similar drama played out as the thesis of her book was discredited live during a BBC interview. Klein writes, of Wolf’s situation and Wolf’s book about the persecution of gay love in the Victorian era —

Wolf shared what she apparently considered to be the most explosive finding of her research: that well into the nineteenth century, there were “several dozen executions” of men convicted of sodomy. She based this on finding the term “death recorded” in court documents. The BBC interviewer, Matthew Sweet, informed Wolf, live on the air, that she had misunderstood the term, which actually meant the exact opposite of what she had claimed: that these men had been found guilty and then released. It also turned out that several of the charges she referenced were not for consensual gay sex, but rather for child abuse, and that by conflating the two, she had perpetuated a dangerous fallacy linking gay men with pedophilia. With such basic errors exposed at the heart of her thesis, Wolf was dropped by her U.S. publisher and the book was pulped.

Yes, Naomi Wolf’s idiocy didn’t lead to her being banished from writing. But, in her situation like this situation for Rosenbaum, a similar path is about to be taken: it leads to the otherwise credible embracing mistruths and fudging facts, which in turn leads them to hand-hold others toward the same conclusion, helping to widen “just asking question” ideologies and disbelief systems. This era of “personal truths” continues, as AI baptizes more and more, an act that lobotomizes in its welcoming you to the asylum, where a wider congregation of the psychotic will nod along with you.

🏛️ Politicultural, I: California’s political death wish

A Republican leading the governor’s race? Spencer Pratt sitting at second place in the LA mayoral election? And the turnout for voters? Lawd. Sick to my stomach! Things are still changing but know I still believe in you, Nithya Raman! We will have our moment! But I may punch a hole through a palm tree as we wait!!!!! (Also: the lesson here isn’t a “breaking of the anti-establishment” trend but that too many voices and choices confuse everything. This is an unfortunate taste of the future — and a 2028 warning — as we may die at our desks due to a multiple choice test with a thousand answers.)

🏛️ Politicultural, II: Pride’s off to a weird start

We are not even a week into Pride, and the vibes are off. A few examples —

• Queer Eye’s Karamo Brown took to People to expose his castmates, citing bullying and toxicity that people suspected when Bobby Berk quit. The straw that broke it all? Karamo’s mother overhearing his cast mates talking shit about him. “[She kept repeating], ‘I thought they were your friends,’” he said. “It made me realize I can no longer stay silent about how often I was made to feel like an outsider.” Mess. (Antoni has weighted in with some non-thoughts, signalling that this is the start of a bigger pig pile on.)