TR.BIZ: 6.9.2026
From Starbucks' drama in Korea to Madonna's new film, this is your early-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 TikTok’s Sundance collab, Elon Musk coming for your 401K, a deep fried Stranger Things meme, and big drama for Starbucks in Korea.
🤩 Hollyweird Insider: TikTok and Sundance are collabing
As the box office drama around the failure of He-Man has different parties pointing fingers and as the Tribeca film festival Israel-Palestine mess continues to smear, something more interesting is happening that illustrates where Hollywood is going: TikTok and Sundance have launched a “micro-series” program. “TikTok has become a home for serialized storytelling, where original micro-series find audiences faster and more authentically than ever before,” TikTok’s Head of Entertainment Partnerships, Dawn Yang, explained. “We’ve seen how powerful community-driven discovery can be in helping stories break through, and we’re excited to partner with Sundance Collab in continuing to champion original voices.“ The program is a four-week course focused on scriptwriting that they’re connecting to the success vertical dramas, specifically Isa Rae’s micro-drama hit Screen Time. I raise this as we’re entering a race to sign deals and identify talent in the shadow of Backrooms and other 2026 YouTube movie breakouts: a star search is happening to identify breakouts, which will lift social while momentarily saving Hollywood. Why else is YouTube hosting the 2029 Oscars? Especially since it just surpassed Netflix viewership! It’s to be seen which talent will rise and hit but the big deadline is 2029, so that there will be enough digital talent fully integrated into Hollywood for the big awards show, therefore becoming a tech-y gotcha when such digital talent sweep this distant-but-near Oscars. Creators are out, in are digital auteurs, inspiring what will become the glossier sequel to mumblecore, largely based in internet culture niches. Things are about to get interesting, as one industry star rises as another falls.
🏛️ Politicultural, I: LA’s high-drama mayoral election
After a week of terrorism enacted by the idea of Spencer Pratt facing off against Karen Bass, the evil has been defeated: Nithya Raman has officially surpassed Pratt and has advanced to the runoff. It was a close one! And a reminder that every vote counts. Good things can happen! Even if it felt like a Safdie brothers drama to reach this finish line. Sheesh. Read my interview with Nithya here.
🏛️ Politicultural, II: SpaceX’s 401K scaries
I keep getting warnings signals about the SpaceX IPO and how it’s going to bomb our 401Ks, all thanks to some in Wall Street hoping to make it easier for Elon Musk (and AI monsters) to tap into “passive” investments like 401Ks. “The rule changes by indexes may warp ‘passive investing’ — a ‘set-it-and-forget-it’ way for amateur investors to accumulate wealth — into something riskier,” the New York Times explains, which has been rumbled about for months but now seems like a possible reality. People are rightfully worried, in that so much of the economy (and our financial futures) is being gambled on by people who are not actively living and working and saving and paying for the future we will inhabit. People are calling it an economic pump-and-dump and an exit strategy for the elites, while Casey Newton sees this potentially as a way to create transparency into these companies. This is a very interesting story to watch as it very likely will break financial and political and tech containment, adding further fuel to the anti-AI and anti-tech fire. You can mess with our present — but our distant futures? Where we’re supposed to be enjoying the fruits of our labor? You’ve messed with the wrong aspiring yuppies.
📝 Media Matters: Are AI and books learning to love each other?
