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 anti-tech movie trends, young people money trends, the 2020s trend of vacant offices, why the new Moschino show is good, and two interesting (but not good) ad campaigns.
📲 Tech Talk: Welcome to Scary Tech Movie Autumn
I had a very strange feeling while watching the full You Can See Everything trailer in full on my TikTok over the weekend. It was an ad, which I stopped to encounter in its entirety and realized something: we’re entering a strange tech movie season, which will undoubtedly be the rumbling clouds above our strange tech now. You Can See Everything is the buzzy, memeable Nathan Fielder documentary about Elizabeth Holmes, which will offer an unfiltered view of the Theranos’ founder’s home life. It hits theaters October 16. Dropping a week before is MUSK, the Elon Musk tell-all from Alex Gibney, the director behind Freakonomics and Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room. The movie already has a reputation after its TIFF premiere, where it was deemed “terrifying” with a near four hour runtime. It’s also facing political pressure too as its release is rumored to be blocked by Trump’s orbit while platforms like YouTube, Meta, and TikTok are disallowing paid ads for the film. Also on October 9? The Social Reckoning, the (bad looking) Aaron Sorkin sequel to The Social Network that details Frances Haugen’s Facebook whistleblowing saga from the early 2020s and how Mark Zuckerberg navigated the crisis. That’s not all: Artificial comes Christmas Day, the hugely dramatic Sam Altman movie from Luca Guadagnino. The fact that three-fourths of these movies come out in October, during spooky season and before midterms, offers a window into our mindsets and the general tech state: these people are scary and weird and they’re ruining our lives. These movies will empower them, in some ways, but also use fact to “shock,” using truth to detail, debunk, and debate the merits, intelligence, and power of these people. Is this going to change anyone’s opinion? Or cause a political sea change? Likely not, as it will validate many who already hold these values — but know the conversation about this trend will be more damning: in a year of AI, data center, and larger tech backlashes, movies like this coming out in such a quick succession will pierce the armor and scar the skin. I’m not sure our tech era is actually nearing its ending, but these emperors clothes are being ripped apart and likely will be unable to tailored back together. That will certainly open up an opportunity to greatly shift culture as entertainment and “traditional” media is used to connect the state of the world with tech-assisted disaster. Just look at NAZA, a recently released documentary in this suite about how AI has helped further the genocide in Palestine. “[NAZA] shows that the algorithms were used to create rationals for the maximal targeting,” as Naomi Klein says of the film. “[AI] is an incredibly powerful tool in the hands of racists and supremacists being applied to erase worlds.” We’ll see if this “bygone” media can undo the future.
📳 Marketable: Children be spending
A few things that landed in the inbox to share that I thought were interesting —
SoFi partnered with YouGov for a study on Americans and money in 2026. There are some very interesting learnings here, like diversifying spending strategies like rotating streaming services and buy now, pay later schemes and the majority of Americans believing entrepreneurship being a key to financial progress. Most interesting? Validation of Gen Z seeing investing as entrepreneurship and “asset building,” resulting in a stat like Gen Z being four times more likely than Baby Boomers to have invested in crypto. Peruse the full report here.
Mobile bank OnePay is going all in on teens in an effort to bridge financial independence with parents parental oversight. Teen spending has always been big, but teens as a financial target by banks is very interesting and indicative of larger adultification. OnePay is also doing a big creator push to get the word out, working with teen (and parent) creators to amplify capabilities. “Identity first, banking second” is the logic behind the strategy.
What are the most popular secondhand spots in the US? Yelp dropped a list, based on the most-saved places on the app. This may seem very #GenZ #Depop but it probably speaks more to collective penny pinching (and backhanded awareness that older products are better and that there’s too much stuff): searches for “thrift shop near me” are up 2K+% along with searches for tailors, bag restoration, furniture refinishing, and clock repair. What are the top stores? LA’s Melrose Trading Post is on top followed by NYC’s L Train Vintage, then Brooklyn’s Urban Jungle, Pasadena’s Rose Bowl Flea Market, and Austin’s Uncommon Objects.
I need to embark on a Sober October journey (I may do a half-month? Idk.), but expect content about sobriety to ramp up today through the week’s end. This will also mean conversations about California sobriety will rise too as daily cannabis users now outnumbers daily drinkers. This is why THC beverages are seeing a boom, which “hemp libation” company Woodstock notes sales in this vertical being up 135%. They’re calling this swap from booze to bud-sipping “zebra striping” (alternating drinking days) or “going damp.”
Two surprising fashion collabs: first, Kith and Katz collabed again, which includes NYC and Jewish food culture treats like latke ice cream sundae, a Rueben, and a black-and-white cookie egg cream (the collection is out now with these food items hitting Katz starting October 10; second, mgk collabed with video game PUBG for a capsule collection debuting at ComplexCon, giving boys their streetwear digs for their battle royale mindsets. The future of fashion collabs may be pairing the epheme
What apps do people most want to delete? A new study from Wolfstone Digital analyzing search terms reveals it may not be what you think it is: TikTok tops the list of most-searched app to delete, followed by Tinder, Twitter, Telegram, and Snapchat. The least searched? Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp. This reveals “which platforms face the strongest signs of active disengagement,” according to Wolfstone co-founder Adam Woodhead.
