TR.BIZ: 9.30.2025
Your early-mid-week check-in, where we cover the search for the next Charlie Kirk and Baggu's big public transit drama ✨
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 explore a wave of bad news for AI, illiteracy hysteria, a very Puerto Rican football game, and Baggu’s big BART drama.
🔄 A lil whoopsie
I did a big goof on Sunday, sending out the weekly report to paid subscribers instead of everyone. An embarrassing accident! Especially since I spent literally all day Saturday tweaking the essays, only to be so out-of-it that I sent it out wrong ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Oh well! A reminder that I’m human! Thus, two gifts: here is Sunday’s dispatch and find a full, free Tuesday TR.BIZ below. Enjoy! And apologies!! And if you like this full Tuesday post…upgrade to paid!
📲 Tech Talk: More AI cautionary tales
Ads for the AI Friend device are getting absolutely roasted in NYC, which supposedly cost a million dollars to deploy. The signing of an “AI actor” is getting a lot of negative attention, which the actor Emily Blunt has called “really, really scary,” imploring the industry “please stop taking away our human connection.” Trump shared an AI video of himself promoting the “medbed” conspiracy theory as Meta teased an AI-only feed, which has people roasting it and sharing their discontent about such slop. It gets worse as Zuckerberg talked about “misspending a couple of hundred billion dollars” just to try to make AI a success (which, clearly, made people mad). “Generative AI will compete with you for power, water, and land,” environmental researcher Kate Crawford explained in a recent New York Times Opinion video. “It’s driving up electricity bills while releasing more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.” Naturally, this is in addition to stealing jobs, making dating impossible, and ruining the arts. These are all stories that have emerged in the past week, which we can add to the growing pile of AI-is-pissing-me-tf-off narratives that see humans competing with tech, a tech that only marginally improves the majority’s lives while rewarding the rich in the process. The Friend item is particularly glaring as it’s a physicalized reminder of the madness of this tech that no one wants, offering a physical venue for people to express their grievances about unseen tech in a public manner (which we hope is repeated in the defacing of the glossy, “human” ads by OpenAI and Anthropic). All this gets at Larry Ellison’s techno-horror future being deployed, not to mention Palantir: we are in the techno-dystopia and people very actively want out of it. This is a reminder of what we know: the AI bubble will burst, or at least it will continue to widen the space between the haves and have-nots, who are finding more ways to make their anger known. As we discussed this weekend, it will play into the larger meaningless landscape, that treating everyone like an NPC means the NPCs treat the world like a cutscene.
What can you do about this? I know I say this every few weeks but AI is putting a widening target on some people’s backs: you gotta be really careful with how you use and market said tech, as people are starting to equate it with a larger anti-tech, anti-fascism mindset. As they should! Because they are clearly linked.
👀 Trend Watchers: Anti-sympathy for the disabled
I’ve long followed disabled creator ST Hammer, who has become known for putting a “NO ADVICE” disclaimer on all her videos as her comments section become a pit of people casual infantilizing or expressing ableism. A wild thing that keeps happening is people suggesting she amputate her non-functional hand, which sums up what feels like the rising feeling that many online (and off) are not seeing the disabled and different as human. Pair this with a recent viral Jeff Norgren video, where he shared a daddy-daughter day with his severely disabled daughter — and the comments section became a space to say how the daughter shouldn’t be alive at all. This runs in parallel to the re-rise of the r-word and the MAHA autism war, both very unsubtle expressions of eugenics and that only “certain people” are people. That piggy backs on increasing chatter about funding cuts in the US and UK to disability: we’ve gone down the anti-body positivity slide, around the anti-DEI carousel, and are creeping into the anti-special ed bounce house. We knew this is where the conversation would head, which is concerning as we will all become disabled one day.
What can you do about this? Consider how you are showing up, supporting, and celebrating the disabled. This should go beyond casual “We have someone who uses a wheelchair!” in your ads but by platforming persons of difference — and giving direct (Financial!!) support to them. Put your money where your mouth is!
🏛️ Politicultural, I: Illiteracy hysteria is back
A near six month old FT story by data journalist and general icon John Burn-Murdoch is getting a lot of play on Twitter, from a story originally about reaching “peak” brain power. One item has taken off: a graph on the decline of reading, which positions the mid-aughts as the time when teens shifted from “daily reading” for leisure to reading “hardly ever” for leisure. Thus sparked a million micro-thinkpieces — professors theorizing about student behavior, chat about Idiocracy, connections to larger media, phone fears, invasions of sea people — all reiterating something I have first-hand knowledge of, as my stories on the subject always hit: talking about the decline of literacy, intelligence, and or reading is left wing rage bait that people will always show up for. This conversation trends every few weeks on TikTok! To the point of the AI item at top, we’re all looking for reasons to turn back the clock and un-tech-ify our lives — and a lack of reading symbolizes a human disconnection from the self. People are seeing something like a loss of reading as a key indicator of culture loss, which means the loss of humanity — hence why it always does numbers.
What can you do about this? For any media entity, always take the opportunity to post about stats related to literacy, too much phone use, and the loss of book culture because people always show up to hoot and holler. Also? Make space and elevate the act of reading! Celebrate it across ages and cultures and communities! The thing that drives me wild about these stories/conversations is they’re never followed with conversations about how to find reading culture and foster it for yourself, your family, and your community. Clearly there’s a hunger for it: be a leader in the neo-literacy space.
🏛️ Politicultural, II: Meet “Brilyn Hollyhand” and his private jet
We are witnessing a race for the new Charlie Kirk and, despite people like JD Vance trying to take the title, one is having a breakout: Brilyn Hollyhand, a punchable baby who looks like every dude I went to high school with in Georgia whose dad was a lawyer or owned a construction company. A video of him is going viral as he heads to a talk…via private jet? People are having a field day for obvious reasons, making it feel like he’s an industry plant whose fake name really doesn’t help the allegations. This is only of-note as we are living within a reality show in search of a new host. And it sucks! Just like “Briland.”
💥 Soft Powers: A Boricua half time show
In case you missed it, Bad Bunny will be the next halftime performer, which is huge considering he is a a noted anti-Trump figure. Obviously MAGA is big mad about it as people wonder if Trump will attend. A few things come to mind here: first, this seems to prove the big loser drama of this past weekend’s Ryder Cup and who is “exceptional” in this state of culture and, two, that the FBI and other sports leagues may be more woke than we think, particularly given how they showed up for Pride (even if the Yankees caved to Trump). All this to point at the sign: sports are politics. Everything is!
🩹 Branded: Baggu tells a lie
Quick, niche drama for you: Baggu is in trouble for pretending to have a BART collab, selling swag for the Bay area mass transit authority without permission. This seems benign enough but, given the overlap between Baggu shoppers and a love of public transport, the brand is in trouble. “Having a fake BART collab is crazy,” as someone said on TikTok. “Why do you need to not only sell stuff but sell fake collaboration for people who are interested in the public good?” This kicks up the previous Baggu drama of using AI for products, which people revolted against, as the brand — which built itself off of single-use bag alternatives — is doing things that go against protecting people and the planet. The brand says they’re “exploring” an actual collab but BART has already clapped back. “We’re flattered they love us so much and want to be associated with our awesome brand,” they said on Twitter. “But it would be nice if they had reached out to us and perhaps shared some of the profit since we are a public transit agency in financial crisis.” Ouch.
👽 Strange Fact: The man who didn’t give a shit
I haven’t been to Philly’s Mütter Museum in nearly twenty years but now I feel like I need to book a visit in the near future as I watched a video on dying from not pooping, which tells the story of one man’s seven foot long colon. What? A 29 year old man from the late 1800s died from literally not being able to shit, leaving behind a mega colon with 42 pounds of poop in it. I tracked down the reproduction of it, which isn’t as exciting as you’d think but it does resemble what it wasn’t. A reminder to get enough fiber in your diet, people!
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