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 exploring the untapped community of former Catholics, the conservative women propaganda on TikTok, entertainment legitimizing slop, and a new iPhone gimmick.
💥 Soft Powers: Cradle Catholics
There is a whole section of the Q2 Trend Report™ devoted to the power of Pope Leo and why he’s resonating now. There’s also a key learning here, that I note given this trend has been bubbling for months —
Now is the time to appeal to Catholics, whether or not you consider yourself associated with Catholicism. This is also less literal but more aesthetic and even “vibe” based, that Catholics represent so much in the nichecific atmosphere: they represent cultural forward thinkers (Rosalia!) but also far right lunacy (JD Vance), two sides in a culture war that represent two very active communities. For those who are within the Catholic faith, breaking out should be easy by continuing to appeal more to culture. Podcasting nuns and TikTok-ing priests are just the beginning. How can you use the culture of the church to connect with people who are lost?
Since sharing this in early July, the idea continues to evolve as I keep encountering discussions of those born and raised in the faith (“Cradle Catholics”), who are trying to work through the space left by their loss of religion as the religion is frequently thrust to the center of culture now. There are discussions of Catholic theatrics, celebrations of church bangers, fan cams of cardinals, how the faith ties to “whimsy,” and the growing tension between right-wing converts and very open-minded life-long Catholics (which has been happening for at least a year). This latter point is particularly sticky given JD Vance and tech bros trying to eat the church, which is how and why both sides of this religious equation are so important: there is a fight for the faith now as it is a hugely influential space, one to tap into as so many “sleeper cell” formerly religious are curious to maintain a culture they keep at a distance. This is a huge audience to tap into, which hasn’t really been taken seriously outside of Rosalia or Madonna or Conclave. It’s surprising that more people aren’t playing in this space. Perhaps we’ll see a bigger boom toward the end of the year? Stay tuned and happy almost Assumption, all inspiration read further on the Catholic boom in the latest Report™.
📝 Media Matters, I: Conservative propagandagate
We talked about this Monday, but there is a war happening on TikTok now about pro-and-anti-trans womanness about how the hate for them is a conservative talking point that many left-wing persons fell for. This is spiking chatter about far right propaganda, about woke narrative spinning, about our moral brain rot, about non-self-aware conservatism, about transphobia affecting all women while pushing for more trasnphobia, about what it means to be a woman, and about how all of this ladders into dismantling anti-discrimination laws. This is creating a culture suck, of people talking about people on social media instead of creativity and the joys of humanity filling an app like TikTok. This is nuanced conversation, one about delicate identity politics but also about the creep of conservative mindsets as the internet becomes not-fun, all of which crashes into literacy crisis conversations that create selective listening crises. I don’t have it in me to do a larger debrief on this but I’m flagging as a follow up to our conversation on Monday because this is a taste of what we’re going to be enduring leading up to 2028. Some social spaces are getting very toxic as a result, requiring a saging of the spaces, lest it explode into a fire of orange donkeys kicking each other. But also? This is another push for people to log off, likely reinforcing our very contemporary hate of tech.
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