TR.BIZ: 8.18.2026

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 MLB’s dated ad, what the viral Chanty Beluga means, JW Anderson’s fast fashion drama, and liberals going under cover.

If anyone from the MLB is reading this, I need you to go grab a bar of soap and put it in your mouth for ten minutes. You are in trouble! And you deserve to be in social media marketing jail for a few weeks! Why? Last Friday, you at the baseball organization declared “CORN KID IS BACK!” with a TikTok that felt as fresh as someone making creamed corn as the entree to a dinner party in 2026: it’s not just dated but way off the moment. The ad itself is fine, as the Corn Kid — who went viral in 2022 — wanders around their Field of Dreams event (?), which is a John Deere sponsored (??) game inspired by the 1980s movie (???). Again: keep that soap in your mouth. The Corn Kid talks about himself in third person, wandering through corn stalks, barely visible as he’s covered in shadows, looking away from camera, line-reading the fuck out of really poor dialogue. While I am sure some Facebook parent somewhere is giggling with glee about this, the other video you at MLB made of the Corn Kid doing the TikTok acting challenge feels just as off and bad, an expired piece of content that we’re supposed to pretend is fresh but, like a corn kernel that comes out of your ass fully in tact, it looks as bad as it sounds. But why are we surprised? You are a sports entity, which is really wild considering how sports have really seized the moment, yet this ad / these ads couldn’t be more not of the moment. Then again, it appears we could be wandering toward such a sports expiration given the Yankees were recently sold to private equity, all as the Lakers is sold to Bob Iger and the other Kushner brother. Are you at the MLB evil too? Hmm. A sad state of things that, like many culture items now, presents itself as of-the-people but is actually preying upon you and your politics. Women in sports debates, anyone? At least the Corn Kid got paid, but let this be proof that having a slow or disconnected social team can do more harm than good for some brands. Now go to your room, MLB!!

We left Barcelona at 7PM on Saturday and got into New York at 10PM, which we thought would make something like jetlag easy but — when you’re five hours into an almost nine hour flight where both the in-seat power and screens are out, you turn to a nap to pass the time. What a rotten idea that was, even if it did in fact pass-the-time, as I was wide awake at 4AM despite going to bed completely exhausted minutes after midnight. Such kicked off a Sunday in a daze, which was followed by a more concrete Monday, where Bobby Aaron Solomon and I explored Greenpoint along with friends from Barcelona, Cris and her girlfriend, Aina. This trip is Aina’s first to the United States and she summed up the experience well, as she similarly was weathering jetlag: every five steps is so much information, that you’re always overstimulated and trying not to be too distracted that you literally fall. Fair point, as I have mostly been sleepwalking through my first few days here. But I have noticed a few things, much of which is old news but things I forgot about or are putting together with these new (but glazed) eyes —

• Runners are everywhere and most of them are hot young men, which is enough to trigger an already present middle age gay guy #Looksmaxxing body disorder but also is fitspo to not let something like jetlag keep you from your #gains. I did in fact go for a run as a result of “them,” but hated it because I hate running.

• I know people in NYC and other cities have always been beautiful but something about the runners and the Instagram faces I pass make it very much seem like the LA-ification of NYC isn’t just a quaint idea but a reality given the camera-ready beauty that is everywhere.

• Line culture is real but, as we went to Acre (Highly recommend!) (We even saw Olivia Rodrigo and Conan Gray there lol) and line-waited ourselves, it clicked that many of the lines are likely the experience of Sycamore Kitchen or Sqirl, where limited space to sit meets with the reality of making orders. It’s less a humiliation ritual and more a process of function. Also? LA invented line culture first!! See the first two items, which I will likely write more about in the near future as the LA-ification is real.

• The Trader Joe’s bags are still everywhere, which feels less of-the-trend and more a shadow trend of something that has been so normalized in American culture (and maybe worldwide too, even if other countries don’t have the color varieties now present here).

• Europe may be obsessed with Spanish wines, but I was surprised to find the first few cute Brooklyn restaurants we went to weren’t obsessed with Spanish wines. While there were some (Catalunya represent! Xarello heads let’s goooo), the diversity is striking and very non-European in that regard: I’ve seen Japanese and Argentine and Portuguese and Slovenian and New York wines, none of which are as available in the EU as you’d think.

• Another item Aina pointed out: the city is quiet. There aren’t any sirens or horns honking, which is quite different from how loud both Barcelona and LA are. Not something I expected at all, as we felt this both in Brooklyn and Manhattan.

• Lots of hand painted murals! Of strange tech things like Kalshi and OpenAI!

• Everyone has dogs, less people have babies, but both feel omnipresent.

• You forget, living in Europe, how diverse the world can be and how great that is.