Nostalgia ultra

This year, set your hot tub time machine back a decade.

Likely the same data we’ve seen this year, which is pointing to one very singular desire, shared across the whole spectrum of now very fractured online communities: Everyone wants to take a mulligan on the entire last decade. To turn back the clock to the web circa 2015, with the hope that it can somehow undo all the horrors between then and 2025.

Trends cycle in and out of favor. Sometimes the names change, sometimes they don’t.

Oh, and Mr. Beast is hiring for viral marketing positions.

via Garbage Day

I’d rather get crushed for being optimistic than praised for being miserable and negative.

-Jared Carrabis_

Forecast from a position of realism.
Then do one from a place of optimism.

Aim for the second.

The question guiding AI adoption/deployment often seems to be “what can we automate?” (which is, of course, not a new question, we just have a new tool to use in the answer.)

The better question is: what shouldn’t we automate?

Then work backwards from there.

A website without a CTA is an art project.

If you’re bored with your core brand message and feel like you’ve been saying it over and over…

Good

Keep going.
Say it again.

It’s probably just starting to take hold outside your brand’s walls.

What story is your industry based on?

The most fascinating part of the study on 400 books is that almost every popular diet follows the same narrative formula. The scientist calls it a modern “Fall of Man” story.

It goes like this:
Step 1: Once, humans were healthy.

Step 2: Then something corrupted us — modern food, processed ingredients, industrial agriculture, seed oils, something.

Step 3: But if you follow these rules, you can return to that pure, uncorrupted state.

Should your story go with or against the grain?

Bottled water = plastic
Fiji ✅
Liquid Death ❎

via The Pump Club

Planet Money is watching 3 indicators this year:

• Fed rate (splintering opinion on rate changes + a new (“yes man”) chair incoming)
• Electric rates (as affordability signal, rates up 7% compared to ~3% general inflation)
• Consumer spending (actions over words, we’re in a perma-vibecession + K-shaped economy)

The indicator of the year for 2025 was tariffs.

A.k.a. The economic soap opera of 2025.

Runners up:

• Consumer sentiment (see “vibecession”)
• CAPE ratio (cyclically adjusted price-to-earnings ratio): stocks are the most expensive they’ve ever been (compared to actual earnings) since just before the dotcom crash

The economy is standing in a hallway filled with closed doors. The movement of these indicators will determine which door it opens and walks through.

Consumer confidence—after being revised up for November (post-shutdown bump)—dipped (again) in December (aka this month).

Despite it being the most wonderful time of the year, people aren’t feeling good about the Present Situation, with the labor market playing the role of Ghost of Christmas Future.