Modern MBA

When you shop at any retail chain or supermarket these days, you find yourself funneled to self-checkout where you’re stuck watching people fumble finding bar codes, bagging their own groceries, navigating the interface, panicking when the machine shouts at them or the screen freezes. Even if you wanted to go back to checkout where a cashier scans and bags for you, you can’t because those aisles are either closed. All this tech just suddenly appeared nationwide in the mid-2010s. Since the debut of these machines, retailers from Kroger and Walmart to Target all gaslighted that self-checkout was faster and that these machines were there not to replace workers, but to instead to free them to be more productive. They stuck to this script year-after-year despite continuous backlash.

In the late 2010s, Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat captivated consumers with meatless products that looked and tasted like animal proteins. Oatly led the way as a popular, comparable non-dairy alternative to cow milk. They represented a paradigm shift in the world of consumer packaged goods during the late 2010s. With minimal differences in taste and texture, customers could substitute their beloved meat and dairy for modern, plant-based substitutes. Whether it was out of curiosity or novelty, these startups exploded. Restaurants and beverage chains joined the hype. Retailers couldn’t stock their shelves fast enough. CPG giants like Unilever and PepsiCo fast-followed with plant-based snacks and dairy-free drinks of their own, eager not to miss out on the next F&B gold rush. It didn’t seem crazy to imagine a world where vegan startups would one day become as big as the billion-dollar meat and dairy giants like Tyson and Nestle. Disruption seemed certain.

Fast fashion, for better or worse, has withstood the test of time. The biggest brands today are not British, American, or Italian, but instead Spanish, Japanese, and Swedish - with annual sales exceeding even the luxury powerhouses like Chanel, Gucci, and Hermes. UNIQLO, H&M, and ZARA emerged in the 1990s and have dominated the mass market for the past three decades. These upstarts rapidly expanded across the West in the 2010s - taking market share from giants like GAP and Ralph Lauren on their home turf, driving J Crew to bankruptcy, and turning Abercrombie and American Eagle into afterthoughts. When the industry realized they couldn’t beat fast fashion, they joined them. Why gamble on innovation when you can profit from proven demand? Even the fashion houses and legacy labels who built their empires on selling timeless, buy-for-life clothing have transformed themselves over the years to be more like UNIQLO, H&M, and ZARA.

War is a battle over information as much as it is about logistics, territory, and bodies. Much has been said of the potential mineral deal between the United States and Ukraine. The Trump administration has made it clear that Ukraine must sign this deal in order to secure continued support from the United States. They’ve asserted that this deal is how Ukraine will pay back for all the hundreds of billions in aid that’s been sent their way. With the speed of the news cycle, it’s impossible to separate propaganda from the substance. All the reporting is big on headlines and light on nuance. Numbers are thrown around like candy and technical names are tossed like buzzwords. The Ukrainians proclaim that they have $13-15 trillion worth of minerals - so paying back billions to the U.S. will be easy - it’s just that they need security guarantees.

Buzzfeed and VICE were the digital unicorns of the 2010s. In this fast-emerging era of smartphones and video, these two companies had seemingly figured the secret sauce to go viral in this new online world. Backed by flourishing viewership, Buzzfeed and VICE fundraised their way to multi-billion dollar valuations, using the investment to elevate production value, expand genres, and build newsrooms of their own. As these startups expanded into journalism, the once-clear line that divided old media and digital media vanished. They collected Emmys and Pulitzers for their work. The viewership, quality, and virality was visible to all - and it wasn’t hard for the public and venture capitalists to be convinced that Buzzfeed and VICE had become for millennials what the NYT, CNN, and Fox were for boomers. There were also smaller startups like Vox, Thrillist, Mashable, and Insider who surged off the same tailwinds.

Thin, crispy, and seared to order, smashburgers are more than just a food trend. Even though consumers are eating out less and the fast food giants are stumbling - it’s these tiny smashburger concepts that are thriving. For only a few extra dollars, more Americans are ditching Big Macs and Whoppers in favor of these fresher, smashed, local alternatives. Customer retention at McDonald’s, Burger King, and Wendy’s have plummeted and their executives are panicking. But smashburgers are not a new invention. Shake Shack, Five Guys, and Culver’s have built their empires on it since the 2000s. Los Angeles has been the birthplace for food trends of the last decade like frozen yogurt, bubble tea, and hot chicken. It was here in 2018 when the smashburgers gained popularity as a fresher, tastier variation sold exclusively by a few individuals out of their driveways.

Food content dominates every online platform. It’s algorithm-friendly, advertiser-safe, and universally relatable, making it one of the easiest ways to build an audience—but also one of the hardest to stand out in. These days, it’s no longer the celebrity chefs, cooking competitions, and exotic food travel shows that get the most views, but mukbangs; which roughly translates to ‘eating broadcasts’ in Korean. What started as a small niche years ago where people posted videos of themselves binging extreme portions, now serves as an umbrella term for any form of eating content. The appeal of mukbangs lies in the consumption, not the cooking or critique. Mukbangers speak directly to the camera—or not at all—reacting in real time, chowing down in their cars or homes. Like influencers, they invite viewers into a casual, parasocial relationship. Some take just a few bites, others eat everything, but most feature abnormally large portions.