Henry Kirk, a cofounder of the software development company Studio Init, wants to hire the best engineers. That's why he asked job applicants not to use generative AI in the first technical coding part of their interviews — with the promise that they'd be able to show off their combined engineering and AI skills in a later section. "They still cheated," he tells me.

"It was so obvious," Kirk says. The coding tests took place in tandem with a video call, and some candidates frequently looked off to the side. They gave delayed answers or copied and pasted full blocks of code into the system instead of typing step-by-step. Some refused to share their screens or spouted off-topic answers to verbal questions, leading Kirk to believe they were reading large language model outputs verbatim without even thinking. "It's a waste of our time," he says. But even as AI is making a mess of technical screening tests, Kirk says he still thinks it has value. "I'm a small company. I have 400 applicants. How do I screen the people down to a manageable chunk of folks?"

Many software engineers aren't just allowed but are increasingly expected to use AI on the job. Companies like Google, Meta, and Salesforce increasingly rely on it for engineering tasks in the name of efficiency. But with gen AI now able to code as effectively as a junior engineer, bosses are wondering if the traditional coding tests — which have long been a staple of the hiring process — can still separate the good developers from the sloppy ones.

New tools keep popping up to make cheating on tests even more seamless: A since suspended Columbia University student, Chungin "Roy" Lee, recently created a tool called Interview Coder and used it to cheat on an Amazon coding test and then posted the interview to YouTube. He's selling the tool to other engineers for just $60 a month (he's claimed on X that he received and rejected an internship offer). Amazon has said candidates can be disqualified using gen AI unless explicitly permitted. The company did not comment specifically on Lee's test, but Margaret Callahan, an Amazon spokesperson, tells me that the company has job candidates acknowledge they won't use gen AI during the interview process when it's not permitted, but it does have them share their history of working with the tools when relevant. Google is also considering bringing some interviews back to in-person settings, where they can have more control over the environment. A Google spokesperson told me that applicants are informed before interviews that if they use AI during them they will be disqualified.

Recruiters and hiring managers I spoke to for this story said the mainstream adoption of ChatGPT led them to suspect that more job seekers are trying to cheat their way past the code tests. Companies are scrambling to change old evaluation processes for a new era. But as they push engineers to get more efficient with AI on one hand and wag their finger at its use with the other, they're raising new ethical questions about what really counts as cheating: Is an LLM an unfair edge, or just a coding partner?

The traditional coding interview is at a crossroads. But the end of the old interview might be welcome among engineers.

"Timed coding tests were never truly realistic; AI just pulled back the curtain," says Annie Lux, the founder and CEO of the coaching firm Land That Job. The interviews create pressure and penalize people who struggle in test environments, Lux says. And many employers now expect engineers to leverage AI tools at work — tests that ban them put job candidates in a different scenario than the one they would work in. A 2020 study by North Carolina State University and Microsoft found that people were better at solving coding problems when they weren't being watched closely and told to explain their work as they went — confirmation that some engineers performed worse when under the stressful conditions of a traditional technical interview. "These interviews reward test-taking over engineering," Lux says. "They ignore how software engineers actually work."

Andrej Karpathy, an Open AI cofounder, coined the term "vibe coding," a nod to the way AI will help engineers "just see stuff, say stuff, run stuff, and copy-paste stuff," and have it "mostly work," as he put it. An engineer's skill for writing code may become less impressive than their capacity to understand it. But the issue hiring managers tangle with now is how to balance the benefits of vibe coding with vetting the best engineers from large pools of applicants in a tight job market where there's a huge incentive to cheat your way into an offer letter. On the job, "hopefully, they are using AI, to do the stuff AI can do," says Don Jernigan, a vice president at Experis Services, an IT staffing firm. "We need to be testing and evaluating them from the areas between what a human can do and what AI can't do."

Kirk says a "perfect storm" bolstered cheaters: The tech job market tightened just as ChatGPT went mainstream. There were more applicants for fewer jobs and more people hoping a perfect score on a coding test would help them stand out. Now, it could hurt them in the long run. Kirk says he and his team have gotten more confident about catching cheaters, and will sometimes call them out and end the interview if they're sure they've found one. One applicant even admitted to it, and others have left the interview without argument, he says. And he is keeping a blacklist of people he suspects cheat in his interviews and plans to never consider them in the future. He already has a list of dozens of people he's sure tried to cheat, with hundreds more who raised suspicion. Now, his studio has applicants follow up their first test by coming on-site for more tests. "We're potentially paying you a lot of money and we need to make sure there's a good fit all around," he says.

ChatGPT didn't invent cheating. In the past, software engineering applicants would sometimes deputize a friend to spit out code in their place (either in a take-home test or, as one recruiter told me, actually sending someone else in their place to the interview round), and job seekers would share coding tests and answers online. If you search Reddit, TikTok, or Blind, you'll find people sharing tips and tricks to con an interviewer. But AI is a knowledgeable friend who's even easier to access. More people are using it to try to land any job by mass applying or sending AI-generated cover letters. Overwhelmed recruiters then use their own AI tools to try to sift through and find the best candidates. It's all creating a massive cog, with two different AIs talking to each other and both job seekers and hiring managers feeling frustrated.

When it came to engineers, recruiters and hiring managers started to notice something was amiss by early 2023. Job applicants completed coding tests with perfect answers, but when they moved on to interviews about the test, some knew little to nothing about the work they'd submitted. "Even with ChatGPT earlier versions, it could solve a lot of coding questions," says Yang Mou, the cofounder and CEO of the AI recruiting company Fonzi. "The thing that's even more insidious now is that the AI is also better at explaining the answers as if it was a human." Fonzi interviewed 1,270 candidates for a software engineering job between January and March, and flagged 23% of them "as likely to be using external tools," Mou says. The AI tool scans answers for awkwardly long pauses and evaluates phrases used to see the likelihood that they've been written by a chatbot, and then humans can listen back to the interview to see if they catch any red flags.

Two years ago, the technical interview company Karat flagged about 2% of interviewees as potential cheaters. Now, that proportion has jumped to 10% of interviewees. "It's happening more frequently," says Jeffrey Spector, the cofounder and president of Karat. "Ultimately, our belief is that interviews have to evolve." Karat is developing a new interview process that it hopes will better evaluate job seekers when they use LLMs, Spector tells me. "The LLM is becoming a core part of how engineers do their job. Preventing them from using the tools on their job seems very unnatural."

As AI becomes a bigger part of the job, Spector says, hiring managers — and humanity at large — have to ask the question: "How do you define cheating?" He says people shouldn't disregard explicit instructions not to use AI, but if most people are using it and you're not, you might be at a disadvantage in the interview process. Many applicants use books and online tips to study for coding interviews, and some use ChatGPT to practice for job interviews. When it comes to using AI in the actual test, Spector says, a tipping point will come where it feels too disadvantageous not to, particularly among young engineers who have learned and grown up in the LLM era — and the ethical questions will get messier.

Hadi Chami, the director of solution engineering at the software company Apryse, says he began to notice ways job candidates were using LLMs as he started to use them more in his own work. So he changed the job application last year. Now, he gives applicants who pass a first "vibe check" interview a take-home assignment, with the expectation they'll use AI. But he tells them they'll have to walk him through their work. That's helpful for now, as he can still see whether they know why something works, not just that it does work. But Chaim expects the problem to get worse: He says that he's concerned about young workers coming into the field. "They may have an overreliance on the tool. They'll be able to ace all their classes," but might struggle in the workplace, he says.

Maybe this isn't the interview apocalypse scenario it seems. "This is a little of a new frontier, which is maybe why there is so much fear and stress on both sides and people are just flailing," says Victoria Gates, the cofounder of the interview training firm Expert Interviews. "If you're investing your time and your money into finding out if candidates are cheating, you're wasting your time. The way interview processes are today, they are very unfair towards candidates. Of course they're going to try to find anything they can." Instead of trying to go full bad cop and employ tech to monitor cheating, Gates says companies should train interviewers to ask incisive follow-up questions and for specific examples that LLMs can't generate. Right now, companies may be focused on catching cheaters, but Ali Ansari, the founder and CEO of the AI interview company Micro1, says that will change. "I think coding in general is already looking extremely different," he says. "That implies even without the cheating, the coding test will have to start looking different." He predicts that there will be a "new norm" for coding interviews within the next year or two.

All this coding mess is evidence of the breakdown in trust between employers and workers. Job seekers are questioning how much free labor they owe someone who may not even extend them a second interview, and more bosses are doubting the integrity and work ethic of the people reporting to them. So much of the tech meant to make job searching easier and more accessible has just added noise to the process. Killing the old coding test and using something more creative in its place may be a small step in repairing that disconnect.

Amanda Hoover is a senior correspondent at Business Insider covering the tech industry. She writes about the biggest tech companies and trends.

Occupy Wall Street, Notorious RBG, cottagecore. These and several other lasting internet trends and IRL movements of the 2010s were born not on Twitter, on Facebook, or in the mainstream media but on Tumblr. You might remember it as the blogging platform that became one of the most hyped startups in the world before fading into obsolescence — bought by Yahoo for $1.1 billion in 2013 (back when a billion still felt like a billion), then acquired by Verizon, and later offloaded for fractions of pennies on the dollar in a distressed sale. That same Tumblr, a relic of many millennials' formative years, has been having a moment among Gen Z.

Zoomers have gravitated toward the pseudonymous platform, viewing it as a safe space as the rest of the social internet has become increasingly commodified, polarized, and dominated by lifestyle influencers. As in its heyday, Tumblr is still more about sharing art, culture, and fandom than individual status. More posts about anime and punk rock than bridal trends and politics. In 2025, 50% of Tumblr's active monthly users are Gen Zers, as are 60% of new users signing up, according to data Tumblr shared with Business Insider. And several of Zoomers' icons, from the "Fault in Our Stars" author John Green to the pop superstar Halsey, have come back to the platform.

"Gen Z has this romanticism of the early-2000s internet," says Amanda Brennan, an internet librarian who worked at Tumblr for seven years, leaving her role as head of content in 2021. She still uses her own Tumblr regularly as the internet's resident meme librarian. "It allows for experimentation that's not tied to your face."

Part of the reason young people are hanging out on old social platforms is that there's nowhere new to go. The tech industry is evolving at a slower pace than it was in the 2000s, and there's less room for disruption. Big Tech has a stranglehold on how we socialize. That leaves Gen Z to pick up the scraps left by the early online millennials and attempt to craft them into something relevant. They love Pinterest (founded in 2010) and Snapchat (2011), and they're trying out digital point-and-shoot cameras and flip phones for an early-2000s aesthetic — and learning the valuable lesson that sometimes we look better when blurrier. More Gen Zers and millennials are signing up for Yahoo. Napster, surprising many people with its continued existence, just sold for $207 million. The trend is fueled by nostalgia for Y2K aesthetics and a longing for a time when people could make mistakes on the internet and move past them.

The pandemic also brought more Gen Z users to Tumblr. The blogging site was an online oasis in the barrage of horrifying news and conspiracy theories, thanks to its acute focus on art and pop culture. And when other platforms take hits, Tumblr benefits: User numbers spiked to coincide with the near-banning of TikTok in January and the temporary ban of X in Brazil last year. Tumblr seems to be a refuge for people searching for new social sites. In January, people launched communities on Tumblr to post and preserve their favorite TikTok videos. Meanwhile, progressives mad at Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk for going full MAGA and are ditching Facebook and X as punishment.

"Our menu has been full. There's been no more space to add something else," says Andrew Roth, the 26-year-old founder and CEO of the Gen Z-focused research and consulting firm DCDX. In a poll of more than 600 Zoomers that DCDX conducted in 2024, two-thirds of respondents said they wanted their social media presence to become more private. Tumblr might be just what many young people are looking for. "Now the time feels more ripe for that to happen for Tumblr, even if Tumblr is doing the same thing or staying in the same spot."

Ari Levine, the head of brand partnerships at Tumblr, tells me the platform is both "more peaceful" and more resolutely itself than its competitors. While Meta runs around aping its competitors' features (reels from TikTok, stories from Snapchat), it hasn't been able to mimic what Tumblr does (though Meta, then called Facebook, was in talks to buy Tumblr before Yahoo did). "How many times am I in an app and I no longer know what app I'm in?" Levine says.

And Tumblr still works much like an older internet, where people have more control over what they see and rely less on algorithms. "You curate your own stuff; it takes a little bit of work to put everything in place, but when it's working, you see the content you want to see," Fjodor Everaerts, a 26-year-old in Belgium who has made some 250,000 posts since he joined Tumblr when he was 14. He says he sees his blog as a "flow of consciousness" and a "diary," one that's mostly made up of reblogging things he finds interesting rather than original posts. In a way, that's a core part of what Tumblr has always done: It's far more focused on fandom and art than it is around single blogs becoming cults of personality.

Being an iconic and beloved cultural corner doesn't always lead to cash flows, however, and the site has had a troubled decade. Yahoo bought Tumblr when Tumblr was one of the world's fastest-growing social networks, and it promised not to "screw it up." But Tumblr's embedded anti-advertising and anti-influencer stances had driven a wedge between the site and monetization. The pseudonymous nature of Tumblr was a direct opposition to Facebook's insistence on users using their real names and faces, and the free-flowing adult content on the site scared advertisers off. Yahoo got left behind in the mobile revolution, and Tumblr, too, suffered, with Verizon scooping up both at discount. In 2018, Tumblr notoriously banned porn and pissed off users, which led 30% of them to quit. The next year, Verizon offloaded Tumblr to WordPress' owner, Automattic, for $3 million, 0.3% of what Yahoo had paid for it.

Under Automattic, Tumblr is finally in the home that serves it, Levine says. "We've had ups and downs along the way, but we're in the most interesting position and place that we've been in 18 years," he says. The site is trying to keep what its users love while unveiling features that do rival some of its competitors'. It's a shift after years of staying distinctly itself. In December, Tumblr launched its Communities feature, a sort of Facebook Groups meets subreddits in which people can join groups based on specific interests, like making art of "silly bugs" or emo kids from the Midwest. In January, Tumblr also launched a TikTok competitor called Tumblr TV, which works like a search engine for GIFs and supports videos. And following media companies (including BI) and social platforms like Reddit, Automattic in 2024 was making a deal with OpenAI and Midjourney to allow the systems to train on Tumblr posts.

But Tumblr is the 10th-most-popular social media site in the US, dwarfed by Facebook, Instagram, and X, according to data from the analytics firm Similarweb. (Tumblr declined to provide total user numbers to BI, but Levine says it has seen steady growth.) Its users see that as a pro rather than a con; it's more exclusive and intentional. But its history of extreme waves in valuation and struggles to make money may dictate its fate more than those who blog there. "I want Tumblr to flourish," Brennan says. "I want it to exist forever. I want to use it forever. I think that it is one of the most beautiful spaces on the internet for someone to figure out who they are." But some of Tumblr's model is a "blessing for it as a user is a curse for it as a business."

The platform could benefit if it capitalized on the "shift from attention to intention," Roth tells me. "How do we actually monetize people's intentions on social media versus the attention of them being around?" That would mean a focus on "people's desires" and how to "help them reach them." Tumblr recently put out a lengthy report for marketers trying to reach Gen Z, advising them to engage with communities around their brands and to search for relevant interest among users over the reach of mainstream influencers. Levine tells me that when Automattic acquired Tumblr, it was a chance for the company to take "stock of where we are" and "reintroduce ourselves" to users and "brands and advertisers who help us pay the bills."

Tumblr loyalists tell me they haven't spent much time with the new features — they like the site the way it is. TJ Smith, a 25-year-old from Texas, says it provided a safe haven for them when they were 13. Diagnosed as autistic at 11, Smith found Tumblr an easier place to connect with and talk about their favorite fandoms, like the Percy Jackson series. Eventually, it helped them work through their sexuality and gender identity (they identify as pansexual and gender fluid). "Tumblr was the first place where I saw those terms being used," Smith tells me.

Most Tumblr blogs aren't about the people who make them, yet they're deeply personal places. Under their pseudonyms and art, people find communities and explore identities without scrutiny from IRL friends and family. Ashmita Shanthakumar, a 25-year-old from Utah who has been on Tumblr since 2013, sees it as "anti-social media," she tells me, and has used it to connect with people who like the same CW superhero shows as she did. She can focus on how the shows make her feel rather than personal updates on Facebook, which can feel comparative.

The social internet is fractured. Millennials are running Reddit. Gen Xers and Baby Boomers have a home on Facebook. Bluesky, one of the new X alternatives, has a tangible elder-millennial/Gen X vibe. Gen Zers have created social apps like BeReal and the Myspace-inspired Noplace, but they've so far generated more hype than influence. People of different ages migrate in numbers to various platforms and seize them, creating the vibes and culture there. Platforms lean more left or right politically. And while some (mostly on the right) have cried "echo chamber" with derision, there are benefits to carving out smaller communities with like-minded people to see and talk about the things you like. Megaplatforms can flatten our online experiences and reward content that fits a mold; smaller communities can enrich them.

I recently unearthed the Tumblr blog I made in high school (don't go looking — I deleted it and my teenage musings immediately). When I scrolled through Tumblr for the first time in at least a decade, I realized it still had something that no other social network did: the sense of timelessness. I saw a post of a simple, soothing color gradient followed by a recent reblog of a GIF posted in 2020 but taken from the 2002 original "Spider-Man" movie. There's still little video on the feed, and it's more of a silent, visual retreat, with cuts of movie scenes overlaid with dialogue on a loop. When I open TikTok and Instagram, I'm bombarded by filtered faces and music, or someone yelling into the camera to sell me a pair of magnetic eyelashes every few videos. Tumblr was the place I went in 2011 to see and reblog flash photography and '90s movie GIFs, so it's no surprise that it's no longer a place where decades of images are juxtaposed together, but one that has itself become a piece of nostalgia for a simpler time online. Unlike some of its 2000s peers, Tumblr doesn't need to fight to get its cool back, but it does have to find ways to keep its cool and move forward.

Amanda Hoover is a senior correspondent at Business Insider covering the tech industry. She writes about the biggest tech companies and trends.

You know that sensation when something feels off, but you can't quite put your finger on it? That sensation of "I don't feel so good about this," even though the "this" is a little fuzzy. That's the state of work for many people right now. So if you're a little uneasy about the job market, you're not alone.

The economy's felt like the other shoe is about to drop for quite some time now. There was the euphoria of the Great Resignation, the post-pandemic era where workers had a lot of temporary power and did some job-hopping. That gave way to the confusing negativity of the vibecession, when Americans said the economy was terrible even though, on paper, it was good — and, despite their negativity, consumers kept spending like it was good, too. Then we got to the Big Stay, where workers decided to stick to what they were doing, whether they were happy about it or not. Sentiment picked up a bit after the 2024 election when people thought a Trump 2.0 economy would look as rosy as they remembered Trump 1.0. But now, the bad vibes are back. Workers are not feeling great about the labor market or their own jobs. The Big Stay has transformed into the Big Cling to Your Desk, Suck Up to Your Boss, Be Seen in the Office.

Consumer sentiment has been on the downswing recently, in part because people are feeling queasy about work. The Conference Board's consumer confidence index fell in March, driven largely by declines in people's outlooks on income, business, and the labor market. The concerns about the future pushed the Conference Board's expectations index to its lowest point in 12 years, below the level that tends to signal a recession. While people feel OK about the current labor market, they're worried about their future employment prospects and their future incomes.

"That's a sign that people are getting worried about their own situation," said Stephanie Guichard, a senior economist at The Conference Board, in an interview. She added that people are beginning to say they're more worried about their family financial situations, too. "We are at the point where they may start changing their behavior."

Surveys from the University of Michigan reflect a similar doom-and-gloom mood toward the labor market. Consumers' expectations for unemployment over the next year are at their worst level since the Great Recession — two-thirds of them think unemployment will go up. According to the University of Michigan's most recent reading, consumer sentiment has declined across the economy, cutting across age, income, and politics, as people are feeling increasingly anxious about a wide variety of measures, including their own personal finances and the labor market. Even high-income consumers are worried about their situations.

As with the Conference Board's findings, the University of Michigan's survey shows people aren't just worried about the broader labor market, they're worried about themselves.

"If labor markets truly weaken or people believe that labor markets are going to weaken, and now they're expecting their incomes to be less stable than they were before, they're not going to be willing to go out on a limb and spend at the same high level, take financial risks, make more investments, start new businesses," said Joanne Hsu, the director of consumer surveys at the University of Michigan. "People are not going to be comfortable doing that if they're perceiving weaknesses throughout the economy."

On paper, the labor market remains quite solid. The unemployment rate is healthy relative to history, though it's a bit elevated from recent historic lows, and layoffs remain steady. The quit rate is a little below where it was pre-pandemic, which reflects the "stay where you are" attitude, but overall, signs from "hard" data are flashing yellow.

Daniel Zhao, the lead economist at Glassdoor, told me that mentions of layoffs in the platform's employee reviews are up by 5% compared to last year and are steadily climbing. "Even if workers are still employed, that doesn't necessarily mean they are happy in their jobs," he said. Some of the commentary is from people talking about the ongoing effects of previous layoffs, expressing feelings of burnout because their workplaces are understaffed. Or, they're worried that they'll get swept up in the next round of cuts. "Employees might not see any reason why there wouldn't be another round of layoffs if they feel like the business and the economy are in a similar position," he said.

People see the headlines about a white-collar recession, and they're unnerved, whether they're knowledge workers or not. They see the news that businesses may be rethinking hiring plans and wonder if they'd be able to find a new gig if necessary.

The word of the day is "uncertainty" — the US Economic Policy Uncertain Index is higher than it was during the pandemic. There's a constant sense of whiplash across many parts of the economy and politics. What's happening with tariffs seems to change daily. Announcements of mass government firings and confusing reinstatements are happening constantly. Many businesses and workers expected Donald Trump's second term to look like his first one, with tax cuts and relatively unserious tariff threats and a general business-friendly stance. Instead, they're faced with a new version of Trump whose tariff gyrations are making business planning impossible and who doesn't seem to care if the stock market falls because of his actions.

"Everybody hates uncertainty, whether you're talking about executives down to front-line workers," Zhao said.

"A lot of people only are like, 'Wow, the mix of policies is worse than I thought, but I'm not exactly sure what policies are being implemented and what I should prepare for," said Guy Berger, the director of economic research at the Burning Glass Institute, a labor-analytics firm.

There's a level of paralysis amid the chaos. With so much instability, many workers and businesses feel like they have no choice but to stay put. That means employees are sticking with their jobs, and businesses are easing off the gas on hiring plans until there's a better sense of what's going on.

"People are hesitant to really even expand sizably or leave their job and find other ones that are a better fit," Allison Shrivastava, an economist at Indeed, said. "Everybody's just kind of frozen, waiting and seeing."

Some of the worker sentiments and anxieties are not that different from, say, 2023 or 2024. There's long been a subtle recognition that nothing lasts forever, including an extra-worker-friendly jobs market. The vibes have been off for a few years now. But the economists I spoke with said that something distinct is happening that may make things different. Instead of gesturing broadly at the state of things, workers are specifically negative about their personal outlooks. The level of uncertainty in the economy is palpable. That means they may be likelier to decide to really batten down the hatches, try really hard to hold onto their jobs, and, in turn, start reigning in their spending. (Though that last one is TBD — throughout this inflationary and vibecessionary period, consumer spending has been remarkably resilient.)

"Employees do feel pretty uncertain about the future," Zhao said.

Berger emphasized that just because workers feel worse doesn't mean they're right that things actually are worse. As mentioned, on paper, the labor market and economy look pretty good. Stocks are down, yes, but as the saying goes, the stock market is not the economy.

"So far, everything we've seen in terms of data is pretty small scale," he said. "There's nothing here that so far suggests that we've fallen into this doom loop where we're going to tip into a downturn where things are going to get worse. If I had to guess, it's going to be an incremental worsening."

For workers who are on edge, the idea of incremental worsening isn't especially heartening. That means many people may be making the calculation that it's better to stay where they are, avoid asking for too much, and hope to stay in the boss' good graces. The next time you run into the CEO, tell them you like their shoes or something.

Emily Stewart is a senior correspondent at Business Insider, writing about business and the economy.

Lee insists he's "famously" a very good Catholic. He's a moral person — his mother raised him right. And by his internal calculation, it's OK to shoplift from Whole Foods. Why? Because of Jeff Bezos.

From about 2020 to 2022, Lee, a 20-something communications professional living in the Washington, DC, area, engaged in what he describes as "grand theft auto-ing" from his local Whole Foods store. He would cheat the scale at the hot bar, pocket spices, or take home four lemons in the self-checkout aisle while only declaring two. Lee has never shoplifted from anywhere else — not Safeway, not a local store. He's largely stopped taking from Whole Foods because he moved to a different neighborhood that doesn't have one. However, he told me, there's one by his gym he'll pop into — and steal from — from time to time.

Lee has weighed the ethics of what he's doing. At one point, the guilt got to be so much that he confessed his misdeeds to his mother. Once he explained his reasoning — Amazon's market power, Bezos' wealth, what the billionaire has done at The Washington Post — she came around.

"If a billionaire can steal from me, I can scrape a little off the top, too," Lee says. Lee is a pseudonym — the same goes for all of the shoplifters and ethically (and legally) compromised individuals quoted in this story. Over the past several months, I've spoken with nearly a dozen of them — some I found through their confessions online; others reached out when they heard through social media I was working on this story.

Practically speaking, it's a good moment to be a billionaire in America — you've probably got more tax cuts on the way, and the president is nice to you as long as you're nice to him. Maybe your stocks are down, but you're still a billionaire, so it's fine. In terms of public perception, however, the superrich have seen better days. Americans are vandalizing Teslas to get back at Elon Musk. Mark Zuckerberg's "Zuckermoon" is over. As for Jeff Bezos, some people are stealing from him — or, rather, his companies — in an effort to exact revenge. Like Lee, they're enacting some moral payback, one fancy cheese from Whole Foods or fudged Amazon return at a time. They're sticking it to The Man, who in this case is one specific individual.

These subversive infractions directed at Bezos and his billionaire cohort may be rooted in legitimate gripes with the state of the world and its unfathomable wealth inequality. On the spectrum of crime severity, swiping $20 worth of goods from a multibillion-dollar corporation does not rank high. But the justifications people offer are just that — justifications. None of what they're doing is actually making the type of impact they might like to see, and they're conveniently ignoring Bezos' positive contributions, such as his philanthropy. And they could be causing unintended harm to the non-Bezoses of the world, as in, everyone else. Many retailers have put items behind glass cases to combat theft, which is a headache for everybody. Shoplifting can demoralize workers, and if enough people do it, it may lead companies to raise prices, or in the case of return fraud, mean businesses make sending unwanted items back a lot harder.

In the realm of retail theft, middle-class consumers and opportunist thieves are a growing group of culprits. It's difficult to tease out the exact size and scope of the cohort, given how incomplete retail-theft data can be. Amazon isn't exactly shouting its shrink numbers from the rooftops, and other companies have even admitted to mistakes in assessing the problem. But as one loss prevention professional put it to me last year, everyday, ordinary shoplifters are "like a giant organized mob, they just don't know each other."

Many of them abide by a certain code around who they take from, and the swath of small-time larcenists I've spoken to consistently say that anything Jeff Bezos-related falls into the "allowed" column. He's the second-richest man in the world, he's highly visible, and they don't love what they know about him personally. They feel like they're balancing the scales in stealing from one of his companies, undertaking some sort of Robin Hood-esque endeavor where they take from the rich to give to the poor, the comparatively poor being themselves.

Take Jesse, a 30-something tech worker who until recently would steal entire bags of groceries from Whole Foods with his roommates. A friend at Instacart tipped them off to the opportunity — with so many personal shoppers roaming around the aisles, workers weren't going to notice another person loading bags or whether they were paying for what was in them. Once, they got expensive steaks from the butcher and left without paying for them, later grilling them out on a friend's roof.

"I never felt bad for the corporation as a whole, because it was Amazon and, you know, it was Jeff Bezos," Jesse said. "He just profits so much taking advantage of the little people, so if we as little people can bite back a little bit, and that's me taking $100 maybe out of revenue for him, that's a little bit of a middle finger."

Separately, there's Carson, another Whole Foods bandit whose friends joke they're actually "liberating" items from the store, not stealing. As Carson, a 30-something who works in the nonprofit sector, told me for a story last year, he likes slipping salmon lox into his laptop sleeve and estimates he saves about $1,000 in groceries a year by shoplifting, largely from Whole Foods.

"It's easy to look at him like a Lex Luthor," Carson told me recently, referring to the Superman villain.

Carson isn't just extracting his purported payback through Whole Foods. He likes to throw big, complicated parties, so he'll buy $1,000 of decorations from Amazon, use them, and then return them.

"Who's actually hurt in this strange, dehumanized system?" he said.

Reporting for this story, I heard the same sentiment over and over from shoplifters and less-than-honest Amazon shoppers. One Whole Foods nabber, a 30-something tech worker, justified their penchant for lifting from the grocery store as a mix of ease, quality, and antipathy toward one of the richest people in the world. "My lack of remorse for any of this is — it's a big corporation. They have so much money, eggs are $10, screw them," they said.

One 50-something business owner explained how they would exploit a loophole in Amazon's return system to get what amounted to free money for runs to an Amazon Go store in their office building. When I asked whether they felt any sense of regret, the answer was succinct: "F— no. He's the most successful entrepreneur alive."

Jimmy, a 30-something government worker, told me he's "indifferent" toward Bezos, and he does feel somewhat bad about engaging in some light return fraud. One of his gaming controllers recently broke, so he bought a new one, stuck the old one in the box it came in, and sent it back undetected. Still, he's not losing sleep over it. "We know how much money that company makes. They're not going to be worried about that $70," he says. "I feel like the Batman of returns. I choose my targets."

The Bezos bashers' complaints ran the gamut: Whole Foods is a gentrifier; he's just too rich; shooting himself into space is gauche. Whatever anyone's precise justifications, there have been plenty of headlines and accusations that paint Bezos and his companies in an unflattering light. Amazon's e-commerce practices are bad for the environment. His businesses have been widely criticized for their approach to workers, including subjecting them to brutal work conditions and engaging in wage theft. His recent political turn and push to exert more influence over The Washington Post, which he owns, has turned many people off and reportedly lost the paper thousands of subscribers.

To be sure, Bezos has also given people plenty to be happy about. It's super convenient to have stuff delivered to your door at the drop of a hat. Whole Foods is, for the most part, a lovely shopping experience. But in an era where billionaires are viewed as the bad guys, and there's growing anger about extreme wealth inequality, it can be easy for people to overlook any upsides. There are a handful of guys in popular culture who epitomize the enormous gap between haves and have-nots. Bezos is one of them.

It is fair to wonder, though, if stealing from Whole Foods or returning a dress you wore to a wedding is the best way to get back at Bezos. It's a bit of a stretch to think the answer to that one is yes.

I reached out to Garret Merriam, an associate philosophy professor at California State University, Sacramento, who studies ethics, to get his read. He told me there are likely three broad categories of thinking going on here. There are those who don't really consider what they're doing to be stealing — they're oblivious to it. Like taking a pen from the breakroom at work, they figure it's baked in when they grab a snack as they browse the Whole Foods aisles. There are people who recognize it's cheating, but they don't think it's wrong, given Bezos' wealth and his business practices. In a context where Amazon has paid millions of dollars to settle wage theft lawsuits, they figure lying about a lost package is a small way to try to even things out. And then there are those who feel a sense of political desperation — they're powerless in the face of massive political and economic forces, and this is an outlet for some sort of action, even if futile. "The target is misapplied, but the anger is, I would say, understandable," he said.

People have a tendency to try to neutralize potentially unsavory behavior by coming up with ways to justify their actions, Emmeline Taylor, a professor of criminology at City St. George's, University of London, said. In this case, they tell themselves things like, "Bezos is bad, Amazon won't even notice, this seems like a victimless crime," to make themselves feel better and like they're in the right. "They've sort of rehearsed this in their head so many times or even said it out loud, they start to believe it themselves," she said. "That's what allows them these sorts of moral gymnastics."

While people may see their actions as a way to get back at Bezos, the sheer size of the modern corporation creates a level of removal that makes it easy to sit back and think, "Who cares if someone pulls one over on them?" After all, it feels like they're pulling one over on us all the time.

"When we take from a store or a workplace, it gets a little bit easier to distance yourself," Terrence Shulman, the founder of the Shulman Center for Compulsive Theft, Spending, and Hoarding, said.

Beyond the fact that theft and fraud are, you know, against the law, anti-Amazon avengers may not recognize the collateral damage they could be inadvertently causing. If you steal from Whole Foods, Bezos won't know, but the store manager who's fired over it will. (I did survey some Whole Foods workers about this, and several of them confirmed that (a) they see a lot of middle-class and even seemingly wealthy shoplifters, and (b) they may be a little bothered by some of it but are not in a tizzy.) Before you lie to Amazon that your package never arrived or return the wrong item, you might want to check who the actual seller is.

John Roman, the CEO of BattlBox, which sells outdoor gear and equipment, would rather just sell everything from his own website, but they've got to be on Amazon and other e-commerce platforms just because of the reach. He's currently dealing with a return fraud situation — someone bought a new spotlight from him, said they didn't like it, and shipped an older model back. BattlBox didn't even realize what had happened until they sent the returned item to another customer who flagged it. Roman has filed an appeal with Amazon, but there's "no telling" whether the company will side with him.

He doesn't really blame people for doing this. By making returns so easy and taking "the customer is right" philosophy to the extreme, Amazon has fostered this behavior. "I don't think the average consumer even understands that it's not Amazon selling the product," he said, pointing to the fact that Amazon regularly introduces an Amazon Basic version of a best-selling item — which then gets prominent website placement near or above the original — in order to get in on the action. Roman even understands the get-back-at-Bezos stuff, given how the ultrawealthy are viewed.

"I'm not saying I agree with it, but I fully understand the people that view that they're giving it to The Man, but the reality is that you are actually hurting small businesses," he said.

Ironically, shoplifting at other retailers has been a plus for Amazon's business — people frustrated that everything is locked up at CVS and Target just go to Amazon's website instead. It's not clear how big of a problem shrink is for Whole Foods and Amazon since the company doesn't break it out in their financials. When Amazon CEO Andy Jassy was asked about return fraud in a CNBC interview last year, he sort of shrugged it off, saying at the company's scale, "You get a bit of everything."

"It matters to them, but does it matter enough to put the time and effort into trying to stop that? I would say probably not," Arun Sundaram, an analyst at CFRA Research, said. He joked that given how profitable some other arms of Amazon's business arms are, if it wanted to give free food to customers for a month, it probably could.

Amazon declined to comment for this story. Jeff Bezos did not respond to a request for comment.

I'm not trying to say that the logic among Amazon and Whole Foods thieves is, "I woke up in the morning mad at Jeff Bezos because killed The Washington Post's Kamala Harris endorsement, so now I'm going to steal overpriced salami from Whole Foods." Attitudes are generally more removed and hazy. They view snacking while shopping (without paying for said snack) as a victimless crime, with the only potential victim being Bezos, even if that's a stretch.

"I don't know who I'm hurting," Lee said.

In the current economy, it's hard not to feel like you're being taken advantage of at every turn. Everything's getting more expensive, but corporate profits are still going up. Companies are constantly cutting costs, whether that means laying off workers or making it impossible to talk to a customer service representative on the phone. People feel like they have to be on guard against business trickery and slights. If you've shrugged and said, "That's how they get you," enough times, you start to think about how you'll get them. People feel like big business has broken the social contract, so they can break it back.

If people want to hurt Amazon with their pocketbooks, the best thing they can probably do is just not shop there. But that would require effort, planning, and forgoing the luxuries of on-demand shopping, which many people don't seem so willing to do.

"That would be a moral response," said Stuart Green, a Rutgers law professor who focuses on the moral theory underlying laws. "I don't think you can steal things that you like and then say you're doing it because you don't like the company."

At least it's better than setting Teslas on fire.

Emily Stewart is a senior correspondent at Business Insider, writing about business and the economy.

Look, to put it plainly: You almost certainly shouldn't buy a delivery burrito using a buy now, pay later plan. I know it may be tempting. It's burrito season, getting out of the house can be hard, and having stuff you do not need dropped on your doorstep is a fun tiny luxury of our tech-enabled world. But if you're considering using a Klarna financing plan to DoorDash your Chipotle order, maybe take a beat.

With all the DoorDash fees, plus the tip — and, yes, you should tip — that little treat is going to run you quite a bit more than you bargained for. Splitting the cost up into four payments may make you feel better about your little indulgence — and may even encourage you to add on a second little treat. But there are some potential downsides. You might wind up missing payments, in which case on top of delivery fees and tip, you'll also be hit with late fees and overdraft fees from your bank. By the end of it all, your $20 burrito could wind up costing closer to $70.

I don't mean to be judgmental. If you really insist on paying for food delivery on a payment plan, you can. In fact, DoorDash and Klarna are betting you will.

Last week, the delivery platform Doordash and the soon-to-IPO payment company Klarna announced a partnership through which customers will be able to buy now, pay later on food orders. People will have the option to pay right away, like normal, using Klarna, but they'll also be able to split the cost into four installment payments for purchases above $35 or, eventually, push the payment to a later date. In a press release announcing the agreement, company executives said it was intended to make "convenience even more accessible" for consumers and offer payment options that were "essential to meeting our customers' needs."

The announcement, um, raised some eyebrows. On the one hand, it's a free country, and anyone is welcome to pay for a burrito taxi in $10 installments over a month and a half. On the other hand, this scenario might involve more risk than reward for consumers, many of whom are already drowning in debt.

"It certainly doesn't seem like a positive development except for Klarna and maybe DoorDash," said Robert Lawless, a law professor at the University of Illinois who specializes in consumer finance. "I just don't think it's an advisable way to be paying for your DoorDash."

The BPNL industry, which includes companies such as Afterpay, Affirm, and Klarna, has taken off in recent years. The total value of loans originated by the industry jumped from $2 billion in 2019 to $24 billion in 2021 to $34 billion in 2022, according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. BNPL was initially seen mostly as an option for large-ish purchases — maybe a Peloton bike, if you're still into that, or a couch. The flexibility can be useful, by splitting payments into smaller, what might be more manageable amounts, and charging zero interest if payments are made on time. Buy now, pay later companies often do not do extensive credit checks as credit card companies do, meaning the option may be more accessible to some consumers.

The optionality and ease of use helped BNPL boom during the pandemic, but in recent years growth has slowed. In an effort to reignite expansion, companies have increasingly been allowing (and encouraging) consumers to use it on smaller-dollar and more trivial purchases, even groceries. In terms of consumer finance, it's a disturbing sign that some people might need to put essentials on payment plans. But businesses aren't just offering BNPL out of the kindness of their hearts; it's because they think they can make money off of it.

"We're seeing it for smaller and smaller and smaller purchases," said Anastasiya Ghosh, a marketing professor at the University of Arizona. "Part of it is driven by these partnerships. So you see more and more merchants like DoorDash that are willing to participate and engage, which to me signals there is a revenue stream."

Part of the way BNPL companies make money is through merchant fees, where the platform that actually books the sale pays a fee to the payment partner, like Klarna or Affirm. This is similar to credit card swipe fees, but the payouts tend to be even higher. Businesses sign up for merchant fees because giving consumers expanded payment options like BNPL makes them likelier to buy and increases the size of their baskets.

"It works on our optimistic view of ourselves in the future. Obviously, in the future, maybe my income stream would improve or I would stick to my budget better," Ghosh said.

It's not that different from the psychology around credit cards, but we've also had years of consumer education around their risks. With BNPL, not so much.

Buy now, pay later users tend to be in more precarious spots than the average consumer. A June 2023 survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York found that women, renters, people without college degrees, low-income people, and those with lower credit scores were more likely to report having used BNPL in the previous year. BNPL may also make people's finances worse: Its users have been found to see fast increases in bank overdraft charges and credit card interest and fees compared with consumers who don't use the option. The use of buy now, pay later has been linked to increased total spending, too.

The concern is that people who use BNPL might buy more even when they shouldn't. They wind up with multiple short-term loans they're trying to pay off every two weeks. It's hard to keep track of, as the bills or automatic withdrawals can hit at different times. That makes it easy to miss payments and easy not to recognize just how big of a hole one might be in. For some consumers, this may result in excessive levels of borrowing and debt cycles they can't get out of.

"Let's say you miscalculate something. You pay a late fee of $7 to $10 on your order, and then maybe you have to pay an overdraft fee because of a cash flow issue," said Nadine Chabrier, the senior policy counsel at the Center for Responsible Lending. "So you could really balloon the amount of money you pay for just one thing."

Food delivery with companies such as DoorDash, Uber Eats, and GrubHub has become a weirdly controversial topic on the internet over the past few years. The kerfuffle is always the same: Someone posts something about all the delivery fees making their order extra expensive, someone else says they should just go pick it up or cook for themselves, and then everybody yells about whether it's offensive because some people can't leave their homes or cook or some other protest. On this DoorDash-Klarna announcement, you can already hear a similar argument: What about people who can't afford that burrito right this second but really need (OK, want) it and for whatever reason don't feel that they have another option? I posed this question to every expert I talked to, and the answer was mainly, sure if you want to do this, go ahead, but it's not in your best interest.

"People have the free will to make a choice of the way in which they want to pay for something, but there may be unintended consequences," Chabrier said.

"DoorDash and Klarna will "undoubtedly tout the idea of, 'Well if you pay for it in four payments, it's the same as up front,' but we're not talking about major purchases where that's going to save you any type of money," Lawless said.

Breaking up large payments for goods that we're going to use for years can make sense. You buy a house on a mortgage so you can pay it off over years as the value (hopefully) goes up. You get a car loan so you can pay it down every month with the money you make driving to and from work. Paying down larger purchases over time frees up cash for other needs, or for investments that will grow over time. But a quick food order may not fall into this category.

"There's a good economic case for financing investments over the long term, and we have stretched the definition of durable goods in a lot of ways," said Michael Madowitz, an economist at the Roosevelt Institute, a progressive think tank. "Delivered food may in fact be the least durable good we've tried this with."

Amid the backlash to the announcement, Klarna and DoorDash are trying to emphasize their partnership is about more than burritos. In an emailed statement, a DoorDash spokesperson said the company's customers already had "plenty of ways to pay" including PayPal, Venmo, SNAP/EBT, and credit cards, and added that this option wasn't just for food orders. "With over 25% of customers now shopping beyond restaurants in categories like retail, beauty, and home improvement — whether it's the gaming console or laptop for your kids, the new barbecue ahead of summer grilling season, or the running shoes you need for tomorrow's 5K — this partnership provides even more flexibility, control, and options," the spokesperson said. They also pointed to a Klarna blog post about the deal. A Klarna spokesperson said the partnership was "especially important as DoorDash expands its offering into electronics, big-box retail, and gifts."

This partnership isn't the end of the world in terms of signaling some sea change in consumer credit; nor is it a sign that a recession is here. These companies are offering people more ways to pay so they'll buy more, perhaps, than they had planned. This is a way to squeeze more cash out of consumers.

This is happening at a moment when the cops who are supposed to be on the consumer beat — the CFPB — may not be doing much, Madowitz noted, given the current White House administration's hands-off bent. "I don't know if this is the kind of thing CFPB, SEC, or both should have a very close eye on, and maybe we just won't ever know," he said.

Regardless, the option to pay in installments is coming to a DoorDash order near you. Maybe think twice before you take advantage of it.

Emily Stewart is a senior correspondent at Business Insider, writing about business and the economy.

Can you smell the testosterone? Suddenly, America's top CEOs seem to be taking their cues from Logan Roy, Rambo, and, most conspicuously, Donald Trump.

Jiujitsu-fighting, MAGA-fied Mark Zuckerberg went on Joe Rogan's podcast to bemoan corporate culture for becoming "neutered" and called instead for "aggression," saying "masculine energy" is "good" and criticism of it had gone too far. Jamie Dimon has gone on f-bomb-filled screeds about how coddled employees need to get back to the office. A buff Jeff Bezos has laid down the hammer at The Washington Post, demanding editors give him a "hell yes" to affirm they're all in on "personal liberties and free markets." Elon Musk, emboldened by Trump to be more "aggressive," is shouting "chainsaw!" as he makes brutal cuts to the federal bureaucracy. And even if that Zuck-Musk cage match got canceled, the ready-to-rumble spirit persists: Musk posted to X earlier this month that he "literally challenged Putin to one-on-one physical combat over Ukraine."

Not in the least surprised by all this chest-thumping: women in business.

I spoke to several female founders, along with psychologists and sociologists, who see the resurgent machoism in corporate America — and the related dismantling of DEI programs, RTO mandates, layoffs, and calls for "intensity" — as the onset of a new era of backlash. On the one hand, some women fear that aggressive company culture in the Trump 2.0 era may push them out of corporate positions and continue trends like underrepresentation in the tech sector. On the other, some see it as galvanizing. "The backlash is a sign that we're making serious progress," says Maureen Clough, the host of "It Gets Late Early," a podcast about ageism in the workplace, sharing the sentiment of several women I spoke to. "Now we know who these people are," she adds. "The masks and the gloves are off."

While some see these displays of strongmanhood as a means of placating — and fending off regulatory action from — the Trump administration, others see it as seizing the political moment to opportunistically return to masculine norms in the workplace. It's "not about money, it's more about them wanting to have the playground they've always had," says Sapna Cheryan, a professor of psychology at the University of Washington. Jennifer Berdahl, a professor of sociology at the University of British Columbia, uses a similar analogy. "It's like boys in a sandbox but scaling it to billionaires. It's the concept of precarious manhood: Almost no matter how much you succeed, it's just never enough." She adds, "What they're really calling for is for dominance contests to go free, almost like a gladiator arena."

The gladiator games don't just play out among the top alphas — those down the chain watch and learn. After Musk called a researcher a "retard" on X, for example, the use of the slur soon tripled on the platform, a study from Montclair State University found. In a January article titled "Is corporate America going MAGA?" an (ironically) anonymous banker told the Financial Times, "I feel liberated. We can say 'retard' and pussy' without the fear of getting canceled." Gen Z men are less likely than millennial men to say the term "feminist" describes them, according to a 2023 survey from the Survey Center on American Life. Almost half of them said they feel men face discrimination in the US. Meanwhile, only 49% of women feel women in the US are treated with respect and dignity, down from 66% in 2015, a Gallup survey found.

Many women are fed up. And, tired of waiting on corporate America, they're increasingly building their own arenas.

Over the past decade, women have made significant, if uneven, gains in the corporate workforce. Women now make up 10.4% of CEOs at Fortune 500 companies, up from just 4.6% in 2015. The overwhelming majority of this small group is white. Women are now outpacing men in becoming entrepreneurs; today they own nearly 39% of American businesses, increasing the number of women-led companies by 13.6% between 2019 and 2023, a 2024 Wells Fargo report said. Firms owned by men grew by just 7% in the same time period. In Silicon Valley, however, Zuckerberg's "masculine energy" quip doesn't track with reality. As of 2022, women made up just 22% of tech workers. That's the same proportion of jobs they held in 2005, the year after Facebook was founded. Women accounted for 16% of first-time VC-backed entrepreneurs and only 9% of entrepreneurs who get VC-backing for two startups, according to a 2024 paper that looked at aggregate data from Pitchbook.

The promises of the girlboss era, meanwhile, have come up short. In the 2010s, Sheryl Sandberg called on ambitious women to "lean in." Work hard enough, assert yourself, and you can have it all. But the girlboss was an empty caricature, idolizing women who'd squeezed their way into the C-suite while trying old leadership tactics and wearing high heels. They were feminine and white, often thin and privileged. And, as Michelle Obama famously said of "leaning in" in 2018, "That shit doesn't work all the time."

A sprinkling of female founders and executives in a world run by men hasn't transformed it: Toxic workplaces still emerged at several women-led companies. Steph Korey of Away was outed as a Slack bully (she apologized). Glossier workers reported discrimination and mistreatment under founder and former CEO Emily Weiss's tenure (Weiss apologized, too). Elizabeth Holmes lied to investors and risked lives (she apologized, and is serving an 11-year prison sentence). Sandberg herself is facing new allegations of toxic behavior: A new memoir by Sarah Wynn-Williams, a former policy director at Facebook (now Meta), claims that Sandberg had a young assistant sleep in her lap and demanded the author join her in bed on a private jet. The book, "Careless People," also highlights the ways women at Facebook felt leadership had failed them. Meta has slammed the book as inaccurate, calling it a "mix of out-of-date and previously reported claims about the company and false accusations about our executives." A spokesperson for Sandberg's Lean In organization declined to comment on the memoir, but directed me to its website for information about ways Lean In sees itself as evolving to help women of all backgrounds navigate barriers and biases they may face at work.

Women have proved they can behave just as badly as men — but even when they're on their best behavior or make minor missteps, they're hit with harsh criticism men are more likely to evade. A 2020 study from the Stanford Graduate School of Business found that men are more valued than women when they "take charge." The "founder mode," hands-on, direct style of management can backfire for women — as Airbnb CEO and founder mode proselytizer Brian Chesky posted on X last fall: "Women founders have been reaching out to me over the past 24 hours about how they don't have permission to run their companies in Founder Mode the same way men can. This needs to change."

"Even if you have more women, they'll still assimilate to the workplace culture you have," says Erika Lucas, the founder of StitchCrew, a nonprofit focused on fostering equitable entrepreneurship, and VEST, a women's peer network and investment fund. "Women are being conditioned to fit into this meritocracy, or fit within these toxic systems because that's all we have." As Cheryan puts it, "masculine defaults" are diffuse in the workplace "because men made companies in their image. The return of those defaults are pushing more women to ditch corporate America and go out on their own, says Lucas. "The reason why we're seeing more women-led companies starting is because corporate America is not working for women."

When companies won't offer work-from-home policies or flexibility that working parents need, it can embolden people to become more entrepreneurial and build under their own terms. "Oftentimes the easiest way to find that is to build it yourself," says Jaclyn Pascocello, the founder of Fabrik, a networking space for people to grow their communities, noting that it's still not easy to launch a company. But in this climate of ascendant machoism, she says, she is seeing a collective of women coming together at Fabrik and starting to build companies to address issues sometimes ignored by men. Those can include solutions for women's health and caregiving. "It really feels like there's a ton of women trying to lift each other up," she said.

But oversimplifying "masculine" or "feminine" traits to fit narrow boxes "is doing everyone a disservice," says Ashley Rose, the cofounder and CEO of the cybersecurity firm Living Security. "You need to find people that possess the traits that work well in your culture." Similarly, the concept of DEI has been misrepresented and turned into a dirty acronym by the political right, says Virginia Cumberbatch, a global DEI strategist and consultant. While DEI implementation has been lacking and its results disappointing at some firms, there are ways for new and old companies to create initiatives to foster diversity, even in the current political climate. "We've allowed DEI to be a catchall that's kind of lost its meaning," Cumberbatch says. DEI, she says, shouldn't be thought of as a blanket fix. Equity looks different in the work of a university or an architecture firm. And companies that are serious about building diverse, equitable, and inclusive environments need to give authority to the people who work in it at a senior level. "It has to be pervasive in every dimension of your organization or your brand, or it is just rhetoric," she says.

There's no business case for stifling diversity. Many studies have found that having a diverse staff is good for companies financially, and benefits like extended parental leave, caregiving resources, and flexibility help with employee retention and burnout. And Big Tech businesses have ballooned in value while they publicly called for diversity, but they ride the tides of public opinion. Personalities that are power-obsessed often swing politically to hold onto their prestige. With that reality exposed, some women are changing their responses. Vanessa Jupe, the founder of Leva, a platform to support new parents, says she became more politically active in the 2024 election and supported Kamala Harris' campaign by canvassing her neighborhood and donating money. Some Facebook groups dedicated to campaigning for Harris have morphed into places of action, with members organizing to write letters and calling lawmakers to express frustration with the Trump administration. Escalating tactics could include strikes, sit-ins, picketing, and actions like the late February economic blackout targeted at large retailers. "There's a full-frontal assault on women and people of color," Jupe says. "The time to play nice is not now. You cannot have kid gloves on when you're fighting against really silly bullies."

The era of the girlboss is long dead. No singular trope or central figure has taken its place in 2025 — which may be a good thing. "Nobody should be made into a hero," Lucas says. "My hope for women is that we start building power collectively." That also means pushing for change by showing that companies can be "successful because you actually operate it in a different way," Cheryan says. Women have stopped thinking they can "have it all" by leaning in, and instead are calling on men to do more at home and work toward more equitable workplaces — and opting out of marriage and traditional corporate America if they don't.

Leaders who are willing to disrupt corporate culture norms have an enormous opportunity to lure top talent away from workplaces that aren't. We're not likely to see a few women rising through the ranks and joining the boys on stage in a cage match — and that's for the best, but there's a culture shift unfolding that could allow them to make something new.

Amanda Hoover is a senior correspondent at Business Insider covering the tech industry. She writes about the biggest tech companies and trends.

Fawn Weaver has never been able to run her business without worrying about tariffs. She launched her Tennessee whiskey brand, Uncle Nearest, in 2017, right before the European Union slapped tariffs on American whiskeys and bourbons as part of a back-and-forth trade war with Donald Trump in 2018. That means Weaver's international sales strategy has been affected, basically, since "day one," she says. And because Uncle Nearest was a new kid on the block, the company didn't really have much wiggle room on prices.

"We couldn't pass on those tariffs to the consumer," she says. "We had to absorb them, and there was absolutely no way we could absorb them."

When Europe suspended whiskey tariffs in 2021, Weaver wasn't home-free, either. She knew the suspension might not be permanent, especially if Trump landed back in the White House. So when he won in November, Uncle Nearest pulled international sales from their annual earnings forecast in anticipation of a return to the trade war.

"We had to make a decision to not focus as much on international until the trade war was over," she says. "Well, it's not been over."

And return the trade war has: The EU is threatening to implement a 50% tariff on American whiskeys. And now, there's a new and surprising trade foe: Canada. The United States' neighbors to the north aren't putting tariffs on US-made bourbon in response to Trump's various economic threats; they're simply making it impossible to buy.

"They pulled us off the shelf right along with Jack Daniels," Weaver says.

The reignition of the international brown liquor battle is another headache for an industry already reeling. After multiple years of solid growth in the 2010s and a pandemic-driven boom in 2020, domestic US whiskey sales have been on the decline, while international sales have flattened. Data from IWSR, an analytics firm focused on the alcohol industry, found that sales volume of US whiskeys fell by 1.2% in 2023, and another 2% in 2024. Globally, sales were flat in 2023 and are on track to decline in 2024. (American whiskeys include bourbon, Tennessee, and rye. The distinctions are key since all bourbons are whiskeys, but not all whiskeys are bourbon. If it's American or Irish, it's whiskey, with the "e." If it's from Scotland, England, Japan, or most other places, it's spelled whisky.)

For customers, this could mean some of their favorite craft brands might struggle and even fold if they can't get on enough shelves in America or abroad. Ironically, though, the bourbon industry's tariff-related headaches may wind up being a plus for American drinkers in the near term — distilleries could wind up with a ton of inventory they can't sell overseas and push more volumes and varieties onto the US market. That could mean prices on American booze come down in the near term, though some analysts say distributors could just charge more on everything, wherever it's made.

There's no denying the industry is facing troubles, but Weaver chafes at the idea of calling what's happening a bourbon "bust." Uncle Nearest is growing as a brand, and there are still plenty of whiskey drinkers out there, at home and abroad. Instead, what's happening is more of a normalization, and one she thinks more people should have seen coming.

"Everyone was so caught up in this 'boom,' no one was forecasting for the correction," she says. Whatever the case, Trump's latest moves are a sobering moment for an industry that can no longer deny its growing pains.

The modern whiskey trend in America dates back to the "Mad Men" era of the 1950s and '60s, explained Marten Lodewijks, the president of IWSR US. It's popularity started tapering off in the '70s — people tend not to want to drink what their parents drank. In the '80s and '90s, whiskey really struggled, which was a curse and a blessing, because it got to sit and age until it picked up in popularity once again in the 2000s, around when the show "Mad Men" came out.

"Those were sort of the glory days for Scotch whisky," Lodewijks said. "The bourbon industry was a little bit later to the party, but obviously they weren't blind to what was happening. And so they rose with the tide as well."

Over the past decade or so, bourbon has really taken off, too. Much like Scotch, bourbon makers have focused on premiumization — improving the quality and raising the price point. Where it was once seen as a product for drunks, it's now considered fancy. Because bourbon ages for less time than Scotch and has laxer rules around it in areas such as ingredients, distillers can be more dynamic in their approach, too. "You can sort of take more chances," Lodewijks said. "You don't have to wait 12 years to figure out whether or not your innovation is a complete miss or a potential success."

Per the Kentucky Distillers' Association, an industry group, Kentucky produced 3.2 million barrels of whiskey in 2024 and has a record 14.3 million barrels aging. Multiple new producers and brands have popped up, bourbon collecting has risen in popularity, and some consumers have been willing and able to spend big on high-end bottles.

The COVID-19 pandemic put these trends on overdrive. People were sitting at home bored with money to spend, and they were spending more of it on alcohol.

"There was a massive runup during COVID," said Tzvi Wiesel, a longtime whiskey investor and trader and the CEO of Baxus, a spirits trading platform. "So all of these distilleries and investors and everyone got a little bit ahead of themselves, and they're like, 'Oh, there's going to be this level of demand and growth is going to continue forever.'"

Private investors got in on the action, pouring money into distilleries and upping production. "They built the capacity to make a million new barrels a year," Wiesel said. The problem was, there wasn't actually a sustainable place for that demand and growth.

The influx of money chasing the increased demand led to what's become a market flush with product that has nowhere to go.

"The hedge funds and the private equity players, they've gone out and bought barrels, but they don't have a brand to go along with it," said Trey Zoeller, the founder and chief strategist at Jefferson's Bourbon. "When bourbon was very scarce, that might've been a good investment. Now, there's not nearly as many buyers for that as there were when there's such scarcity."

Despite hopes for a new normal, bourbon has long been a cyclical industry. Optimists expected the upward trajectory kicked off by the pandemic to continue, but the market's come back down to earth.

On the one hand, demand is clearly decelerating. By 2022, Americans had returned to their normal drinking habits — when you're back in the office, pouring an old-fashioned at 2 in the afternoon is a real no-no. Amid inflation and dwindling pandemic-driven savings, there's also been a squeeze on consumers' wallets. Alcohol is a discretionary item, meaning it's a want, not a need, and when budgets are tight, people tend to lay off. There are structural factors in play as well. Gen Z is drinking less. Cannabis may be taking some market share from booze. GLP-1s such as Ozempic appear to curb alcohol cravings. Those are "probably having an impact on the margins," said Nadine Sarwat, an analyst who covers the beverage and cannabis industries at Bernstein, though it's not clear they're huge factors — most 24-year-olds (of any generation) are not high-end whiskey drinkers.

On the supply side, the decline in consumer interest is happening at a time when there's a glut of whiskey available. Because bourbon has to age for at least a couple of years — most are kept for four to six years — producers have to anticipate demand years in advance. It's become increasingly clear that a lot of producers overshot their estimates. There's a ton of bourbon sitting in barrels with no bottles to pour it into or brands that want to buy it. (Some brands distill their own whiskeys; some buy it from larger distilleries on contract; some do both and even blend different barrels together.) While distillers can sit on barrels for a while, there are limits, depending on the product. Most bourbon has about a 10-year age limit before it turns. Many investors are on a tighter timeline ito get their returns, meaning they have to cut prices on barrels to move them on the market.

"What I was paying for four-year-old Kentucky bourbon three years ago, I can now get 10-year-old Kentucky bourbon cheaper," said Blake Riber, who runs the craft spirits platform Seelbach's and blogs about the whiskey industry at Bourbonr. "This is just wild, the pricing on it and how much that has just crashed in, call it, 12 months."

Some producers have started to recognize the writing on the wall and scaled back, such as the distilled spirits maker MGP and the alcohol conglomerates Diageo and Brown-Forman.

"The challenge that they're all going to be facing over the next few years is, what do I do with all of the extra liquid in order to either let it age more or are there other outlets that I can use?" Lodewijks said. That may mean more flavored whiskeys or more whiskey-based ready-to-drink cocktails — whatever gets it poured before it goes bad.

The tariffs, of course, are throwing a wrench in an already difficult situation. As part of Trump's trade war, the EU is mulling ending the suspension of its tariffs on American whiskeys in early April. And this time, the bloc could set the levies at 50%, double the 25% from the president's first term. Trump, in turn, has threatened a 200% tariff on wines, Champagnes, and other alcoholic products out of France and the rest of Europe.

It's not entirely clear what it would mean for the American bourbon industry if the EU tariffs take effect. Given the recent glut and change in domestic appetites, growing sales outside America has been a key release valve for producers. Bernstein's Sarwat estimates that tariffs would result in a 10% hit to operating income for Brown-Forman, which owns brands such as Jack Daniel's and Woodford Reserve.

"Because US volumes have been really sluggish over the last couple of years, the international market has always been a real positive for increased penetration, and so any further challenges in that market does not help," she said.

Lodewijks said the EU's original 25% tariff led to about a 20% decline in whiskey sales to Europe, but that doesn't necessarily mean we know what a 50% tariff would do. "There's a point at which more and more consumers aren't willing to spend or spend the money that it would take to buy the product. So I'm not saying necessarily it'll be more than 40%, but likely, it would be more," he said.

The broad point of Trump's trade war — with Europe, China, whoever — is ostensibly to encourage companies to make more goods in the US. But in spaces such as alcohol, it's not so simple. Tequila has to come from Mexico. Scotch is always from Scotland. American whiskey companies would love to sell more to people at home, but American drinkers are not picking up what they're putting down. If tariffs go into effect on alcohol products coming into the US, people won't necessarily switch over to domestically made bourbon. If you're predominantly a wine drinker, you may not be jonesing to swap that for Wild Turkey overnight. And for the industry and Americans who do drink brown liquor, the tit-for-tat battle may not be a win either.

Last time around, American bourbon and whiskey companies ate a lot of the cost of tariffs instead of increasing prices. But not everyone in the space has such a luxury, especially the smaller guys who've already been pushed around by the bigger guys. They're trying to fight for shelf space wherever they can get it and are still trying to recover from the 2018 tariff bout.

"After the tariffs, everything fell off a cliff, and it has not recovered at all," said Becky Harris, the former president of the American Craft Spirits Association and the founder of Catoctin Creek distillery. "The big producers do recover. They recover why? Because they have massive amounts of money, they can splash back into the market."

That means some small producers may go under if they cannot find a place to sell their products. Given the industry's competitiveness, they could also try to increase prices, though that may be tough. The bigger manufacturers and distributors have broad portfolios of products that encompass different types of alcohol from different parts of the world. If they see a price increase on imports to the US for one of their product lines, say, a European wine or Mexican tequila, they may increase prices on American-made products, too, either because they have to or just because they can.

"It's very likely that under the cover of tariffs, domestic products will also go up in price," Lodewijks said.

While some analysts and industry professionals told me the supply glut could lead to producers dropping their prices in the short term in an attempt to move their booze, Tom Fischer, who runs BourbonBlog.com, said the long-term news may not be as encouraging.

"If distilleries lose sales in Europe due to higher prices from EU tariffs, those same American distilleries may raise domestic prices to offset lost revenue," he said. "This has been shown to happen in the past with other goods, so we hope that bourbon won't be the next casualty."

Trump's trade war has the potential to hit the industry in more tangential places, too. Riber noted that not much glass manufacturing happens in the US, and he's starting to hear concerns from bourbon brands about potential tariffs on glass imports and needing to raise prices to make up for it. "At some point, that's going to have to get passed on," he said. Wiesel brought up the increased need for warehouse space as bourbon piles up that can't be sold. "Distilleries are going to have to invest a ton into the actual physical infrastructure to hold onto all of these barrels that they own that are maturing for longer because they don't have a place to sell them," he said.

And then there's Canada, which the president has picked a somewhat confusing fight with. He's threatened 25% tariffs on imports from Canada, has said he wants to make it the 51st state, and has taken an overall aggressive approach to the country. It's sparked a sense of patriotism in Canada — along with boycotts on American-made products, including bourbon.

"Canada is just pulling American products. They're essentially sending notes to their suppliers saying, 'Hey, no, I don't have anything against you, but my customers are not buying American right now. They're angry,'" Harris said. "And they said, 'Even when the tariffs are gone, this is going to take a while, so don't hold your breath.'"

Fischer expressed similar concerns about the potential European tariffs. "A 50% tariff risks pricing us out of key markets, and once those consumers shift, they may not come back," he said. "You can't just roll back a tariff and expect loyalty to return overnight. This is long-term damage."

Weaver, from Uncle Nearest, is still optimistic about the future. Bourbon is one of America's most important exports "in terms of symbolism," she said, and if you look at bourbon's history, "we've always had these times when people are drinking less of it, but then it comes roaring back." She gets that the president is doing what he thinks he needs to do to negotiate trade agreements. In the meantime, it might be nice if he gave the industry a bit of a PR boost.

"The best thing he could do is literally say, 'Hey, America, this is going to be in our best interest,' because this is clearly what he believes, 'but while we're working this out, we really need you to double down on bourbon,'" she said.

Maybe "Buy American" can become "Drink American," even if the president himself doesn't drink.

Emily Stewart is a senior correspondent at Business Insider, writing about business and the economy.

Tesla's stock has spent the past few months on autopilot, barreling toward a crash. Protesters angry with CEO Elon Musk's politics are burning electric-vehicle charging stations and vandalizing Cybertrucks, leading some owners to offload the cars before they become the next targets. A JPMorgan analyst said last week that the precipitous drop of some 50% of Tesla's market cap was unprecedented in the auto industry. And instead of returning to the dusty Tesla floor where he used to sleep to inspire workers to "give it their all," Musk is continuing to play Donald Trump's all-powerful "first buddy" in Washington.

Musk's role at the White House DOGE office has made Tesla investors want their CEO back. But he's far from the first chief executive to go AWOL.

Absent leadership "is something of a silent epidemic in corporations," says Laura McHale, the managing director of the professional coaching firm Conduit Consultants Limited. It can take several forms, she says: from "leader distance," where CEOs are physically OOO as they court investors or go on the panel circuit or communicate infrequently, to psychological neglect (lacking direction, not delegating, failing to give employees proper recognition). While absenteeism is quieter than headline-making destructive behaviors like bullying or abuse, McHale says it's more common — and can be just as harmful to company morale and productivity. "And yet, it's almost never talked about."

The scope of the issue is hard to measure in part because what modern CEOs do all day — Musk included — is somewhat of a mystery. Until about 50 years ago, a chief executive's time was largely trackable, as they spent most of their day closely overseeing their company's product. But as mergers and IPOs became more common and corporations became more global, the CEO's role shifted from an internal product leader to a public figure seeking to drive shareholder value on the world stage. Today, many top CEOs jump from executive positions at companies in different industries rather than working their way up and learning a company inside and out. As they focus on building their personal brand or even working with an eye on the company's future, they may lose sight of the day-to-day operations that build strong company cultures. A 2009 study in the Quarterly Journal of Economics found that as CEOs become superstars as well known as the companies they run, they begin to underperform. The "consequences of media-induced superstar status for shareholders are negative," the study concluded.

Even at smaller firms, leaders' attention can become easily diverted. At startups in particular, CEOs have to focus on raising money and pleasing investors, which often takes them away from their offices. This absenteeism can turn "toxic," McHale says. "It is very destructive for employees and systems. It minimizes the importance of social relationships with our leaders." A 2015 Interact/Harris Poll of US workers found that most of the communication issues people had with their company leaders weren't about bullying or demeaning behavior, but about what their bosses weren't doing: whether not knowing employees' names or not giving clear directions or recognizing their achievements. A paper from 2010 found that "laissez-faire" leadership was more prevalent than other types of destructive leadership. And a recently updated paper found that companies whose CEOs worked remotely were more likely to underperform and have lower valuations.

Musk is far from the first CEO to try to wear the hat in two places: Steve Jobs ran Apple and Pixar simultaneously, and Jack Dorsey oversaw Twitter (now X) and Square (now Block). But Jobs was a largely hands-off manager at Pixar, delegating tasks to other execs. Twitter had always been difficult to monetize and effectively moderate, and Dorsey stepped down in 2021.

But much as there's no comparison for Tesla's plunge in value, Musk himself is incomparable. In addition to Tesla and X, Musk has on his plate Neuralink, The Boring Company, SpaceX, and xAI. He remains chief executive of Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI — that's in addition to posting on X at a dizzying pace and fathering 14 children. In 2022, when he added Twitter to his empire of influential businesses, some management experts speculated that he'd bitten off more than he could chew. Musk slashed staff by 80% and ran the hobbled blue bird alongside his other companies for several months before naming Linda Yaccarino as CEO. A radically new version of Twitter, renamed X, still worked, defying many predictions that it would break under the pressure. Amid his X takeover, Tesla's stock also plummeted from a high of $309 a share in September 2022 to a low of $103 in January 2023 — because of concerns around EV demand, rising inflation and interest rates, and Musk's distractions at Twitter. But Tesla stock roared back through the rest of 2023.

So when Musk began raiding the federal government's IT system in the name of cost cutting, many were slow to count him out. Perhaps he could bring the outsider energy needed to pare down bureaucracy and keep his companies humming at the same time. So far, DOGE has fired thousands of workers, canceled lifesaving aid, and produced all-around chaos. You can debate how well Musk's tactics are working to cut government waste, but it's undeniable now that DOGE and Musk's political involvement are eating away at his biggest cash cow.

When it comes to Tesla, Musk is the missing CEO who isn't really missing — he's everywhere else. He dominates headlines each day, his face appearing constantly in the press and his posts gaining eyeballs all over X. That's part of Tesla's problem. Owners and would-be buyers of the cars no longer can separate Musk's political ideology from the brand, and his brutal cost-cutting tactics have turned people off. But it's not just Musk's divided attention and political unpopularity affecting the once premiere EV company: Tesla is facing several roadblocks, including increased competition in the electric vehicle industry from Chinese manufacturers and uncertainty around the development of its fully autonomous self-driving software.

Jumping in and out of the daily grind of companies "is especially problematic when you're a micro-manager," says David Yoffie, a professor of international business administration at Harvard Business School. We know that Musk "likes to really get into the weeds and into the details," Yoffie notes. But there aren't enough hours in a day to micromanage a handful of companies — and that makes it harder to dive deep into the core issues of each. In January and February, Musk was reportedly sleeping on the floor of his DOGE office across the street from the White House, adapting his hardcore playbook from working at Tesla and Twitter to show his dedication at DOGE. Musk traveled with Trump to Mar-a-Lago for a donor dinner as recently as this weekend. Following the election, he spent so much time at Trump's Florida oasis that the president joked: "Elon won't go home. I can't get rid of him."

Sometimes CEOs go long periods without seeing their employees or they communicate sporadically over email with staff in a way that creates more separation between themselves and workers. "Without a finger on the pulse of what's really going on in their organization, they start losing credibility because they often will helicopter in, blow things up a little bit, create a big kerfuffle," Lori Dernavich, an executive coach and leadership development advisor, says of absent CEOs.

With Musk, the absenteeism isn't so silent. One Tesla backer, Christopher Tsai, has said he hopes Musk's "involvement with DOGE is short-lived so he can spend even more time on his businesses." Ross Gerber, a Tesla shareholder, told Business Insider in February that he was concerned about the other ventures that were pulling Musk's attention away from Tesla. "His 100% focus is on AI, and that's really a detriment to Tesla more than it's a plus for xAI and all the other businesses because he doesn't work at Tesla anymore," Gerber said. "If he were putting all of his time into Full Self-Driving, I'd feel a lot more confident about Tesla."

Some founders start companies with an entrepreneurial spirit but find themselves bored with the day-to-day tasks of a CEO. That's generally a time for them to transition to a chairman role — perhaps the way Dorsey did with Twitter when he was pushed out of his role as CEO in 2008 — but not all willingly bow out. As a result, "their sporadic presence means that they become a bottleneck for the organization," Dernavich says. "That bottleneck leads to resentment, poor decision-making, slower response times, and the culture gets affected. So much can start going haywire when that happens."

Asked how he's running his businesses alongside the demands of DOGE, Musk recently told Fox Business in a rare interview that he was doing so "with great difficulty." It was a bad week. An outage took X offline (Musk later blamed a "massive cyberattack" originating in Ukraine, which experts have cast doubt on), and a second SpaceX rocket exploded during a launch. Tesla lost $127 billion in market cap in one day. Trump just bought a Tesla with hopes of boosting the car's popularity. He'll have to buy quite a few more to make up for Tesla's losses. Tesla did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

Musk could afford for his wealth to drop by $100 billion or more in support of his political opinions, and his other companies are doing just fine. But being one of the most powerful people in the world means your actions and views have an outsize effect on everyone, including customers, shareholders, and workers at Tesla. Musk may have the stamina to hold out. The others may not.

Amanda Hoover is a senior correspondent at Business Insider covering the tech industry. She writes about the biggest tech companies and trends.

It's genuinely amazing how cheap a new TV is these days. A 65-inch LCD television that probably would have cost $1,500 or $2,000, a decade ago is now under $500. And in a world where everything's so expensive — cars, houses, eggs — there's some comfort in knowing you can still indulge in your guilty pleasure show at the end of the day, in high quality, for a pretty low cost. If you can't afford that fancy vacation, at least you can live a little vicariously through "The White Lotus."

That's the deal American consumers have begrudgingly made over the years. A lot of the elements of the supposed American dream are wildly pricey — to the point that for many people they're out of reach. Healthcare is wildly expensive. College tuition is nuts. Navigating the housing market is panic-attack-inducing, whether you're trying to buy or rent.

What's still accessible is the cheap stuff. The cost of consumer goods such as toys, clothes, and electronics has gone down. We tolerate the price tags of the big stuff, in part, because we have no other choice, and in part because at the very least we're entertained, we're connected, and we can fill our homes and closets with stuff. Maybe you can't move up in life, and once available opportunities are shut off, but hey, at least you can get something fun and weird for $5 on Temu.

But now, that grand bargain is changing. Inflation has made the cost of once accessible stuff a little hard to stomach. And tariffs threaten to blot out the last of what's affordable. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent recently declared that "access to cheap goods is not the essence of the American dream." Unfortunately, it's the whole shebang, or at least what it's become. And even that might be about to be taken away, too.

It didn't used to be this way. Throughout most of history, consumers weren't inundated with things. Most people had a limited amount of clothes — often made by the women of the house — and furniture and possessions. Their stuff lasted throughout their lifetimes, and when something broke, they fixed it instead of tossing it to buy a replacement. But with the Industrial Revolution and eventual "Mad Men" era of advertising, mass-produced stuff became widely available and attractive to everyone. Along with savvy marketing campaigns came manufacturing tricks like planned obsolescence, where things are built to die, and financial innovations, like consumer credit, that made it easier to pay for all that stuff. And, of course, there's globalization, meaning it's possible to make a bunch of cheap stuff outside the US and ship it in.

Chip Colwell, an anthropologist who is the author of "So Much Stuff: How Humans Discovered Tools, Invented Meaning, and Made More of Everything," told me that it's not just the "capacity" to make all this stuff that made Americans start to accumulate it, but "also really this ideology of abundance." It became possible and desirable to constantly have more, in order to keep up with the Joneses and with our own ideals of consumerism. "The culture of consumption that we have is absolutely predicated on supercheap stuff that we can easily throw away and not have to worry about," he said.

The consumer economy is a driving force in the American economic engine. We spend money to keep the wheels turning. It's become part of our patriotic duty — after the September 11, 2001, attacks, political leaders told Americans to keep spending and not let what happened "in any way throw off their normal level of activity." The ability to spend on what we want when we want is viewed as a pillar of American freedom.

"Now, there's no shame in being materialistic. In fact, materialism is part of our consumer citizenship," said Wendy Woloson, a history professor at Rutgers University who is the author of "Crap: A History of Cheap Stuff in America."

The churn of stuff cuts across income levels, too. A survey from The New Consumer and Coefficient Capital found that Shein shoppers were likelier to say they cared about sustainability and the environment than the average consumer — eyebrow-raising, given that Shein's clothes and business model are pointedly not good for the planet. A separate March 2024 analysis from the credit card data company Earnest Analytics found that nearly half of sales for Temu, another cheap Chinese retail marketplace, came from people making over $130,000 a year. Given the way wealth has been concentrated at the tippy top of the economy, it tracks: Nearly everyone outside the top 10% of income earners is feeling squeezed by costs of things such as healthcare and higher education, and cheap consumer goods are an outlet to exercise some agency. And in uncertain economic times, everyone's feeling a little price-sensitive.

The Trump administration's recent moves have some important implications for the cheap-stuffification of the American economy. The president is taking a protectionist approach to trade, implementing tariffs that could make the inexpensive things consumers have come to rely on quite a bit more expensive. Retailers such as Best Buy and Target have begun to warn of price increases. The stream of super-low-cost inane items from Shein and Temu could be cut off should President Donald Trump get his way. The prices of clothes, electronics, and toys are likely to go up — the things that up until now have been reliably affordable.

"The whole agenda is let's make it so that it's not the default option to buy just the cheapest, crappiest stuff from overseas when we should be making more of it in America," said Dan Frommer, the founder and editor in chief of The New Consumer.

But shifting the entire supply chain for goods from overseas back into the US is a transition that, if it happens, will be painful for consumers. We're used to a world of more more more — we don't know what it's like to do less less less.

"We don't have that experience of contraction. The system has grown and grown and grown and grown and grown, and the system is based on growing and growing and growing," said Susan Strasser, a historian of American consumer culture. "You want the end of the quarter report to be better than the last end of the quarter report. That's the whole point of it. And so in no sense are people prepared."

I'll go back to the example of TVs — the great American escape. Televisions, like many consumer electronics, have gone down in price even as they've gotten better over the years. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, television prices have decreased by 98% since 2000.

"The reason why the prices fall is because of business investment," said Paul Gagnon, a vice president and industry advisor on consumer technology at Circana, a market research firm, adding that companies invest "continuously in new manufacturing facilities that are more efficient and therefore can produce for at least the same amount of money a product that has a lot more performance, or for less money, something that's larger."

Much of this activity, however, is taking place outside the US.

Patrick Horner, a practice leader in TV set research at Omdia, a tech advisory firm, explained that 10 years ago, 49% of assembly for televisions imported into the US was happening in China. But after Trump's first term and the tariffs he put in place on China then, manufacturers moved more of their assembly operations to Mexico. Now, around 60% of American TV imports are made there. You can see the problem: In his second term, Trump has announced 20% additional tariffs on top of existing tariffs on China, and he's also threatening a 25% tariff on imports from Mexico that's (for now) supposed to be implemented in April. Omdia estimates manufacturers with existing factories could shift partial production to tariff-free countries in six months to a year, but building a new factory would take years. And, again, no one knows what Trump's next target could be.

"TV makers are looking into shifting some assembly out of Mexico and relocating it to someplace that doesn't have tariffs," Horner said. "But the thing is, Trump could very much say, 'Hey, Vietnam's on the radar screen, now they're getting the 25% tariff.' I don't think that anybody can accurately predict where the next tariff action is going to take place."

Gagnon said some particular factors kept prices on TVs from going up too much in response to Trump's tariffs in 2018 and 2019. At that time, retailers bought extra inventory to try to get ahead of price increases and it happened at a moment when supply chains to make critical components were expanding and pushing prices down. "Even though the tariffs caused the costs to go up on TVs imported from China, a lot of the components of the TV went down," he said. The context now is different. "It's pretty hard to see how an increase of 25% on the imported cost of a TV from Mexico to the US, given the profit margins for a lot of these TVs, wouldn't result in a price increase," he said.

It's not a bad thing to contemplate the end of the era of cheap stuff. The rate at which we're able to accumulate things without having to think about the trade-offs — environmental, labor-related, or otherwise — is alarming. I don't want to sound like a scold here, but our kids don't need so many toys, our closets don't need to be so full, and that barely old phone doesn't need to be swapped out. Getting a new fun thing may deliver a temporary endorphin hit, but most research shows it doesn't make us happier in the long run. It's not our fault we're like this. Corporations and marketers have turned us into stuffmongers, and even our political leaders encourage us to keep buying.

If and when tariffs start to increase prices and make even the most reachable things unreachable, it's going to feel annoying and unfair. Goods aren't going to become higher quality overnight; tariffs will just make them costlier. That TV isn't made to be fixed when it breaks; it's made to be replaced, whatever the price of said replacement. Fixing something isn't just a physical skill, Strasser said, "but to some extent, it's an emotional skill and a way of framing your relationship to material goods that's just completely different from anything that we've experienced in the last 50, 60, 70 years."

Like it or not, the American dream is a little bit about access to cheap stuff. It's that giant TV that at least lets you watch the football game (assuming you can find it wherever it's streaming, which is increasingly expensive). It's a repeat pair of those sneakers that wore out suspiciously fast. It's even a "Live, Laugh, Love" sign, a seasonal pillow sham, or random holiday decoration. And now, that all might be ripped away, too.

Emily Stewart is a senior correspondent at Business Insider, writing about business and the economy.

I recently opened Netflix and was prompted to watch an episode of "Saturday Night Live." When I clicked, I was told I actually wouldn't be tuning in for the cold open — because I pay Netflix the least amount of money possible for its ad-supported tier, the show wasn't available to me. I could upgrade, though, by paying an extra $10 or more indefinitely for an ad-free plan, which would come with better quality video, the ability to add my account to more devices, and the privilege of watching a show that has aired on basic cable for 50 years.

Increasingly, streaming content is subject to tiers and the trend of "premiumization." For years, companies like Netflix, Max, and Disney+ fought the so-called streaming wars — losing money because of pricey content, fierce competition, and high churn rates among users who hopped from platform to platform. But 2024 was the year things turned around. Spotify, Netflix, and Disney+ were all posting profits, finally making investors happy.

To keep investors happy, the subscriptions that appear as second thoughts on your credit card statement are still creeping up. Premiumization has long been a driver of tiered spending in the physical world — from airplane seats to airport lounges to Disney World — and now digital streamers are harnessing its power. The price hikes are working because they've got us hooked: Most people who quit Netflix come back, lured by a new cast on "Love Is Blind" or some other viral original premiere. Netflix prices went up again in January, Spotify is reportedly considering a new plan that will give users who pay extra more premium content, and Amazon Music has price hikes and more exclusive content in the works, too. Even YouTube TV went up by $10 a month last year, coming to a total of $82.99.

As streaming finally matures, our wallets may be the ultimate losers of the streaming wars.

Almost any service you try to buy today will offer add-ons. Even discount gyms like Planet Fitness offer tiered plans. What's different about these streaming companies is they were born in an era where they promised us more for less — you could listen to the entire library of Spotify rather than buying each track or album, and say goodbye to those viruses hidden in LimeWire downloads. In 2012, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek said he sought to create something "better than piracy," and that the company wanted "to bring music to every single person and bring it to every moment of their life." Netflix gave us not just ways to ditch DVDs and snail mail, but access to its own hit content anywhere, anytime, without any annoying ads (goodbye forever, Geico caveman). They reinvented the way we watched TV and listened to music — streaming was so cheap and flexible that it easily hooked millennials.

That's when the streaming wars took off in earnest. Companies scrambled to gobble up existing shows and new talent for their content. Prices were low, and it felt like cinephiles and TV buffs had more control and choice than ever. Streamers advertised themselves as if they cared if we, the watchers, had a good time. On a 2020 call, Netflix's former CEO Reed Hastings said: "We want to be the safe respite where you can explore, you can get stimulated, have fun and enjoy — and have none of the controversy around exploiting users with advertising." Now, that safe haven is only offered to those who shell out more money, as Hastings ate his words and launched a cheaper ad-supported tier for Netflix in 2022. When I was blocked from watching "SNL," the Netflix app blamed licensing agreements, which make a small portion of the content it offers unavailable on the ad-supported tier. As of 2023, Peacock no longer offers the free, ad-supported tier it launched with, and now charges $7.99 a month for its cheapest plan. Max announced in February that it would remove access to Bleacher Report and CNN Max from its basic tier.

"This idea of the good stuff costing a little bit more isn't exactly new," says Max Signorelli, the consumer research lead for media and entertainment at the consultancy firm Omdia. "But certainly, long gone are the times where these relatively new streaming offerings were marketing themselves as the cheap, viable alternative to traditional media sources."

Today, streamers aren't alternatives to cable; they're the mainstream. Combining subscription and ad revenue was the model that made companies like Verizon and Comcast cable giants. "A lot of the newer media companies came out of the gate with a tech mindset of: scale first, we'll worry about profits and revenue later," Nii Addy, the chief marketing officer at the streaming company Philo, tells me. "We're at that inflection point where they're having to turn that scale into profits." Ironically, they're following in the footsteps of the companies they sought to disrupt. "A lot of these new media companies are with one hand killing the legacy cash cows, but then they're also nursing their own, and it's based on the exact same model," Addy says.

Netflix had an exceptional 2024, making $39 billion in revenue, an increase of 16% from 2023. It celebrated the news and simultaneously announced a price hike: "We continue to invest in programming and deliver more value for our members, we will occasionally ask our members to pay a little more so that we can re-invest to further improve Netflix," the company said in its January earnings letter. Warner Bros. Discovery, which includes Max, saw its streaming business make $677 million in profit in 2024, up from $103 million the year before. Peacock revenue grew by 46% from 2023 to 2024, coming to $4.9 billion, although it still did not post a profit. Paramount+ says it is on track to reach full-year profitability in 2025.

The music streamers have stumbled for even longer, trying to disrupt an industry that was wildly profitable before Napster and LimeWire decimated it. Spotify, which rarely made a profit through 2023, turned itself around 2024 and had its first profitable year. Now, Bloomberg reports the company is considering charging an additional $5.99 for a Music Pro plan on top of premium subscription prices that hit $11.99 a month (which is up from the $9.99 it charged from 2011 until 2023), in hopes of drawing music superfans with perks like higher-quality audio, remixing tools, and access to concert tickets. In the not-so-distant future, premium versions of Taylor Swift songs may be available only to those who can afford it. Spotify declined to confirm the rumored details for this story.

The rumors come as the music streaming game is changing; Spotify signed a deal in January with the world's largest music company, Universal Music Group, to advance what is seen as a new streaming 2.0 era in music, driven by more exclusive content and personalization. Amazon Music, too, has expanded its relationship with UMG, announced vague plans to develop exclusive content, and has raised its subscription prices by $1 a month. Amazon did not respond to a request for comment. But replacing one price for nearly all the world's music, tiers will separate the superfans from the casual listeners — and some superfans may even subscribe to more than one music streamer if the exclusive offerings start to further differentiate the catalogs of Spotify and Amazon.

Ultimately, entertainment tiers might not be such a bad deal for consumers. Z. John Zhang, a professor of marketing at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton Business School, says tiered pricing actually does democratize these services. Different pricing levels allow people who want to pay less to do so and still get decent access to content, subsidized by those willing to pay for premiumization. "What's good about tiered pricing is they give you the choice. It's not like it forces you to be in business class," he says. "For the people who pay the higher price, it's voluntary, they want to. The customers all become better off; they all have their own choice."

For now, streamers are taking divergent approaches: Some are charging more for add-on content, and others are starting to take perks away from those who pay the least. All of this will likely result in the bottom-tier price being a worse experience across the board. On airplanes, I'll take the smallest seat and forgo water if it's not free. I'll watch ads with my Netflix and Hulu if it means I can justify subscribing to both. If it wants me to pay more each month, Spotify will have to come up with something particularly exclusive and enticing, like a jump on concert tickets, to beat out the bots that plague Ticketmaster. But if more good content goes behind the steeper paywall, it'll be a test to see how long the cheap subscribers like me can hold out.

Amanda Hoover is a senior correspondent at Business Insider covering the tech industry. She writes about the biggest tech companies and trends.

There are few activities more delightful than getting a little wine drunk and hitting up the local Target to go treasure hunting. Sure, you pretend you're there for a legitimate reason — to pick up toilet paper or trash bags. But whatever the plan was going in, you wind up with a basket full of random goodies: a bikini for a vacation you're not taking and party favors for a gathering you're not having. A yoga mat! Hot Cheetos! Five packs of gum! At Target, the world is your oyster in terms of stocking up on stuff you absolutely do not need. Even if you're doing Target sober, you wind up drunk on stuff.

But lately, that Target trip has been a little less joyful, if you're even going at all. The Minneapolis-based retailer has been going through a rough patch as price-conscious consumers cut down on just-for-funsies buys that fuel Target's sales. And in terms of politics, it seems like Target can't get anything right. For the past two years, it's found itself at the center of America's culture wars, drawing the ire of conservatives and progressives alike. For some consumers, popping into Target (or refusing to) has turned into a political statement, though it's not clear what statement it even makes.

Target can't decide what it stands for, ideologically. For many businesses, that's fine, but in Target's case, cultural relevancy is baked into the business model, and it keeps waffling on how it wants to be relevant. What Target stands for economically isn't working right now, either — it's operating from a place of weakness. The result: a Target that can't keep a, well, target off its back.

If you want to get a sense of how things have been going for Target lately, just take a look at its stock price. Target shares are down by more than 30% over the past year and by over 50% since their 2021 peak. While its most recent quarterly earnings were generally in line with Wall Street's expectations, it hasn't reported strong financial results since the pandemic. The retailer also said sales were off in February because of the weather and "declining consumer confidence," and it has anticipated tariff-related price increases in a matter of days. Things are not working in Target's favor, in part, because it relies on discretionary spending — basically, the nonessentials. As people pull back on that kind of spending amid inflation and worries about the economy, that hits Target where it hurts.

"People expect prices to rise, and that's causing people to spend more conservatively, and that's causing them to think twice about throwing this or that other thing into their cart," said Zak Stambor, a senior retail and e-commerce analyst at EMARKETER. "Target's business relies on people throwing this or that into their cart." (EMARKETER is owned by Axel Springer, the parent company of Business Insider.)

Target is struggling to differentiate itself and compete against Walmart, Amazon, and Costco, said Michael Baker, a managing director and senior research analyst at D.A. Davidson. If a consumer's focus is product selection and wowing customers with compelling offers, Costco's the answer (or at least as good as Target). If it's convenience, it's Amazon. If it's price, Walmart wins. "That doesn't mean that Target can't find their niche," Baker said, but the niche it does have — wants and not needs — is one that doesn't work great in this environment. "With the wind at their back and people spending a lot on discretionary items, we think Target can compete reasonably well, but in a more difficult environment, the increased competition over the past decade or so, I think, makes it that much more difficult for them," he said.

Target is also struggling to catch up in some booming areas that are working for its competitors, like groceries and e-commerce. Both efforts have been undertaken "halfheartedly," said Zhihan Ma, a senior research analyst at Bernstein. Target largely relies on its stores to fulfill online orders, which may be cheaper in terms of the up-front cost to implement, but it's very labor intensive, as associates are expected to deal with in-person shoppers and e-commerce customers in tandem.

Beyond the slow-walked investments, one of the key differentiators for Target — a relatively enjoyable shopping experience — has been undercut in recent years. Target's attempts to fight retail theft mean more merchandise winds up locked up. Like with other retailers, some locations have problems with inventory shortages or crowded aisles. The result is a shopping experience that isn't a bang-up time, which is especially damaging for Target, where a bit of fun is part of the point.

"The business is what the business is to a large extent," Stambor said. "Target is a place to find that cool other thing that you didn't expect to throw into your cart."

While Target has been having a tough time financially over the past couple of years, it may be even worse when it comes to the news. Yes, there are some positive headlines about Stanley's "Wicked"-themed cups and everything it's doing with Taylor Swift. But there are a lot more negative headlines Target would rather not see.

One of the ways Target has sought to differentiate itself from competitors is by embracing a rather cosmopolitan identity. It does collaborations and deals with designers, big-name brands, and celebrities. It tries to get higher-end consumers in the door. It's a bit fancy — there's a reason people use a little French accent to call it "Tar-jay." That means some of its consumers, particularly those who are more progressive leaning, expect more from it, and in some cases, Target has been happy to oblige.

"In some ways, they're victims of their own success," Baker said. "Target has come to stand for fashion and fun and it is really a very culturally relevant retailer," he said, which puts it more in the crosshairs than Walmart and Amazon.

As recently as 2020, Target was leaning into this identity. The Minneapolis-based retailer had positioned itself as a leader on racial justice in response to George Floyd's murder by a Minneapolis police officer in 2020. The moves seemed to go over well until 2023, when it stumbled into a series of culture-war woes. That year, many businesses faced a backlash after a Bud Light marketing campaign featuring the transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney sparked outrage among some consumers in the spring. Heading into the summer, Target's Pride month collection — something it's been doing for years — became the subject of right-ring focus. Some of the hullabaloo was completely made up, such as false social media reports that Target was selling "tuck-friendly" bathing suits for children. But the dust-up also moved from social media to the real world: Some angry shoppers were actually attacking associates and destroying store displays. Target scaled back its Pride collection, moving items to the back of the store in some locations and pulling some items altogether. It later said the backlash hurt sales.

Since then, Target's been stuck in a loop of corporate identity indecision that it seems unable to get out of. The decision to scale back on Pride made no one happy — some consumers were already upset about the merchandise's existence in the first place, and others were upset because Target backed down. Target declined to comment for this story, but with regard to its diversity strategy and business outlook, a spokesperson pointed to links to its "Belonging at the Bullseye Strategy" and its fourth-quarter results.

Target has taken a similar please-no-one approach when it comes to its diversity, equity, and inclusion policies. In January, the company said it was axing multiple DEI initiatives, including ending its three-year DEI goals, wrapping up a program to invest in Black-owned businesses, and stopping participation in external diversity-focused surveys. Target's DEI efforts and reversals have been met by resistance on several fronts. On the right, the retailer has been hit by a lawsuit brought by the state of Florida, among others, saying investors weren't made aware of the risks of Target's DEI initiatives and potential backlash. On the left, the Atlanta pastor Jamal Bryant has called for a 40-day boycott of Target over its DEI rollback.

"Any time a company is visible, it's a target for activists who have one agenda or another," said Brayden King, a management professor at Northwestern.

At a moment when much of corporate America is anxious about the political environment, Target, in particular, seems to be bearing the brunt of all these swirling emotions. Many people feel powerless when it comes to actual politics, so pouring their frustrations into things they can control — where and how they shop — turns into an outlet for some sort of action.

The big issue, however, isn't that Target sold Pride merchandise or undertook DEI initiatives, it's that it so openly waffled on all of it. Again, it's similar to Bud Light: The near-ubiquitous beer brand did a tiny marketing campaign with a transgender influencer, and when that caught fire online among right-wing personalities, the company panicked and backed down instead of keeping calm and staying the course. When a company capitulates to backlash and cowers, it suggests what it initially did was incorrect — and ultimately pleases nobody.

Wavering draws more attention to the issue. It signifies weakness — which, in the case of Target's business, is part of the problem. It also degrades trust with consumers and turns the company into a more obvious target for activists down the line.

"That kind of seesawing back and forth and saying one thing and doing another, that's what gets brands like Target in trouble," said David Albert, the chief insights officer at Collage Group, a consumer research firm that focuses on multicultural audiences. "We've seen here, especially with Target, is that they've eroded that trust because they're not doing what they say and they don't say what they do."

It's not clear how much the political noise will impact Target's bottom line. The 2023 Pride backlash did ding sales, but that was a temporary problem. As a general rule, the vast majority of boycotts don't work. Consumers are set in their ways and often prioritize convenience. If there's a Target down the street or a Walmart 30 minutes away, most people will stick with Target. Also, if you really start to worry about whether each and every business you interact with aligns exactly with your values, you will likely find there is nowhere on Earth you can shop.

"Boycotts, of course, are very effective tactics for drawing attention to a cause," King said. "It will have this effect of making Target look bad. But do I think that it will affect what Target does? Probably not."

Just because boycotts rarely work doesn't mean they never work. Bud Light, for one, really did see a decline in sales. The evidence is mixed on whether February's single-day "economic blackout" was effective, but there are at least some signs it may have moved the needle. Ma, from Bernstein, said it's too early to tell if the DEI-related backlash will hurt Target's long-term financials, but she acknowledged that it may introduce more "volatility" into its shorter-term results if it continues to find itself embroiled in cultural backlashes. "It doesn't help, for sure," she said.

In terms of the business basics, Target has plans to get back some of that Tarjay sheen. It's amping up its private-label offering, creating more in-house brands that resonate with consumers and give them a reason to go to Target, specifically, rather than somewhere else. It's seeking out more flashy collaborations and partnerships, like with Warby Parker. It's scaling Target Plus, its third-party marketplace. It's still hoping consumers will do a spin around the store for those glorious little splurge buys on top of the basics.

Still, in the retail landscape, Target isn't in a highly enviable position. Between price-sensitive consumers and tariff whiplash, the macroeconomic landscape is not stacked in its favor. And its soft business outlook means that in terms of the culture war, it's operating from a place of weakness, which raises the chances of making a misstep. Instead of companies worrying they're going to be the next Bud Light, they're likely starting to worry they'll be the next Target.

Emily Stewart is a senior correspondent at Business Insider, writing about business and the economy.

Nolan Saumure, a 28-year-old Canadian YouTuber, walked into Afghanistan from Pakistan last summer. He spent a week traveling through the Taliban-controlled country with a local guide and a camera in an attempt to show what he called "the other side of Afghanistan" — the natural beauty, warm hospitality, and rip-roaring good times he says aren't depicted in Western media.

Saumure, whose YouTube channel, Seal on Tour, has 650,000 subscribers, is something of a shock-jock Zoomer Anthony Bourdain: His popular videos include "48 Hours Living in India's Biggest Slum," "Trying the Most Addictive Substance in the Philippines," and "White Boy Becomes Jamaican in Downtown Kingston." For his Afghanistan trip, he played up the unique travel experience of hanging out with exclusively men, titling one 35-minute video "Afghanistan Has Too Much Testosterone." Since 2021, women have been effectively barred from many aspects of public life under the Taliban's modesty laws. All day, it's "all dudes, bro-ing the fuck down," Saumure says to the camera. "It's a complete sausage fest in here," he adds as he spins the camera around to show the crowd of men around him.

At one point he meets some girls playing outside. He narrates that after childhood, "everything is taken away from them," which he says makes him sad. But in the bulk of his YouTube videos, he presents the "sausage fest" as a blast, as he and Afghan men go to parks, ride a pedal boat in a crystal blue lake in Band-e-Amir, eat ice cream, and watch the slaughter of a goat.

Along the way, he bumps into men he and other travel vloggers call the "Talibros," who patrol the streets with rifles strapped over their shoulders. Saumure chats it up with several men he says are Taliban members, showing one of them how to download Duolingo so he can practice his English.

Saumure is one of several travel content creators who have gone to Afghanistan since the United States ended its longest war and evacuated the country. They're mostly men — sometimes traveling in groups on boys' trips. For a certain kind of manosphere influencer eager for an edge in the attention economy, Jalalabad is the new Nashville.

In the summer of 2021, a 21-year-old British student named Miles Routledge visited Afghanistan after seeing it on a list of the world's most dangerous places. (He had previously visited Chernobyl.) Notably, Routledge was stranded during the fall of Kabul that August and had to be evacuated by the British army. When he returned in 2023, he was imprisoned by the Taliban for several months. He claims he was treated well, watching movies and playing Xbox with members. "It was a good setup," he says in a video. "Basically, I was chilling." Routledge didn't respond to a request for comment.

The predominating sentiment in these videos is that Afghanistan is misunderstood, portrayed by the West as hostile and dangerous while it's actually warm and welcoming. "F*@K the Media: I Went to AFGHANISTAN!" one traveler titled his video; another clip is called "Afghanistan is NOT What You Think!" Some show beautiful mountains and mosques and detail warm interactions with locals. There's more shocking fare, such as "I Went Shooting with the Taliban," or videos about exploring decades-old abandoned Russian tanks. A YouTuber called Arab who runs a channel with 1.8 million subscribers calls himself an adventure traveler but says in a disclaimer that he's going for journalistic purposes. His goofy, spirited hourlong videos include "The Young Taliban Train Me For War," where he plays with children dressed in camo and holding toy guns, and "I Spent 7 Days Living with the Taliban." He didn't respond to a request for an interview.

These creators are also wading into a country that many Western governments warn against traveling to, one that has been ravaged by war and is now under an oppressive unelected government. Freedom of expression and religious practices that don't conform to sharia, or Islamic law, are restricted; girls must leave school at 12; and Taliban members have attacked queer people. In 2024, three Spanish tourists and three Afghans were killed in a shooting in a bazaar — the Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack. In January, two Americans were freed in a prisoner swap for a Taliban member. In late February, the Taliban arrested a British couple in their 70s, though the Taliban described their detention as a "misunderstanding." The US Department of State advises citizens not to travel to Afghanistan, citing "civil unrest, crime, terrorism, risk of wrongful detention, kidnapping, and limited health facilities."

Many of these travelers aren't strangers to some sense of danger. Afghanistan offers the kind of exclusive content certain to lure eyes, especially if the vloggers can interact and bro out with a notorious extremist group.

Saumure tells me that after traveling to several "dangerous" countries, including Iraq and Pakistan, "you kind of start to disengage from all the level-four warnings that your government might say about traveling to these places and just not trust your own government and go based on what other travelers are saying."

But he still witnessed the country's deep-rooted issues. "Even if the west is maybe selling a very sensational narrative, I still saw the oppression firsthand as far as women not being allowed in certain parks and modesty laws," he says. "It's a delicate subject. I just wanted to be like, 'this is how it is here,' instead of driving into my beliefs."

The growing interest to experience places firsthand — or at least watch some other amateur do it — underscores a growing distrust of institutions and authority. In a 2024 survey by the Pew Research Center, about one in five Americans said they got their news from influencers on social media. That figure jumped to 37% for respondents under 30.

As dangerous as Western governments say Afghanistan is, the country wants tourists, particularly those who show a different side of the country than news reports show, and it advertises tourism on its websites. Afghanistan's Ministry of Information and Culture didn't respond to my request for comment. Taliban officials told The New York Times last year that some 14,500 foreigners had visited Afghanistan since 2021, most of them men. Several tourism companies and travel agencies have popped up to help eager travelers navigate the country. The rebrand of Afghanistan has been underway for years — shortly after the fall of Kabul, videos of Taliban fighters became memeified, showing them doing silly activities like riding a carousel. Some researchers worried at the time that the content could help soften the group's image.

Carrie Patsalis, a 48-year-old British travel vlogger, toured Afghanistan with a guide for 10 days in May. "The world has a really funny narrative and a really funny idea about which countries you should shun based on unelected regimes," she says. She argues that staying away hurts the country's economy — UN officials have estimated that about 85% of Afghans live on less than $1 a day — and the Afghan people who may not support the Taliban rule.

She thinks travel vloggers should show both the country's beauty and its oppression. Patsalis tells me she made a point to seek out women on her trip. She tells me that while the women could not be seen on camera, she wanted to let them know that "I see you, I know you're here, and it matters to me how you live."

Ultimately, going to Afghanistan is good business for travel content creators competing for eyes in an online world full of travel recommendations. Harry Jaggard, a British 27-year-old who has been making videos for three years, says his series in Afghanistan in 2023 was his most successful. He tells me he's traveling to North Korea next month. "To be the best, you sometimes have to push the boundaries," he says. "Everyone wants to see it, and not many people go there."

In his series, Jaggard travels with a guide and meets men who he says are members of the Taliban in the street. (He says he learned to tell by looking at their clothing and asking his guide.) He says that while he was apprehensive, he found the Taliban members to be shockingly friendly. "They're outwardly very kind — that's how they gain your trust," he tells me. But he didn't want to highlight too much of the Taliban in his videos; he says he focused on meeting citizens, whom he described as among the most hospitable people he's encountered in the dozens of countries he has traveled to. He says it's a reminder that "a government and its people are two different things."

The videos also fill a gap in traditional travel journalism. "Frommer's would never cover travel to a place that is as dangerous as this one is," says Pauline Frommer, the publisher of Frommer's Guidebooks, the popular guidebook series that has been around since the 1950s. While encouraging other people to travel to places like Afghanistan despite government warnings is dangerous, there are insights to be gleaned from watching travel vloggers have first-hand experiences there, and many people can learn from watching them. "I see nothing wrong with videos about less visited parts of the world," Frommer tells me. "I find value in looking at what daily life is like."

For now, Afghanistan isn't overrun with selfie sticks at landmarks and TikTokers crowding local restaurants. But the need to keep content interesting is pushing these creators to more controversial and dangerous places, as curious viewers want to see more of the worlds they aren't a part of. But then how many eager backpackers will follow in their footsteps to make their own content?

Amanda Hoover is a senior correspondent at Business Insider covering the tech industry. She writes about the biggest tech companies and trends.

The kids these days aren't drinking as much as they used to. They're doing sober dating and alcohol-free game nights and whatever zebra striping is. But you know who is still boozing it up? Their parents and grandparents. While the media (including this publication) has been chattering about Gen Z and millennials scaling back on alcohol, many of us have missed that older generations are bucking the trend. Many baby boomers are turning into baby boozers. They're hitting retirement, they have savings to spend, and they're enjoying a little life victory lap — accompanied by a glass of wine (or three).

A recent analysis of customer credit card spending by the Bank of America Institute found that overall spending at bars in January was up 1% from the year before. The group responsible for the increase: baby boomers, who upped their spending by 4% and seemed to be opting for the bar over going to a restaurant. While Gen Z and millennials are still spending a larger aggregate amount at bars (the last time you went out, you probably didn't see the bar teeming with cougars and silver foxes), their tabs are shrinking. Gen Z, for example, decreased its spending on bars and alcohol stores in January by 15% compared to the same month in 2023. The youngs are backing off of the hard stuff; baby boomers aren't following suit.

"The interesting thing that's happening is that a higher share of baby boomers' going-out budgets is being dedicated to bars," said Joe Wadford, an economist at the Bank of America Institute.

A consumer survey by CGA by NIQ, a food-and-beverage industry research firm, found that average monthly spending on bars and restaurants by people between 21 and 34 fell from $166 in fall 2023 to $154 in fall 2024. During that same time period, spending by people over 55 went from $129 to $170 (of course, not all of that was on booze). The percentage of over-55 Americans who say they drink alcohol has increased from 49% in the early 2000s to 59% today, Gallup found; among people between 18 and 34, it fell from 72% to 62%. The proportion of older adults who say they sometimes overdo it has also gone up during that time period, while for everyone else, it's gone down. Older drinkers are also drinking more frequently. A Business Insider analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data found that spending on alcoholic beverages, adjusted for inflation, has gone down among most age groups since the mid-1980s — except among people over 65.

Overall, older people still drink less than younger people, but the generations are moving in opposite directions. Baby boomers are raising more glasses while their kids and grandkids are laying off.

So what's going on here? For one thing, baby boomers have been spending big on alcohol for years, and that's not going to change at the flip of a switch, especially now that their kids are out of the house and they've no longer got The Man to answer to. They've got time and money to spend, and they want to spend some of it on alcohol — and the nice stuff, too. Now that they can afford it, they're buying nicer wines and premium-brand liquors, eschewing the cheap options of their tight-budget youth.

"They're very much in this kind of YOLO period of their lives where it's like, 'I've got money; I feel good; people are living longer, healthier lives. I am traveling more compared to prior generations,'" said Kate Bernot, the lead analyst at Sightlines, which researches the alcohol industry. "They're just kind of in this prime time where buying nice stuff sounds good."

Younger adults have their bank accounts pulled in different directions. They're trying to buy homes or are saddled with mortgages. They've got car payments and childcare costs and student debt. Baby boomers, the youngest of whom are in their early 60s, are free of many of those expenses. They've reaped the benefits of rising home prices and a booming stock market. If you're 23 and struggling to pay your rent, you might have no choice but to swap a night out on the town for a quiet evening in with a six-pack to save money. A 65-year-old who doesn't have work tomorrow for the first time in 40 years and is sitting on a nice little nest egg isn't making the same calculation. As Gen Z and millennials are aging into more financial obligations, baby boomers are aging out of them.

"For the older generation, if you think of economic headwinds and economic issues, they perhaps might not have been as affected as much as young people," said Matt Crompton, a vice president at the market research firm NIQ, who focuses on the restaurant and bar market.

Older people may not listen to or be as aware of the health concerns around even moderate drinking as younger people. They came up in an age when some amount of drinking was considered healthy — that glass or two of red wine at night was supposedly good for their hearts. They've got ingrained habits they're not going to be quick to drop in the way younger people might in trying out Dry January, Sober October, or swapping nonalcoholic options into their routines on occasion.

"They have always been pretty strong alcohol consumers since they turned a legal drinking age, so they're just continuing those patterns, and now they just have money and time," Bernot said.

Crompton pointed out that while cannabis is competing for the "buzz dollar" among young consumers, that's not so much the case for most older ones. "The older consumer often will stick with what they know," he told me.

Baby boomers may not be who we think of as the typical alcohol consumer. We don't see them much in alcohol ads or in the media. But that doesn't mean that they're not excited about exploring alcohol — and brands are starting to notice. During the Super Bowl, Michelob Ultra ran a commercial featuring Catherine O'Hara, who's 71, and Willem Dafoe, 69, playing younger competitors on the pickleball court for beer. Brands are "finally waking up to the huge spending power and interest" in alcohol boomers have, Bernot said.

For the alcohol industry, the boomer boozer represents an under-the-radar market to serve. But there's a looming issue: As the cohort ages from "fun retiree" to "old old," they're going to become less frequent consumers. As people get into their mid-70s and 80s, they really slow down on drinking, and, at some point, they die. According to Sightlines, baby boomers account for 40% of all alcohol spending in the US. Brands are working to replace them, but meeting the tastes of a younger generation — especially when they're cutting back in general — can be tricky. This is an issue for wine, in particular. Silicon Valley Bank's latest report on the state of the US wine industry found that wine is the favorite of the three major alcoholic beverage categories for people over 60, while it ranks last for people under 60, behind spirits and beer.

"I hope we are all past the notion that we shouldn't worry about younger consumers coming to wine, and all we need to do is wait or, said another way — be patient and do nothing," wrote Rob McMillan, the founder of Silicon Valley Bank's wine division, wrote in the report. "Doing nothing won't change our present situation."

Baby boomers aren't getting sloshed every night in their retirement communities — or at least most of them aren't. But they aren't stepping away from alcohol in the same way that younger generations are, and they're keeping the party going longer than generations before them. Grandma might still have her two glasses of wine at dinner, while Mom has half a glass, and her 21-year-old daughter opts for a Diet Coke. Or Dad still goes to the bar for the big game and spends $30 on a handful of beers, while his son watches at home with some NA Athletic brews shared with friends. The elder half of the family can't figure out how to get the games with all the streaming services now, anyway.

Health considerations aside, boomers are in a moment when they have the space and finances to enjoy a drink more than they have in a long time. So, they're seizing the opportunity.

"It really boils down to where they are with their life stages," Wadford said. "The baby boomers are just enjoying some well-earned downtime."

Emily Stewart is a senior correspondent at Business Insider, writing about business and the economy.

The reelection of Donald Trump brought Republicans a chance to realize their long-held dream of drowning bureaucracy in a bathtub. Since the Reagan era, many have tried; none have succeeded. But when Trump announced that Elon Musk would serve as cutter in chief and set up a Department of Government Efficiency, many believed the moment had at last arrived. So in November, I posed a question to management and policy experts: Could Musk's history of ruthlessly slimming down his companies and making them wildly successful give him the experience he needs to sniff out and cut Washington waste?

They predicted that Musk would have less unilateral power to enact his will than he does in the headquarters of X or Tesla. The federal government is not ruled by a king, after all, let alone an unelected "special government employee." But they didn't doubt Musk, given that he gutted Twitter's staff and — defying expectations that the platform would break — somehow kept it alive. As the Columbia Business School professor Michael Morris told me, sometimes it takes "creative destruction" to make radical changes to large organizations. On the whole, the experts were cautiously hopeful.

That was the fall, when all anyone could do was speculate. Today, six weeks into DOGE's existence, we have a lot of data. DOGE has created a dizzying tornado of news. Musk has used it to test the limits of the law, such as by dismantling USAID, a move that many legal experts have called unconstitutional. Tens of thousands of federal workers have been hastily fired; some, such as those who regulate the nation's food supply, were rehired once their necessity was recognized. Engineers loyal to Musk have infiltrated government IT systems.

So I went back to the experts and asked for their assessment of how things are going so far. For the most part, their hope had morphed into serious concern. They described DOGE's tactics as "clumsy," "wrongheaded," and full of "political recklessness."

"The arrogance of the whole thing is pretty stunning — even for someone with an ego as large as Elon Musk," Linda Bilmes, a senior lecturer in public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, tells me. "It appears as if the objective is just to blow things up and hope something better emerges."

Bilmes says Musk's approach thus far has been a huge "missed opportunity." In November she told me she hoped Musk would seek counsel from those who know best where government waste is, including the Government Accountability Office, the inspectors general, and federal workers themselves. DOGE has barely interacted with the GAO, which last week released its latest road map to improving government efficiency. Trump has fired more than a dozen inspectors general as part of the purge of government workers. And Musk has painted federal workers as his enemies rather than his partners. For two weekends in a row DOGE has sent an email to all federal workers asking for a list of their weekly accomplishments; if DOGE deems them lacking in productivity, they could be terminated.

Last month, onstage at the Conservative Political Action Conference, Musk wielded what he called "the chainsaw for bureaucracy." But if Musk were truly interested in understanding the government to root out inefficiencies, Bilmes says, the memelord would have led with an image of a giant ear or telephone. "The wrongheadedness of the approach can be summed up in the image of the chainsaw," Bilmes added.

Two business school professors I talked to said the imagery harked back to "Chainsaw" Al Dunlap. In the 1990s, Dunlap wiped out thousands of employees at the toilet-paper giant Scott, facilitated the sale of the company, and walked off with a $100 million paycheck. Dunlap then took his brutal methods to the appliance maker Sunbeam, where share prices soared in anticipation of his plan to halve the company's staff. But that alone couldn't save Sunbeam. After several quarters of disappointing profits and a scandal involving falsified accounting documents, Dunlap was fired. Sunbeam went bankrupt, and Dunlap was hit with a shareholder lawsuit accusing him of inflating stock prices to acquire two other brands, as well as fines by the Securities and Exchange Commission, which accused him of misrepresenting Sunbeam's financial results. (He settled both.) All that chainsawing left a trail of destruction. "He substituted one kind of trauma for another kind of trauma," Morris says.

Musk is jogging memories of Chainsaw Al because his tactics aren't about simply cutting back on government waste, which can be achieved through things such as killing the penny (Trump did order this), getting rid of unoccupied office space, and telling the Pentagon that its days of lobster dinners are no more. It's about pushing the federal workforce to the brink and expanding the power of the executive branch.

"I'm both appalled and hopeful," Morris says. "Letting young kids who don't know anything about the context just gain access to all kinds of records that it's not clear they're legally allowed to be looking at, that opens the door to privacy issues, to espionage, to all kinds of problems."

On the other hand, Morris maintains some optimism that Musk's wrecking-ball approach may still be the best bet yet to break through entrenched government waste. "Bureaucracies grow because politicians make calculated moves based on the constituencies that they're trying to keep for the next election. You have inertia, you have this snowballing bureaucracy, and that's part of the problem," he says. "It's relatively rare to have an administration and an administrator like Elon Musk with complete political courage, political recklessness even."

The world's richest man doesn't answer to voters, and he even said during Trump's campaign that Americans should expect economic "hardship" as a result of his slicing of government programs and workers. And Trump is only giving Musk more power, requiring agencies to create a centralized system managed by DOGE where they record and justify payments. He has even said he'd like for Musk to "get more aggressive."

Morris says that when bold figures like Musk try to bring about rapid change in business, they create shocks to the system that usually lead to blowback. And that blowback is building. On Thursday, a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order blocking the firing of probationary employees at some agencies. DOGE is drawing ire not just from federal workers and Democrats but from within the MAGA movement. Steve Bannon has called Musk a "truly evil person" and last week told an interviewer that Musk "wants to impose his freak experiments and play-act as God without any respect for the country's history, values or traditions."

Recently, federal workers were sent a now notorious email asking them what they accomplished in the past week. They had little time to respond, with the threat of termination hanging over them if they left the email on read. Chaos ensued. Federal workers felt harassed and intimated, and many mulled resignation. Management experts largely told my colleagues that this type of leadership was harmful and could hurt worker morale. Then another email hit workers' inboxes, asking for a list of accomplishments to be sent every Monday. The emails are just the latest example of the ways DOGE and the Trump administration have wreaked psychological havoc on government workers, and Bilmes described them as "total nonsense." Many workers in the government are focused on preventing bad outcomes, such as the spread of disease or terrorist attacks — that work doesn't necessarily lend itself to ideals of efficiency.

Joseph Fuller, a professor of management practice at Harvard Business School, says that DOGE's tactics largely show that "at the root of what they're trying to do, they're trying to get the data." That could allow the government to push toward automating more tasks of its office workers. "In some ways, what they're trying to do is get a better map of how these places work so that they can start using tech to reduce costs and reduce deficits," Fuller says. But the disarray and confusion created by DOGE's tactics could outweigh any benefit. "The extent to which that agenda is overthrown by this kind of almost comically clumsy initiative might be something they regret," he says.

Fuller says tactics similar to the accomplishments emails happen in the corporate world in companies "under pretty significant financial duress." "It's a little bit of a 'break glass, pull lever' mechanism," he says, that "can be useful to allow you to make rapid cuts, which might cause you to live to fight another day in a corporate setting." The federal workforce is heavily unionized. The sources of funding are not controlled by a CEO. The government is not a company that needs to make it through the next quarter in hopes of being acquired. It needs the resources to carry on in perpetuity. DOGE did not respond to questions about whether it plans to work with the GAO as it continues to recommend spending cuts going forward.

The federal government isn't Sunbeam. Or Twitter. Or Tesla. Or SpaceX. When you cut half the people who work at Twitter, it glitches — even if it eventually recovers. When you eliminate USAID, people can die. How are we to measure the efficiency of programs that keep the country safe from terrorist attacks or nuclear disasters? The purge of employees can lead to gaps in systems we can't afford to break now and fix later.

The US government is not a corporation. And it's not a startup, the vast majority of which fail. Some are acquired, which is seen as success. Few turn out like Tesla and SpaceX. Their founders move on to try again, to come up with something new and take it back to investors for another go. The government cannot be put to the same tests — what it does is too important.

Amanda Hoover is a senior correspondent at Business Insider covering the tech industry. She writes about the biggest tech companies and trends.

A former coworker recently noticed that the young people in his office didn't seem to be doing happy hours anymore. He figured it was just a case of teetotaling Gen Zers, which is probably healthy, but still, it felt a little sad to imagine that kids these days weren't having as much after-work fun as he used to. But in the middle of his lamenting, a terrible thought crossed my mind: They probably are doing happy hours; they're just not inviting him. He's married, in his 30s, and has been a middle manager for a while now. His 20-something underlings might not want to make a habit of knocking one back with the boss — if anything, they're probably out complaining about him.

One of the underappreciated rites of passage of aging is the moment you realize that you're an adult. It's one of those things that sneaks up on you. Yes, 18 is the age when you legally are considered an adult by the government, and there are important milestones at 21 (drinking) or 25 (renting a car), but the lived experience of adulthood is looser than that. You hit a travel snafu, or there's a conflict in a meeting, and you wonder just who's supposed to be in charge here. Suddenly, it hits you that the answer is you. Millennials: On the map of aging, you are here.

In the cultural imagination, one of the main narratives about millennials has been that they're young. They were defined by a sense of arrested development, a generation suffering from a perpetual failure to launch. But the march of time comes for everyone, and millennials are no exception. They're buying homes, having kids, making investments, and getting promoted at work. Millennials are the adults in the room now — they're the ones responsible. It's neat, but it's also stressful and scary.

"It's startling to many when you get there, especially if you didn't go through life thinking you knew everything to begin with," said Jennifer Deal, a senior research scientist at the Center for Effective Organizations at USC's Marshall Business School at the University and the author of "What Millennials Want From Work."

"For a lot of the people who don't necessarily think that they have all of this stuff completely dialed in, finding out that they're now the ones who are supposed to keep the boat steady and on course is startling and overwhelming," she added.

In their family lives, millennials are increasingly finding themselves in the "sandwich generation," a life stage in which they're taking care of both their kids and their parents (or grandparents). On the one end, even if their parents don't need caregiving, they've slowed down, and they're not as on top of things as they used to be. Their moms are no longer in charge of holiday planning, or maybe their dads need help figuring out how to set up their new phones. On the other end, they're figuring out what's for dinner every night or starting to doubt the effectiveness of their gentle parenting approach given what's going on with their misbehaving kids.

Many millennials are also in a sandwich situation professionally. They've been working long enough to get into management or at least move up the corporate ladder a few rungs. They're not yet at the ranks of the more senior Gen Xers and baby boomers, so they're also expected to translate the younger generation to their bosses. They can relate to the youngs, but they're not entirely in sync with them, which in and of itself is uncomfortable to admit. Like, what do you mean there are jokes about millennial managers on TikTok? Why is everyone talking about how to relate to Gen Z? How am I no longer the youngest person in the room?

"For probably 10 years, millennials were the new thing. Millennials were the shock to the system. Millennials were changing everything," said Lindsey Pollak, a speaker and consultant on multigenerational workplaces. "To go from that and to have a new kid in town with the Gen Z cohort is probably even more noticeable because millennials got so much media around being new and different."

Our educational formation is marked by graduation — from elementary school, high school, college, etc. At work, there's some of that, in changing titles and promotions, but advancement is much subtler, so you might not notice it.

"Sometimes, the transition starts to happen when you start to manage somebody for the first time, but as organizations are becoming more and more flat, it's less of a moment," Pollak said.

In a Zapier survey conducted by Harris, over 60% of millennial respondents said they had direct reports. They're often a reluctant managerial class because many don't love the idea of having to be the bad guy and set the rules. So they're trying to handle things differently as managers, hoping to bring more empathy, transparency, and a healthier work-life balance to the table than they were afforded at the start of their careers. Sometimes, being the boss means having to put a foot down, which they're learning how to do effectively. But even if they're not managing anyone, they're expected to know the lay of the land. It can lead to some imposter syndrome, on top of the overall anxieties that come with aging.

"You forget how much you've learned, and that has value — communication, the nuance of managing people and projects," Pollak said. "More junior people don't know what they don't know, and you do."

I've run into this recently: Two young journalists have reached out to me over the past couple of months for mentorship. My gut reaction is that I hate it. I feel like I'm not old or seasoned enough to have reached mentor status, and I worry I don't have much to tell them that's of any use. Upon some reflection, I've come to realize being on the merry-go-round for a while means I can be helpful, even if mentoring really is not my jam.

"Adulting" is fun when it's a one-off celebration that you did your taxes alone for the first time. It's not so fun when it becomes your full-time gig. When you're in charge at home and at work, it means there's not a lot of time to recharge yourself. It's your job to call the teacher about a problem at school and explain to your Gen Z report that they can't call in sick once a week. If you own your home, which a growing number of millennials do, there's no landlord to figure things out for you — you've got to call the plumber when a pipe breaks.

"It's exhausting and slightly scary because now you're in charge of keeping all the balls in the air, and you're not really sure who's playing the net," Deal said. "Sometimes, you don't necessarily trust yourself to do it, but you trust yourself more than the other people who might be doing it."

Maybe you would really rather not do the driving on your girls trip, but your bestie is terrifying behind the wheel, so you suck it up and say you'll rent the car. It's annoying, but given how many miles you've put on your proverbial and literal tires, you know how to handle things a bit better and prefer to take the wheel.

Being the adult in the room means dealing with reaching middle age, which is becoming a reality for the many millennials who are crossing the threshold of 40. The slightly delusional hopefulness of youth has faded. New aches and pains are creeping in. People may be disappointed in how their life has turned out and not super jazzed about the future. Those in the sandwich phase of caregiving have more financial and emotional troubles than their peers. Middle age means you're at the bottom of the U-shaped curve of satisfaction. We're happy when we're young, then we have a bad time in our 40s or so, and then we get happy again when we're old.

"When you're younger, you don't have as many responsibilities, or they're not as taxing," said Lindsey Anderson, an associate professor at the University of Maryland who studies aging. "Then, you're in this middle age trying to figure life out, where you have children, maybe aging parents, a career. You have these life-course milestones that are bigger and heavier that you have to lift."

On top of the challenges and stresses that come with adulthood, millennials are also losing the automatic cool factor bestowed by youth. Their socks are too short and their hair is parted wrong and they have absolutely no idea what is happening with pants anymore. Brands are speaking to them differently, with buzzwords like "sensible," "practical," and "safe." The good news is maybe they're so wrapped up in the trappings of being a grown-up they don't have time to care about whatever latest trend they are behind on. "Jeans that are clean" is the only goal when you have a screaming toddler in the background.

"For me, being part of this generation that is now parenting and managing and the adults in every sense of the term and managers in every sense of the term, maybe I'm too exhausted to go to happy hour the way that I used to," Chris Lovell, a career coach from Los Angeles, said.

There's this meme that flies around online. It goes: "13-year-old me: Don't tell me what to do. Me now: Could someone tell me exactly, in chronological order and with great detail, what I have to do?" It crystallizes the current millennial life stage. Like it or not, the avocado-toast-loving, brunch-obsessed generation is now running the show. And many millennials do not like it.

There are, of course, upsides here. Once you step into the role of being the grown-up, you come to understand that you can trust yourself to take on the responsibilities that perhaps once felt daunting. There's something freeing in being the decider and developing that level of autonomy. It's also nice to have yourself together a little more. The tasks you're taking on are ones you're prepared for, even if you don't realize it. It's sort of like you're lifting weights in the gym for years, and over time, you get to the point where you can pick really heavy things up.

Millennials are trying to do things differently and better than generations past, to varying degrees of success. As much as they may want to be a "cool" dad, sometimes, they just have to be a dad. We compare ourselves with the models we had as children and young adults, meaning our parents, our grandparents, our early managers, and our older coworkers. We take cues on what to do and how to act from them, or at least from how we thought they were doing things. And, oftentimes, we realize they had a point.

"You have a new appreciation for the work that your parents or your manager or whoever the model was for you," Anderson said.

The experience of realizing you're the grown-up — and the excitement and fear that come with it — isn't unique to millennials. Baby boomers did it, Gen X did it, and Gen Z, you'll get there, too. Millennials are doing it in the age of social media, meaning they get to watch their peers, commiserate, and wonder whether they're falling short. The internet is a space for endless suggestions on how to do things "right." Part of being the adult in the room is sifting through all that to figure out the answer — and eventually just going with "good enough."

Emily Stewart is a senior correspondent at Business Insider, writing about business and the economy.

One of America's greatest love affairs is with cheap stuff. Yes, consumers generally want things to come fast, and sure, they'd like them to be of decent quality — but above all, what they really care about is the price tag.

Many retailers understand this obsession and are eager to cater to price-sensitive customers. But serving this desire does not guarantee success: The single-minded focus on price means that often we can be pretty disloyal about where our cheap stuff comes from. And in a race to the bottom, there's always someone willing to go lower. At the moment, that's the Chinese online retailers Temu and Shein, whose rock-bottom prices are proving almost impossible to beat for American companies.

Some formerly hot big-name retailers have had a tough go of it as of late. Liberated Brands — the operator of the beloved millennial brands Billabong, Quiksilver, and Volcom — filed for bankruptcy in February and said it would close all its US locations. The fast-fashion retailer Forever 21 is reportedly mulling filing for bankruptcy for the second time in five years. According to the research and advisory firm Coresight, major US retailers announced 7,325 store closures in 2024, up by 33% from 2023 and the highest number since 2020. The bloodbath has continued into 2025: More than 3,000 store closures have already been announced this year. Names such as Big Lots, Party City, Joann, Kohl's, Dollar Tree, and Macy's are shuttering locations. And it's not just physical retailers that are struggling — shares of the online retailer Etsy tumbled after it reported disappointing sales numbers during the holiday season.

When a retailer is having a hard time, it's usually for a multitude of reasons — poor management, a declining brand, changing consumer tastes, etc. But in many of these cases, one quite new factor is contributing to their troubles: supercheap Shein and Temu, which are increasingly hard to contend with. Many American consumers love to cycle through stuff rapidly and thoughtlessly, and the Chinese retailers let them do that in an unrivaled manner.

"What they've done that hurts the competition the most is compete so strongly on price that, yes, it makes it very difficult for anyone else to compete in that way without losing that money," said Sky Canaves, a principal analyst of retail and e-commerce at EMARKETER. "It puts other retailers on the back foot."

In the realm of cheap stuff, there's no such thing as cheap enough.

Liberated Brands has blamed several factors for its bankruptcy, including inflation and a volatile economy, but inexpensive online retailers are also contributing to its woes. In a sworn declaration accompanying the company's bankruptcy filing, its CEO, Todd Hymel, said the company had faced challenges from "shifting consumer preferences" toward fast fashion and e-commerce that harmed its pricing power and profitability.

"Consumers can cheaply, quickly, and easily order low-quality clothing garments from fast fashion powerhouses and have such goods delivered within days," he said. "These fast-fashion companies can cater to micro-trends as opposed to the traditional seasonal trend-forecasting retail model."

Forever 21 finds itself in a similar position, struggling to contend with Chinese e-commerce companies that can undercut it on price and are relatively indistinguishable, quality-wise. (You probably can't tell if a dress was from Shein or Forever 21 without looking at the tag.) In 2023, Forever 21 announced a partnership with Shein in an "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" move. But apparently, even that hasn't been enough. For its part, Etsy made its name as a marketplace for personalized, handcrafted items from tiny creators. In recent years, though, it has expanded into offering inexpensive mass-produced goods in an effort to keep up. The problem is that whatever T-shirt you can get printed off Etsy for cheap you can probably find on Temu (or Amazon) for even cheaper.

Liberated pointed to a press release about its bankruptcy filing and otherwise declined to comment for this story. Forever 21, Shein, and Temu did not respond to requests for comment. Etsy declined to comment.

Most retailers don't outright say that Shein and Temu are a problem for them. It's not a great look to admit that you're hemorrhaging customers because you can't compete with e-commerce companies selling the lowest-quality, lowest-priced versions of everything you make. But if you read between the lines, the issue is present.

"Retailers sometimes are talking about consumer behaviors or cautious spending, and we think some of the siphoning off of sales to Shein and Temu is getting bundled up in the overall narrative of consumer caution," said John Mercer, the head of global research at Coresight. "Yeah, there's been some caution, totally, but some of what companies are reporting under that could be losing sales to Shein and Temu."

Coresight has estimated that Shein and Temu may be a $100 billion threat to traditional retailers.

Shein and Temu mostly employ well-trodden tactics from other retailers and push them to the limit in ways other companies can't. Instead of American companies manufacturing their stuff in China and shipping it over to the US, they decided to cut in on the action by making and shipping stuff themselves. The more direct supply chain allowed Shein and Temu to get agile and efficient enough to feed the American consumerist beast.

"You have to appreciate the fact that China for decades was always known as the country that merely manufactured products for other retailers," said Brittain Ladd, a retail and supply-chain consultant. "Shein and Temu, what they did is they researched retail in the US and Europe and so forth, and what they determined is we can do better. We actually can take what makes us special, our capabilities and manufacturing and supply chains and low-cost sourcing, all of that, and we can create business models where we can beat the best retailers in the United States."

Shein, which has been around since 2008, can quickly identify fashion trends and get them marketed, produced, and shipped to consumers' doors. The garments may take longer to arrive than if they came from Amazon, but the price makes them appealing. Temu, a newer entrant that sells items well beyond clothes, has the benefit of a monster parent company, the Chinese giant PDD Holdings, that allows it to set super-low prices that essentially no other retailer can stomach. It's not all that different from what Amazon did when it started out, losing money on e-commerce to get customers.

"They're backed by a very deep-pocketed parent company that is willing to lose money for a sustained period of time to gain market share in the US and elsewhere in the world," Canaves said. "It's a very aggressive strategy."

Now, I know what you might be thinking here: What about Trump and the tariffs and all this talk of taking on China? Shein and Temu have a plan for that — or at least they may not have to worry too too much.

Historically, Shein and Temu have been able to take advantage of a tax loophole that allows importers to avoid paying duties and taxes on shipments worth less than $800, known as the "de minimis" exemption. (Because what they sell is so inexpensive, it's tough to get to $800 in a single order, so they can put a bunch of orders together, too.) For some context, nearly 1.4 billion shipments entered the US through the de minimis exemption last year. Early in his term, President Donald Trump signed an executive order trying to close that loophole. Shein and Temu were prepared and had already been fulfilling more orders from the US and building up inventory stateside. Still, the executive order caused so much chaos at ports that it was put on pause. If the pause is lifted, the scenario won't be ideal for Shein and Temu, but it won't be a killer either.

"They're just simply storing the inventory in the US, just like other retailers do," Ladd said. "And even though that's a higher-cost methodology, it still allows them to sell their products at a price point much cheaper than anyone else."

It's a similar story with the 10% tariff Trump has imposed on goods from China. It's not great for Temu and Shein, but it's also well below the 60% Trump was floating on the campaign trail. It's relatively easy to pass some of that increase on to customers, and since plenty of their competitors import from China, too, they can keep their relative price advantage.

"Shein and Temu are rock bottom of the market," Mercer said. "If the whole market is rising in price, you can put your price up and still be rock bottom."

Some retailers have been able to ward off the Shein and Temu threat. Walmart and Amazon may not be able to go as low on prices, but they also offer things the Chinese e-commerce companies don't: faster delivery, groceries, different products. In November, Amazon launched Haul, a section of its app that, ironically, looks and works like a knockoff Temu. Other retailers at risk of going the way of Billabong or Forever 21 have managed to reinvent themselves and retain relevance, such as Gap and Abercrombie.

"You're not going to be able to outcompete Shein or Temu on price, so you have to build that almost emotional relationship with" customers, Mercer said. "You have to stand for more than low prices."

Ladd added, "Retailers go out of business because they lose relevance with customers."

Not to let flailing retailers off the hook here, but they're not dealing with the easiest of circumstances. Inflation has been a problem. The economy is unstable. It's not clear what tariffs and trade conflicts will mean for the retail industry. They're also managing a price-obsessed American consumer who's easily lured away.

We're attracted to cheap stuff not because of its quality but because it has a low enough price that allows us to constantly churn through the stuff, said Wendy Woloson, a history professor at Rutgers University who wrote "Crap: A History of Cheap Stuff in America."

"We don't have to make commitments to the things around us because if they're cheap enough and if they're available enough, then I can always buy something else," Woloson said.

When the barrier to entry is so low, there's no significant consequence of consuming like this. Hate that mousepad you got on Temu? Who cares; it was $2.74. Woloson noted that some people can't afford to buy something nicer, but even if everyone could, it's not clear they would. We live in an era of flash fads. People don't want a $200 pair of jeans that'll last for a decade — they want a $20 pair they can toss when the next trend cycles through.

"I think we're really bored," Woloson said.

At the moment, Shein and Temu are winning a race to satiate the insatiable American consumer, and they're undercutting retailers big and small in the process.

Emily Stewart is a senior correspondent at Business Insider, writing about business and the economy.

In 2023, not long after ChatGPT made generative AI mainstream, a poll on the anonymous workplace forum Blind asked, bluntly, whether young software engineers were "fucked." Some 42% of the more than 13,000 respondents picked the response "Yes? U guys are pretty much fucked."

This past October, Sundar Pichai proudly announced on an earnings call that AI was writing more than 25% of new code at Google. Mark Zuckerberg has said that Meta will build an AI engineer to write code. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff announced a hiring freeze for engineers in 2025, saying AI had increased productivity by 30% — and then news broke that Salesforce planned to lay off 1,000 workers. (It's still hiring salespeople for AI-powered products.) Stripe intends to cut some engineers while also growing its overall head count this year.

All of this raises the question of what junior engineers will take on if some basic tasks become automated. Some product managers have speculated that AI will increasingly take on some technical coding tasks and circumvent their need for engineers. Overall, job postings for software engineers on Indeed are at a five-year low.

Are engineers really coding themselves into obsolescence?

AI is knocking down the career ladder by doing more of the coding work of entry-level engineers, but, at least for now, the increased coding output from AI is also increasing the demand for and value of experienced, creative developers to interpret and put the AI's work to good use.

While many obituaries have been written to mourn the death of coding, engineering is more than writing code: It requires creative thinking to solve problems and expertise to read code. As it is now, AI isn't an original thinker.

"AI can't support what it doesn't know," says James Stanger, the chief technology evangelist at CompTIA, a nonprofit trade association for the US IT industry. "I still don't think that it is something that can fully replace a good developer." He adds, though, that "if a developer is not creative, then you can replace them very easily."

oftware engineering has been around since the 1960s, but hiring boomed in the '90s with the dot-com era. Coding boot camps became common in the 2010s as the demand for engineers outpaced the supply. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1.9 million people worked as software developers, quality-assurance analysts, and testers in 2023. The bureau projected that the industry would grow by 17% from 2023 to 2033, outpacing the national average of 4% for all jobs.

An analysis from CompTIA found that the rate of job postings for software engineers fell by 50% from January to December 2023, recovering slightly by the end of 2024. While posts for jobs across tech, finance and accounting, and marketing, communications, and creative roles all fell as well, the dip for software engineers was the sharpest. But CompTIA says the reason for the fall wasn't clear. Tech companies — including some that acknowledged overhiring during the pandemic — laid off thousands of workers in 2022 and 2023, with many citing economic uncertainty.

But there's a widening divide within software engineering regarding experience level. CompTIA found that the proportion of open software engineering roles seeking entry-level workers had dropped since January 2023, to just over 20% from nearly 30%, while job postings for those with seven years of experience or more increased to make up nearly 40% of the open roles, up from just over 30%.

The experienced engineers I talked to seemed confident that AI wouldn't come for the jobs anytime soon.

Jeremy Chua, a software engineer for the AI Lab at the venture firm Georgian, turns to chatbots when he hits issues with coding. He may prompt ChatGPT or Claude to cull answers from the depths of Google and Stack Overflow, a Q&A site for programmers, or to help him write in coding languages he's less fluent in. Chua, who has more than a decade of experience, says he was skeptical about whether gen AI could help him at work. He says that now he can sometimes complete projects that would have taken a week in a day or two, and he thinks of the chatbots he uses as coding partners. "It's not like it will replace me — it augments the way that I work," Chua tells me.

Caleb Tonkinson, an engineer at a clinical AI company called SmarterDx, tells me that AI is changing programming through two paths: "I can deliver the same thing faster, or I can deliver something better in the same period of time." He views AI as similar to other tech tools that became available to engineers — except more exciting as it advances rapidly. "There have been tons of tools for 20 years now" to debug software, generate code, or evaluate code, he says. "Your best companies and best software engineers are almost always leveraging those tools."

Cody Stewart, a principal software engineer at the software company CallRail, says he doesn't use gen AI for everything at work but might use it to get answers to "stupid questions" that he could spend a long time looking for on Google or Stack Overflow. He began using chatbots at work in 2022. "I read something that was like, you either learn to adopt new tools and figure out how they can enhance your day-to-day life and you stay with the times, or people are going to outlevel you," he said. "I saw that and thought I should probably give this a shot."

While more-experienced engineers are optimistic about AI, young engineers have more reason to worry.

The startup Cognition AI last year widely released an AI-powered software engineer called Devin, designed to work on bugs and small feature requests. In a December video, it described it as "a junior engineer" who "works best with a great manager." Cognition AI and its CEO, Scott Wu, did not respond to questions about whether it's meant to replace engineers or reduce the number the companies need.

Jayesh Govindarajan, a Salesforce executive vice president focused on AI, told my colleague Ana Altchek that the company was building "a system that can pretty much solve anything for you" but "just doesn't know what to solve," making knowing how to code less important. "I may be in the minority here," Govindarajan said, "but I think something that's far more essential than learning how to code is having agency."

Alexander Petros, a freelance open-source software engineer, is an AI holdout; he tells me he doesn't use generative AI to code. "I do worry that because AI is in many ways doing things that you used to hire junior developers to do, it does remove the ladder upon which junior developers would try to do those things, make those mistakes, and then learn," he says. Petros says he tried ChatGPT but found that the code could be clunky. If something in that code breaks, humans may not know how to fix it. "The process of producing code with LLMs, for the foreseeable future, is almost entirely distinct from the process of producing good software systems that last for a very long time," he says. Plus, using AI to solve problems means he may not learn how to get through those roadblocks on his own.

Chatbots lack creativity — that's where engineers, especially those who have been doing the job for a while, have an in-demand advantage. Stanger says he hopes companies use AI not as justification for cutting back on engineers but as a way to help them "get deeper into this code and get more creative."

Stanger says that treating engineers as a faucet that can be turned on and off as a business needs, or even replaced with AI, is likely to backfire in the long term. "If you've got toxic companies that are interested in that binge-and-purge, on-and-off hiring of developers, I'm not sure they're going to create very good products," he says.

People have long panicked that technology will take their livelihood. But even as automation eliminates some jobs, tech often creates a demand for new roles; most people today are working jobs that didn't exist before 1940.

The wholesale elimination of software engineers likely won't come to fruition in the near future, but the picture for more-experienced engineers is brighter. In the best-case scenario, AI will mean they get more time to flex their muscles and solve deep problems.

Amanda Hoover is a senior correspondent at Business Insider covering the tech industry. She writes about the biggest tech companies and trends.

There's a pretty clear sentiment in America's corporate world these days: anxiety.

Yes, big business generally welcomes the deregulatory promise and likely lighter tax bill that comes with Donald Trump's second presidency. But the accompanying uncertainty of Trump 2.0 is also leaving corporate America slightly on edge. The president is issuing executive orders at a breakneck pace, but vague wording, court battles, and questions of legality mean the significance of these orders is unclear. Trump has promised to take big swings on tariffs and immigration, but how those swings actually manifest is in flux. Elon Musk is a similarly disruptive figure, with his DOGE staff firing federal workers and slashing funding for various programs at a head-spinning rate. Given the bum-rush first month, many corporate leaders are scrambling to gain some favor with Trump or, at the very least, avoid his ire.

In short, we're in an era of scaredy-cat capitalism. American business isn't moving boldly and swiftly — it's acting slowly and timidly, waiting for the uncertainties to shake out and trying not to call much attention to itself in the meantime.

When Trump took office in 2017, many CEOs were alarmed by his immigration and climate policies. When Trump was inaugurated in 2025, some of America's most recognizable corporate executives were seated behind him. Major companies and leaders donated millions of dollars to Trump's inauguration fund and have visited the president's Mar-a-Lago club. If companies appeared somewhat willing to strike a tone of defiance in 2017, the vibe this time around is one of compliance.

In December, ABC News, owned by Disney, agreed to pay $15 million to Trump's future presidential library in order to settle a defamation lawsuit. Meta similarly cut a deal in January to give $22 million to settle a 2021 suit. CBS's parent company, Paramount, has thus far held out on settling a lawsuit Trump filed over a "60 Minutes" segment, though some observers believe it's only a matter of time before it folds, possibly in hopes that the administration will look more kindly upon a pending acquisition by the studio Skydance. As my colleague Peter Kafka has pointed out, these Trump lawsuits are the type that typically would not get very far — but now that he's back in the White House, the risk-reward calculus is different.

"Powerful companies with enormous legal resources are deciding that they're better off making a payment — in the form of a donation — to Trump than fighting him," Kafka wrote.

In an attempt to head off Trump's anti-DEI campaign, several companies have backed away from diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts. Companies including Target, Walmart, and Meta have announced policy rollbacks. Others, such as GM, PepsiCo, and Disney, have taken a subtler approach, quietly axing DEI language and programs. The US Chamber of Commerce has pulled much of the information about its Equality of Opportunity Initiative, announced in 2020 to "help close race-based opportunity gaps," from its website.

This isn't happening in a vacuum: The right has been increasingly vocal in its opposition to DEI efforts in recent years, and Trump has put that opposition into overdrive — and in writing. He's signed executive orders seeking to root out DEI practices in the private and public sectors, including barring government contractors from engaging in them and asking federal agencies to identify corporate targets for potential lawsuits over DEI. The plan, according to Trump, is to stop "illegal DEI." It's not clear what that means, and the underlying law hasn't changed, but it still makes companies nervous and has had a chilling effect. No one wants to be the government's target — or draw the conservative internet's ire and become the next Bud Light. Agencies may be looking for low-hanging fruit to make an example out of in order to scare others off. And regardless of what the government does, negative publicity and social media campaigns are a threat in and of themselves.

Some business leaders may remember some of the vindictive nature of Trump's first term, such as the president's opposition to the AT&T-Time Warner merger, reportedly partly because of his dissatisfaction with CNN. In an interview with Bloomberg last July, Ken Chenault, the former CEO of American Express, cited it as cause for trepidation about a second Trump term. "The fear is real," he said.

Daniel Kinderman, an associate professor at the University of Delaware who studies business responses to right-wing populism, said companies may regret cozying up with Trump and being quick to bend to his will.

"What the government's doing is so radical that I think a lot of companies will be sorry that they got on the bandwagon or did not keep a greater distance," he said. "It's not reducing their risks."

On the domestic and foreign fronts, the perception of Trump as a loose cannon may give him an advantage in negotiations — acting unpredictable and volatile is a way to throw, say, China off balance. But for business, it can be challenging to navigate.

"Businesses like predictability, and that's not what they're going to get from Trump," said Alex Conant, a Republican strategist who was the communications director for Marco Rubio's 2016 campaign. "Trump is highly unpredictable, which creates a challenging business environment."

In a note on Tuesday, David Kelly, the chief global strategist at J.P. Morgan Asset Management, said that the policy uncertainty created by the Trump administration could slow economic growth, affect hiring, and stunt investment. He pointed to tariff threats, immigration crackdowns, federal workforce reductions, and federal budget uncertainties as areas where action could be cause for business hesitancy.

"The rapid pace of these moves, along with frequent reversals, court challenges and mixed signals on future policy actions, make it difficult for economists to assess their cumulative effects," he wrote. "Also important, and even harder to analyze, is the potential for policy uncertainty to delay business decisions."

If you're an automaker, for example, you're staring down the potential of steel and aluminum tariffs, separate tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico, and reciprocal tariffs from trading partners. Plus, you're not sure what's going to happen with electric vehicle tax credits. It's hard to know where to begin or whether to make an investment at all. At a conference in February, Ford's CEO, Jim Farley, said Trump's moves had created "a lot of costs and a lot of chaos" for the industry.

In an interview with CNBC on Thursday, Walmart's chief financial officer, John David Rainey, said the retailer was "not going to be completely immune" from tariffs on imports from Mexico and Canada. Tariffs on imports from China would likely affect the company, too. He said that there was "far from certainty in the geopolitical landscape" and that Walmart hadn't calculated tariff increases into its financial expectations for the year.

Companies are tasked with laying out various scenarios of what might happen next — and reassuring their shareholders that they're prepared for whatever's ahead. Elaine Buckberg, a former chief economist at GM, has been in this situation before: the trade war with China that Trump kicked off during his first term.

"I feel like I was doing scenarios on China tariffs back and forth, basically, until COVID came and took away all the attention," she said. "I would prepare presentations the night before, and they'd be updated by the next morning."

Buckberg pointed to a 1983 paper from Ben Bernanke (who would go on to be the chair of the Federal Reserve) on investment decisions and uncertainty. "If there's this irreversible investment and there's uncertainty, you'd rather wait until the uncertainty clears up," she said. "And so that means you should expect lower business fixed investment, which hurts growth until this uncertainty resolves."

Congress and Trump will need to negotiate through at least one tax bill this year, as Trump's 2017 tax law is set to expire. Conant pointed out that this fight will be more uncertain for businesses. Congress may look to find ways to raise revenue — whether from higher taxes on certain activities or by eliminating tax credits. That could make for some winners and losers, and pit various industries against each other. "I don't think the business community is going to be as united this time as they were last, because there's going to be winners and losers," he said.

To be sure, businesses are benefiting from plenty of Trump's actions, uncertainty and all. He signed an executive order halting enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which bars companies from bribing foreign government officials. The Trump administration is likely to be more hostile toward unions than the labor-friendly Biden administration and take a hands-off approach to regulation. Still, the insecurity of it all remains a challenge.

"I've been in Washington for 15 years, and this is the most chaotic time, where there's so many surprises that are happening on a weekly basis," said Nick Nigro, the founder of Atlas Public Policy, a research firm in Washington, DC. "There's too much uncertainty for meaningful decisions to be made right now."

The global Economic Policy Uncertainty Index, which tracks news coverage of economic policy uncertainty, has risen sharply since the 2024 election. The National Federation of Independent Business' optimism index ticked down in January, though it remains well above where it was during the Biden administration. The National Association of Home Builders survey that tracks sentiment among homebuilders found that confidence fell in February. The University of Michigan's consumer sentiment indexes dropped in February as people began to worry about tariffs and inflation concerns bubbled back up. As Americans contemplate the landscape, optimism remains, but reality is setting in, and it's a bit unnerving.

Across corporate America, a pervasive sense of unease is setting in. Businesses do not want to call negative attention to themselves, even on what many might consider run-of-the-mill diversity programs. They don't want to become a target of the president or of angry people of any political persuasion online. Meanwhile, they're managing an outlook where it seems like anything could happen — an executive order here, a court battle there, an immigration raid, a new tariff, an axed tax break. The feeling permeates through consumers and workers, too. If the federal government is taking a slash-and-burn approach to its workforce, what's stopping business from following suit? Many companies have been cutting their workforces. Plenty of consumers have wondered if they should stock up on stuff before tariffs take hold, and some have taken action.

Scaredy-cat capitalism doesn't mean panic mode — but it's a scenario where everyone's a little insecure about what comes next.

Emily Stewart is a senior correspondent at Business Insider, writing about business and the economy.

There are a lot of perks of working from home: the skipped commute, the chance of a quick midday workout, the lack of formal workwear. Many people say it makes them more productive, or at least just as productive as when they're in the office. But there are also some drawbacks when your office becomes your couch. Among them: You can get a little weird. A lot of alone time can result in some lost muscle memory, socialization-wise, and some slightly freaky habits you'd probably keep under wraps if other human beings were in eyeshot.

Anouska Shenn, who runs a workplace wellness agency in the United Kingdom, undertakes long, involved beauty treatments on days she's working from home and doesn't have meetings. She does a lighter version of the scary-looking "morning shed" trend popularized on TikTok. In between sending emails, she applies and removes a combination of face masks, wrinkle patches, hair curlers, and more that is very much not other-people appropriate. The getup is tough to sleep in, so she takes advantage of the ability to do the routine during the day. Plus, it's not something she really wants her partner to witness — you know, to keep a little bit of the mystery alive.

"I guess it's quite a luxury," says Shenn, who's been working from home since starting her business, The Yoga Company, in 2017. She's never been caught masked up in a spur-of-the-moment meeting, though if she were, she'd take it off. "Truthfully, I was one of those weirdos at the office who used to sit on a big exercise ball," she says, "so maybe these habits aren't such a non sequitur, but I've certainly become more shameless since I began working from home."

We're five years into the vast pandemic-driven remote-work experiment — and about three years into the return-to-office battle between employers and employees. While people aren't working remotely as much as they were at the height of the pandemic, when nearly two-thirds of work was being done at home, about a quarter of work is still happening beyond the confines of the office. That time can get strange — and make the in-office time a little awkward.

Nick Bloom, a Stanford economist who focuses on remote work, has found that employees who work from home save about 10 minutes a day on grooming. It can be nice to skip a shave or go makeup-free, which remote workers do at higher rates than those in the office. But it can also be a little gross. In one of Bloom's recent surveys, 73% of respondents said they showered before working from home, compared with 85% who said they showered before going into the office. Eighty-one percent of remote workers said they put on deodorant, compared with 95% of in-office workers. For toothbrushing, the margin was slimmer: 92% versus 95%.

"Some of this is understandable, but some of it — like brushing teeth — I thought was about oral hygiene not going into work," Bloom said in an email.

Eric Mochnacz, who works for an HR consultancy based in New York, has developed what he called a "unique routine" while working from home that, if anything, sounds more over-the-top than underachieving. He gets up a couple of hours early to play New York Times games like Wordle and read on the couch. Between calls, he does chores: washing dishes, dropping off the rent check, going grocery shopping. He considers it a "clarity break," part of stress relief. Also among his at-home stress relievers is song-and-dance time that is a no-go on days he's in the office. "I'll just put a Spotify song and dance around my apartment," he says. Lately he's been on a Taylor Swift kick. He thinks the setup makes him more productive in work and in life — the built-in time-outs help him do his job better, and he keeps his Peloton streak alive.

Mochnacz's company has a hybrid setup, and he's noticed that work-from-home weirdness translates to some weirdness in the office, in that he can be a little extra chatty. Whether it's a "brain fart" about some work stuff or Matthew Lillard's potential return to the "Scream" franchise, he feels compelled to gush to a colleague. "I'm, like, hoping people care," he says.

William Chopik, a social-personality psychologist at Michigan State University who studies relationships, says that while working from home gives people a "ton of flexibility," it can also affect their behavior.

"There's something to say about being around other people that kind of polices our behavior a little bit, or at least makes us a little bit more vigilant to stuff that we do," he said. "You might be a little less likely to get distracted. You probably don't talk to yourself, you don't say weird things, you don't randomly start singing. I do all those things at home, and the truth is that I would die of cringe if I did that in front of other people."

Online, there's plenty of chatter about the habits people have developed at home that aren't really appropriate for prime time, or work time. They don't change out of their pajamas (or they get day and night pajamas). They maybe start happy hour a little early, talk to themselves, or engage in levels of doomscrolling they'd get into trouble for if their manager saw. Some people say they feel like they never take a break; others say their short breaks turn into extended ones.

Like it or not, the office provides social structure, and if you go too long without it, you may end up developing some overly unstructured behaviors. About a decade ago, when I had a fully remote job, I'd go days without talking to other humans except for the ladies in my noon spin class, where I'm pretty sure I was the only person with a job. A while back, a friend of mine got into the habit of working from the tub, reading and typing away on the computer during hourlong baths.

Strange habits at home don't stop at the front door. Remote work can also mean people get rusty on the softer skills needed around coworkers in the office. It may result in some awkwardness, whether perceived or real, when people are back at their desks.

A lot of the norms around formal communication have been maintained in remote and hybrid work. A meeting is a meeting, whether you're in a conference room or on Zoom. Messaging via email and Slack is the same. But informal, spontaneous communication — chatter on the walk to the meeting, an encounter at the watercooler or on the way to lunch — doesn't happen when people are remote. People's skills have shifted over time to match their environments. In a hybrid situation, perhaps some people's verbal-communication muscles got stronger but the nonverbal stuff got worse.

"If the environment doesn't lend itself to a normal interaction, all of these skill sets can become super challenging activities," said Hakan Ozcelik, a professor of management in the College of Business Administration at Sacramento State University.

Compounding the matter is the fact that a lot of people don't get as much practice as they used to socializing in group settings outside of work. People are spending more time alone; they're not in church groups or book clubs or community organizations as they were, say, 50 years ago. So many of our modern interactions have moved online that it makes the in-real-life ones harder.

"The rules of engagement have gotten fuzzier, and that's what can trigger awkwardness," said Constance Noonan Hadley, an organizational psychologist who founded the Institute for Life at Work. Perhaps someone sees a group lunch at work and, because they haven't done something like that in so long, they're more nervous about joining than they would've been just a few years ago.

Cody Baertschi, a digital marketer who lives in Minnesota, feels like he's gotten the hang of virtual communication at work. He knows to talk to the Europeans about how cold it is there (in centigrade) and get down to business within the constructs of a video meeting. But for the normal, more "old-school situations," he feels like he needs a manual. The small talk that takes place walking to and from a meeting is a struggle. "I don't have the reps," he says. "There's not the construct of a call. There's not the comfort of being in your own space while having the conversations."

He and his wife notice it when they meet other parents — they worry ahead of time about what to talk about. During the week, work can feel never-ending, regardless of the hour of the day — a quality that's self-inflicted. It can also make him a little stir-crazy. "When the weekend rolls around, it's like I've got to get out of the house," he says. The Twin Cities, where he does his weekend-warrioring, are a two-hour drive away. But even the long time in the car is worth it to hit up the Mall of America, check out a museum, or do a hike. It's nice to go to restaurants, too — cooking his own lunch all week makes Baertschi eager to try someone else's cooking. "Who cares?" he says. "I'm out of the house."

The good news is that, just as we can get worse at socializing, we can also get better. "Social skills are truly a skill," Noonan said. "It's something you can train."

It's also worth remembering that something you think is awkward might not be awkward to everyone else. A friend recently shared that she gets anxious that people can hear her walking in the office because of the click-clack of her shoes, which I would bet a million dollars is not a thing her coworkers are up in arms about (or have probably even noticed). Clearly, some WFH behaviors that are not appropriate for the office: Premeeting pump-up time blasting Katy Perry from your speakers at your desk is a no, as is wearing the same grimy sweatsuit for four days in a row. Behavior that's appropriate for the office: joining coworkers at the lunch table next to you, or stretching your legs with a midday walk.

And as return-to-office mandates take hold, your coworkers might feel a little off about the whole thing, too. Maybe it'll give you something to talk about — or commiserate that you'd rather be home, doing your weird little habits in private.

Emily Stewart is a senior correspondent at Business Insider, writing about business and the economy.

In 2020, it was all the rage for corporations to pledge their allegiance to diversity and inclusion. In 2025, it's very much in vogue to declare that they're no longer into that kind of stuff. Companies such as Target, Walmart, McDonald's, Google, and Meta have recently announced major rollbacks of their DEI efforts. In corporate America, nixing employee resource groups is the new version of posting that Black Lives Matter black square five years ago. On the flip side, companies including JPMorgan and Costco say they're sticking to their DEI guns despite the Trump-fueled headwinds.

It's tempting to paint an us-versus-them — or them-versus-them — picture: the DEI backpedalers versus the DEI warriors. But there's a quieter and potentially larger group of businesses taking a different course: subtly burying DEI efforts. They're not putting out press releases or big memos saying they're axing programs aimed at hiring diverse candidates or tracking supplier demographics. Instead, they've taken a look at the legal, political, and cultural landscape and made the calculation that it's better to silently pull back on DEI-related language for now.

"Many companies in America have always wanted to promote diversity in the workplace in a manner that's lawful, and that hasn't changed," said Rebecca Baker, a partner at the law firm Vinson & Elkins in its labor and employment group. "What has changed is there's a cloud of ambiguity as to what is lawful."

Companies are hoping to fly under the anti-DEI crowd's radar at a moment when the movement feels more emboldened than ever. They're afraid to put a target on their backs, legal or otherwise. Despite some of the attention-grabbing headlines, this might be how DEI really dies — quietly, in the shadows.

While several companies have made splashy announcements about their DEI plans, others have simply scrubbed mentions of them, including in their annual 10-K financial reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. For their latest filings, it appears that a lot of publicly traded companies did a CTRL+F+DELETE on "diversity."

Legally, companies have to disclose some information about their workforces in their annual reports, such as how many people work for them, but they're not required to say anything about diversity and demographics. It had become popular over the past decade or so for companies to make such disclosures anyway, especially in the wake of George Floyd's murder in 2020. But that's shifted as companies have become increasingly worried about being viewed as "woke" or overly progressive.

General Motors, for example, cut the DEI section of its annual report. In its 2023 report, the automaker said it aimed to be "the most inclusive company in the world" and touted its diverse board of directors and dozen employee resource groups. In its 2024 report, that section was gone. PepsiCo's latest filing scrapped a breakdown of its workforce demographics as well as a line about how it believed its "culture of diversity, equity and inclusion is a competitive advantage that fuels innovation, enhances our ability to attract and retain talent and strengthens our reputation." The soda maker did, however, retain a mention of pay equity. Disney shortened its DEI section, in part removing mentions of employee development programs and fellowships for underrepresented talent while adding a mention of Heroes Work Here, an initiative to hire and train US military veterans. Mondelez International scrapped its section dedicated to diversity and inclusion in its workforce. Philip Morris International significantly shortened what had previously been its DEI section, removing goals for gender and racial representation in its management and mention of employee resource groups. The section is now named "collaborative culture."

Some firms are taking a subtler approach. Pinterest, for example, renamed the "inclusion and diversity" section of its report "inclusion and belonging." Chipotle swapped "diversity, equity & inclusion" for "culture and inclusivity," though it continues to include breakdowns of its workforce by gender, ethnicity, and race.

The companies mentioned did not respond to a request for comment or declined to comment on the record, with the exception of Philip Morris, which said it valued its "global workforce" and was "focused on fostering a fair and collaborative workplace in an environment that provides opportunities to all employees for growth and professional development."

"Prior to Trump taking office, there was already a lot of pressure on DEI," said Andrew Jones, a senior researcher at the Conference Board's ESG Center. "Lots of companies obviously realize that DEI became a very politically loaded term, controversial term, even a slightly toxic term in terms of the legal and political scrutiny."

Last spring, a Wall Street Journal analysis found that dozens of companies were changing their DEI descriptions in their annual reports amid heightened legal and political scrutiny. A new analysis by NPR this year found that several companies were axing references to DEI altogether. Beyond the filings, data provided by AlphaSense, a financial information and insights company, indicates that mentions of DEI have sharply declined on earnings calls and in other public investor-related communications over the past couple of years.

Businesses are increasingly hush-hush about anything that might even have a whiff of DEI, lest they poke the anti-woke bear and become the next Bud Light or worse.

"If you're a CEO, you've got the general counsel in one ear saying you're going to get sued or you're going to use lose contracts," said Alison Taylor, an associate professor at New York University's Stern School of Business who wrote the book "Higher Ground: How Business Can Do the Right Thing in a Turbulent World." "And then you've got the public-affairs person in the other ear saying here's who's yelling at you on social media."

Baker said companies were increasingly including mentions in their risk-factor disclosures of potential controversies around their employment practices and social initiatives. "So they're flagging that 'Hey, investors should understand that the DEI climate is in flux right now and we can't exactly predict what might happen. And some of our employment practices, although we believe they're fully legally compliant, may ultimately end up a target of litigation,'" she said.

Corporate America was nervous before the election about the political tides turning, given the Supreme Court's 2023 ruling against affirmative action in college admissions and the growing influence of conservative activists such as Robby Starbuck. Now, Trump 2.0 has sent many of them into a silent panic mode. The president positioned himself as a fierce opponent of almost DEI, determined to root it out of the federal government and, if he can manage it, private industry. The crusade is clearly having a chilling effect across the business community.

In an executive order signed on his first day in office, Trump set out to end what he called "radical and wasteful" DEI programs in the federal government. The next day, in a separate executive order, he revoked an order signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965 that barred government contractors and subcontractors from engaging in employment discrimination. Many government contractors are public companies. But even for those that aren't, the order lays out steps for "encouraging the private sector to end illegal DEI discrimination and preferences." It instructs federal agencies to identify up to nine potential civil compliance investigations of private companies. In effect, they're hunting for lists of names to sue, and no one wants to be one of them.

"There is a valid fear of companies having a target on their back based on how they outwardly promote DE&I," said Renai Rodney, a counsel in Ropes & Gray's litigation and enforcement practice group, "which is unfortunate, because while there's certain things in the executive order that companies should certainly be mindful of, the underlying law has not changed."

The chaos and confusion is part of the point. The letter of the law isn't any different — it's always been illegal for companies to implement quotas or require a certain proportion of their workforce to be a specific race or gender. The law's interpretation and enforcement, however, have clearly undergone a reversal. Federal contractors run the risk of the Department of Justice going after them to assert that their DEI policies violated the False Claims Act, which prohibits contractors from defrauding the federal government. Major companies could be accused by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission of violating Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. The law was meant to prevent businesses from declining to hire someone because they're part of a minority group; now it's being used against businesses by people who say they're being overlooked because they're in the majority.

Jenny Yang, who served as an EEOC chair and commissioner from 2013 to 2018 and now heads the Urban Institute's Workplace Equity Initiative, said companies facing claims that they discriminated or used ill-defined "illegal DEI" practices may very well have a good case in court and win. But going to court costs money, and any battle is likely to draw attention, so they may be inclined to give up before there's even a fight.

"A lot of this really does not have the law behind it, and it's not likely to survive a motion to dismiss," she said. "But companies don't want to spend the money even defending against the lawsuit, and they don't want the reputational harm, or they don't want their board to get upset."

Employers may proactively examine programs they think could be subject to legal scrutiny, such as scholarships or fellowships aimed at underrepresented communities.

"It may not actually make it to a legal decision, but they decide, well, we'll settle this by opening up that program to everyone and not just groups," Rodney said. "Those haven't been ruled unlawful, but companies are either deciding we don't want a bad decision on the books or we don't want to use resources to fight this, so we'll just change the terms of the program."

It isn't just the federal government that companies have to worry about — conservative state authorities, legal groups, and individuals with big platforms are also freaking them out. In mid-2024, Missouri's attorney general sued IBM, alleging that it was using unlawful racial and gender quotas in employment. The Trump-aligned group America First Legal has filed several complaints, including against Southwest Airlines and American Airlines, over their DEI practices. Texas' attorney general, Ken Paxton, has told financial institutions such as BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, and Citigroup to watch it on DEI or face enforcement actions. A police pension fund in Florida is suing Target, saying it wasn't made aware of the risks of the retailer's DEI initiatives and potential backlash.

"In terms of what's the actual legal risk, I think we're seeing it now morph into Title VII discrimination claims from individual employees, activism by Republican state attorneys general," Baker said. "Now we're waiting to see exactly what comes out of the president's executive order."

Just because companies quietly disappear mentions of their DEI policies doesn't mean the work can't continue. They can practice without preaching, and many will. If one is to believe companies meant it when they said they cared about fostering diverse workplaces, then presumably none of that went away overnight. The issue is that, cynically, it's sometimes hard to believe these companies were that dedicated to the idea in the first place.

"Many initiatives weren't always measurable," Jones said. "There were a lot of public commitments without really thinking through how they were measured and implemented."

Corporate values often seem like a PR stunt — X supports the troops, Y wants to end racism — based on where companies calculate the "right" answer is at any given moment. What's "right" often means "whatever will generate the most cash for shareholders" or, increasingly, "what will keep us out of trouble."

"They're governed by social media," Taylor said. "They're governed by who was last yelling at them."

A few years ago, companies were worried about the progressive backlash. Now they're worried about the conservative one. To some extent, companies ended up in this spot by talking a big game and launching programs without thinking through what they were actually trying to accomplish.

"They're making decisions out of fear, likely, but they know no matter what they do, there's going to be a percentage of the population that is upset with that decision," said Naomi Wheeless, the chief customer officer at Nextech Systems and a board member at Eventbrite. "So moving silently or slowly is the strategy that a lot of them are choosing."

The strategy is not a foolproof one. Many activists and government officials are out for blood, and they're seeking to make some high-profile examples of big-name companies in order to put some anxiety in everyone else. Hiding doesn't mean you won't be found. What's more, the political winds can change, and if they do, companies may be faced with explaining their choices to a new set of constituents. Maybe next time they'll think about what they actually want to accomplish, business-wise, instead of just paying lip service to whoever's maddest at them on Twitter.

Emily Stewart is a senior correspondent at Business Insider, writing about business and the economy.