Black Friday Was Strong, but Hard to Read

Happy Sunday, y’all 👋. I hope you carved out a little space today to breathe before the week kicks back in.

I’m trying something new tonight. All week I send you ten things that matter across tech, marketing, entertainment, culture, and commerce. This edition zooms out a bit. Instead of headlines, I want to show you the bigger patterns and the five things I’m actually thinking about going into the week. If the daily notes are the signal, this is the shape of the signal.

Let’s get into it.

1. The Macy’s Parade is aging in reverse

The Parade shouldn’t be doing numbers like this in 2025, but here we are. Tens of millions tuned in across NBC and Peacock, and the audience actually grew again. That almost never happens anymore. Most big broadcast moments are shrinking every year, but the Parade is quietly doing the opposite. NBC locking in a long term renewal makes sense. This thing has real pull. It still resets the room and signals, “Okay, it’s officially the holidays.”

The numbers also say something deeper about the country right now. People are tired. Everything feels noisy, chaotic, and over-personalized. The Parade is one of the rare cultural moments that asks nothing of you. You just show up. No discourse, no algorithm pushing takes at you, no rapid-fire stimulation. It’s familiar, predictable, and safe. I shared how the Parade has become one of the last places you can still count on real collective attention. The performance this year backed that up. When 34 million people watch the same thing at the same time, that’s not just nostalgia. That’s people looking for something stable in a moment where almost nothing feels that way.

2. Black Friday looked strong on paper, but the signals underneath were all over the place

Black Friday’s headline numbers looked solid. Online sales hit 11.8 billion dollars, up 9.1 percent year over year. Salesforce had U.S. online sales at 18 billion, and Shopify saw in-store purchases jump 26 percent. But anyone paying attention knows the vibe was… off. People are still spending, but it doesn’t feel celebratory. It feels cautious. Inflation is still punching people in the ribs. Federal support programs are lighter. Sentiment is shaky even though wallets are technically open.

What really stood out this year is how messy the signals were. Deals started so early and ran so constantly that the day barely meant anything. Retailers couldn’t tell what demand truly belonged to Black Friday anymore because everything has blended into one long promotional blur. And the person getting squeezed the most is the shopper. More noise, more “deals,” less actual value. Earlier in the week, I shared how Black Friday has basically lost its shape. This weekend confirmed it. The volume was high, but the meaning was unclear. It’s a retail season running on fumes, not a cultural moment anymore.

3. The AI conversation is continuing to shift from possibility to responsibility

AI hype cycles come and go, but something different happened this week. The push for OpenAI to disclose its training data wasn’t just another headline. It felt like the start of a real accountability era. For years, these companies have operated behind sealed doors, training on massive bodies of creative work without transparency. Now the legal and cultural pressure is catching up.

And honestly, it’s overdue. Once training data has to be visible, everything shifts. Creators get a seat at the table. Rights holders have leverage. Regulators know what they’re actually dealing with. I shared how this could rebalance power in the AI ecosystem. We’re finally moving past the stage where AI companies get to say “trust us” while building black boxes. The next phase is going to be messier, slower, and way more honest. And that’s a good thing.

4. Brands want to piss you off…and it’s working

I’ve noticed a real mood shift in the work coming out lately. Brands are dropping the ultra-sanitized, “don’t offend anyone” approach that dominated the last few years. Instead, we’re seeing campaigns with actual personality. A little tension. A little friction. A tone that feels more like a human being and less like a committee of lawyers. And people are responding. Because real emotion is interesting. Perfectly safe work is not.

I shared how some brands are intentionally embracing this edge…not shock-for-shock’s sake, but honesty. Specificity. A real point of view. When a campaign makes you feel something, even if it’s slightly uncomfortable, you remember it. When it tries to please everyone, it dissolves on contact. Safe work blends in. Specific work stands out. The industry is waking back up to that truth.

5. Inside Hollywood’s AI Freak-Out

Hollywood is yelling about AI right now, but if you zoom out, AI is just the spark. The dry brush was already there. The economics are under pressure. Streaming isn’t delivering the margins people hoped for. Theatrical is inconsistent. Audience behavior is unpredictable. Talent negotiations have been tense for years. AI just arrived in the middle of all that and became the placeholder fear for a much bigger set of problems.

When an industry is stable, new technology gets evaluated calmly. When it’s unstable, new technology feels existential. I shared how AI is exposing the cracks that were already in the foundation. Hollywood isn’t panicking because AI is so powerful. It’s panicking because the old model isn’t working, and AI is forcing the industry to confront questions it has been dodging. The tech didn’t cause the unraveling. It just made it impossible to ignore.

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