Silence, Brand! 2025 Q2 Trend Report

🦀 the crabs embark on an adventure to discover the stand out digital trends and culture for the second part of the first half of twenty twenty five [informative] 🦀

Jul 13, 2025

omg 🦀
its … SUNDAY???
and there’s crabs in your inbox?
bizarre.

THAT MUST MEAN ITS TIME FOR OUR Q2 TREND REPORT!!!

The second quarter of 2025 gave us an internet that’s equal parts chaotic and curated. Brands jumped from feed to IRL with surprise activations, and a wave of content emerged that screamed, “I’m still human”.

Under the surface, deeper shifts emerged: economic vibes became the new financial forecast (everything’s a recession indicator now btw icymi) and Pinterest quietly won summer with its nature-first predictions.

Flavor and color palettes turned toward citrus and guava, sardines became symbols of taste and class commentary, and emerging groups like KATSEYE showed us where global fandom is headed next.

🫧 Dip your toes in the water with this sneak peek and when you’re ready to submerge, download the full report here 🦀✨

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“Sardine Girl Summer”—distinct from its Cape Cod complement, the Fisherman Aesthetic— was originally predicted by our associate editor, Benton, over five months before InStyle, Hypebae, and Martha Stewart reported on the trend. It might seem like a recession indicator, but with the cost of tinned fish subscriptions from high-end brands like Fishwife ($28.80/month for three tins!), it’s clear there’s more to it: We’ve been hooked on sardine manicures for a while now, but the kitschy maximalism of fish tin iconography and Gen Z’s adventurous eating habits (including the desire for more global flavours as reported by Rubix Foods in late 2024) both helped sardines solidify their position as a microtrend.

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In Q2, “rage bait” content proved it was engineered to provoke anger, confusion, or public outcry to become a main character on the timeline. It’s not a glitch; it’s the algorithm’s feature. News18 explains, rage bait thrives on outrage’s viral velocity: creators spark emotionally charged reactions, driving comments and shares, which in turn feeds the platform’s prioritization systems. But it’s not just individual creators fueling the fire—brands are playing the game, too. Duolingo leaned hard into this strategy, deploying chaos and throwing shade at other brands, showing their mastery of trash talk marketing. What looked like unhinged mascot trolling was, in fact, a calibrated form of attention hacking—one that generated record engagement and cemented the owl’s strategy as an effective (and repeatable) Q2 formula. This isn’t benign clickbait. It’s reshaping how brands communicate and audiences engage. Rage bait tilts the internet toward hyper-reactivity and flattens nuance into hot takes and flame wars. It’s attention at all costs. But there’s growing awareness of the consequences: trust erosion, audience fatigue, and an arms race of increasingly inflammatory content. For some brands, Q2 was a turning point—not just in mastering rage-bait tactics, but in learning to throttle them. We saw the emergence of what we’re calling soft-baiting: enough tension to stoke debate or quote tweets, but delivered with humor, absurdity, or self-awareness. Rage bait isn’t going away, but it's evolving into a more nuanced, meme-literate marketing lever.

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Silence, Brand! is an internet culture and marketing newsletter compiled by unhinged brand marketing professionals—an elite army of internet idiots.

Thank you to our Q2 contributors: Dejaih Smith, Dayna Castillo, and Benton Williams

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Silence, Brand!

Silence, Brand! 2025 Q2 Trend Report

🦀 the crabs embark on an adventure to discover the stand out digital trends and culture for the second part of the first half of twenty twenty five [informative] 🦀

🦀🦀🦀 »» DOWNLOAD THE FULL REPORT « « 🦀🦀🦀

🦀 Silence, Brand! is presented by LOUDMOUTH 📣

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