Business

Carnival Cruise Line CIO’s measured approach to navigating Gen AI

Published

5 months ago

September 3, 2025

Carnival Cruise Line has piloted over 100 different generative artificial intelligence projects. And while only six are in full production today, the cruise line operator’s chief information officer is pleased with the company’s measured progress.

“We have limited, for the time being, the number of tools that are available,” says Sean Kenny, who has served as CIO since 2017. “What we wanted to do was not have science experiments everywhere.”

Kenny says that Carnival Cruise Line established an AI governing body that meets monthly to determine which use cases should get capital funding, track progress during the piloting phase, and sign off on when an application of generative AI is ready for broader adoption.

Carnival Cruise Line’s generative AI adoption strategy is independently operated from the company’s other brands, which includes Holland America and Costa Cruises. Each division has been empowered to individually navigate their technology roadmap.

In his role as CIO, Kenny says part of his job is to bring employees along the adoption journey, promoting training courses offered from AI providers like Microsoft and corporate hackathons. He says one-on-one coaching is more effective than group sessions.

“Nobody wants to look dumb, especially if your boss is sitting at the table with you,” says Kenny, of the hesitancy he’s observed in AI group training sessions. Carnival’s employees can also reach out to a centralized AI team to ask questions if they get stuck while trying to use these relatively new AI tools.

One generative AI use case that Carnival has deployed is a tool that can help personal vacation planners, the company’s travel agents, answer guest questions. Another application of AI that Kenny is excited about is a tool helping servers make more appropriate recommendations for the perfect red wine to sip with steak. What Carnival hopes to see from the latter is an increase to the company’s net promoter score, a closely watched customer satisfaction metric that cruise lines, restaurants, retailers, and other consumer-focused companies track.

Kenny says he’s tapped the expertise of big tech giants like Google, Microsoft, and IBM for Carnival’s AI journey, but is also keeping a close eye on emerging players, especially in the cybersecurity arena. “We’re trying to be open minded to the startups,” he says. “I think it’s important for business and IT leaders to be open to the new players.”

While cruise line operators are enjoying a surge in popularity after the pandemic badly battered the industry—and Carnival itself reported an all-time high of $25 billion in annual revenue in 2024—investments in AI and other technologies could make travel by ship even more desirable.

Kenny says the technology will be especially powerful when it comes to personalization. A guest that books a Jamaican jerk chicken cooking excursion class may also be interested in a wine tasting on the boat. “In terms of the guest experience, it shows us trying to connect the dots,” says Kenny, who also cautions that Carnival doesn’t want to go overboard and be too pushy.

Kenny is closely monitoring other emerging technologies, including an ongoing test of a robotic tool that can comb through leftover food and remove foreign materials like plastic, glass, and wood. This allows Carnival to crush leftovers and pulverize it into literal fish food that can be dumped into the sea. Previously, this work was exclusively done by human hands.

Kenny is also excited about the prospect of using augmented reality and virtual reality technologies to improve training and to monitor and adjust the settings of the large diesel engines, which are so loud that they make in-person work extremely unpleasant. There aren’t any solutions available on the market that Carnival thinks are ready for adoption, but the company is keeping a close eye on progress from vendors.

What’s further along is the company’s WiFi capabilities. A decade ago, Kenny says most travelers expected that any hotel they’d check into would offer internet access, even if they had to pay extra for it, but that this expectation of connectivity wasn’t always true on a cruise ship. That’s been evolving and Kenny has mostly solved the issue by leveraging SpaceX’s Starlink and other providers to deliver far more steady internet access while at sea.

Better WiFi has allowed Carnival to upsell, giving travelers more access to an app where they can book excursions like snorkeling or visiting a historic cultural site when the boat lingers in a port. Excursions are an extra revenue boost for cruise operators like Carnival and AI-enabled travel recommendations, Kenny says, could make these journeys even more alluring.

“I don’t need my tool to go into the world wide web to pick out data and present it to you,” he says. “We can rely on our own terabytes of data.”

John Kell

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NEWS PACKETS

The AI PC market is rattled by tariffs. Demand for AI PCs in 2024 is expected to be softer than initially projected, as Gartner now says 78 million devices will be shipped this year, a more conservative estimate than the 114 million units the research firm had forecast last year, according to CIO Dive. Tariffs and slower economic growth have reportedly affected the adoption rate of AI PCs, though Gartner says that by 2029, these devices will be the norm among hardware providers including HP and Dell. Gartner says AI PCs will also impact the software landscape, with two in five software vendors investing in AI features that run directly on PCs by the end of 2026, up from merely 2% in 2024.

Anthropic’s new funding round nearly triples AI startup’s valuation. Bloomberg reports that Anthropic has closed on a deal to raise an additional $13 billion from investors, one of the largest ever for an AI company, at a valuation of $183 billion, up from the $61.5 billion valuation if fetched in March. The latest financing was led by investment firm Iconiq Capital, with other participants including Fidelity Management and Research Co., Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Qatar Investment Authority. Bloomberg says the total was higher than initially expected, due to strong investor demand. Anthropic, which was founded in 2021 by former employees of rival OpenAI, said that the latest funding round reflected the company’s “unprecedented velocity and reinforces our position as the leading intelligence platform for enterprises, developers, and power users.”

Nvidia’s monster 2Q comes with some concerns. Fortune reports that Nvidia’s quarterly results were “by far the biggest event of this earnings season,” as the AI chip maker posted second-quarter revenue and profits that bested Wall Street’s sky-high expectations. But some analysts have worried about a disclosure from Nvidia that 44% of revenue from chip sales to data centers is derived from just two customers, presumed to be Microsoft and Meta Platforms. There are also growing fears of more local competition from China where one rival, semiconductor firm Cambricon, reported revenue that surged 4,300% in the first half of the year. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang touted the $50 billion AI market opportunity in China, but also warned that getting approval to sell the newest GPU chip will take time.

ADOPTION CURVE

AI coding tools proliferate, but over-reliance is a big worry. AI coding assistants like GitHub Copilot, Cursor, and Windsurf continue to see strong adoption among developers, with a recent survey finding that 78% of developers rely on these tools every day and two-thirds reporting that their organization’s use of AI coding will “increase significantly” over the next 12 months. The survey of 300 technology decision makers across North America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific, which was backed by Australian software maker Canva, also found that 95% of technologists were comfortable with candidates using AI during technical interviews.

The study did find some lingering concerns. One in three say over-reliance on AI without developer accountability was their top worry, while one in five were perturbed that junior engineers may see their development stunted. CIOs and CTOs generally have agreed that AI coding tools will dramatically change the workflows for developers to tilt in favor of editing more code rather than writing it. To that end, Canva’s survey found that 93% say AI-generated code is “always or often” reviewed.

Courtesy of Canva

JOBS RADAR

Hiring:

– State Street is seeking a chief data and AI officer, based in Boston. Posted salary range: $300K-$412.5K/year.

– AbsenceSoft is seeking a chief technical officer, a remote-based role. Posted salary range: $275K-$390K/year.

– Chanel is seeking a head of technology, based in New York City. Posted salary range: $248.6K-$300K/year.

– Starburst is seeking a chief information security officer, a remote-based role. Posted salary range: $250K-$300K/year.

Hired:

– Lululemon (No. 401 on the Fortune 500) announced the appointment of Ranju Das as chief AI and technology officer, effective September 2, and also disclosed that CIO Julie Averill will depart the apparel maker to pursue other opportunities. Das will report to CEO Calvin McDonald and joins Lululemon after previously serving as CEO and founder of Seattle-based startup Swan AI Studios. He also served as CEO of OptumLabs, the research and development arm of UnitedHealth Group.

Every Friday morning, the weekly Fortune 500 Power Moves column tracks Fortune 500 companies C-suite shifts—see the most recent edition.

– Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group appointed Raphael Bick as CIO, joining the luxury hotel operator to oversee technology and AI. Bick joins from McKinsey, where he spent nearly 15 years in leadership roles, including most recently leading the consulting firm’s technology practice in Asia.

– Renault Group promoted Philippe Brunet to the role of CTO, overseeing engineering for both the French auto manufacturer and its electric vehicle arm Ampere. Brunet has worked at Renault for his entire career and has held a wide variety of leadership roles, including as SVP of powertrain engineering and as VP of software and tuning powertrain engineering.

– ArkeaBio announced the appointment of Zach Serber as CTO, joining the agricultural bioscience company to oversee the company’s scientific efforts to develop a vaccine to reduce methane emissions from cattle. Serber previously served as a founder and chief science officer at biotechnology company Zymergen and was chief operating officer at biotech startup Evozyne.

– Fetch has appointed Ori Schnaps as CTO, joining the mobile shopping rewards app to oversee product development and the application of AI to increase personalization. Schnaps most recently served as head of core product engineering at social media site Reddit. Before that, he held leadership roles at Meta and served as a co-founder of Thrive, a personal finance startup that was acquired in 2016.

– AI Proteins promoted James Bowman to serve as the biotech company’s first-ever CTO, where he will integrate machine learning, robotics, and large-scale data analysis to create novel protein therapeutics. Bowman previously served as director of protein engineering and initially joined AI Proteins in 2021. Prior to that, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Protein Innovation, Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School.

– Ardent Mills appointed Ryan Kelley as CIO, joining the flour-milling and ingredient company after most recently serving as CIO at oil-and-gas exploration and production company Par Pacific Holdings. Kelley also previously served as a CIO and chief procurement officer at oil refinery operator Motiva Enterprises. He also served as a director of supply chain management at energy company Andeavor.

– Amyris announced Sunil Chandran returned to the biotechnology company to serve as CTO following a two-year tenure as chief science officer at plant-based meats producer Impossible Foods. Chandran has spent 17 years at Amyris, rising up the ranks after initially joining as a scientist to eventually becoming head of research and development.

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Business

Selling America is a ‘dangerous bet,’ UBS CEO warns as markets panic

Published

25 minutes ago

January 20, 2026

Jace Porter

Investors are “selling America” in spades Tuesday: The 10-year Treasury yield is at its highest point since August; the U.S. dollar slid; and the traditional safe-haven metal investments—gold and silver—surged once again to record highs.

The CEO of UBS Group, the world’s largest private bank, thinks this market is making a “dangerous bet.”

“Diversifying away from America is impossible,” UBS Group CEO Sergio Ermotti told Bloomberg in a television interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Tuesday. “Things can change rapidly, and the U.S. is the strongest economy in the world, the one who has the highest level of innovation right now.”

The catalyst for the selloff was fresh escalation from U.S. President Donald Trump, who has threatened a 10% tariff on eight European allies—including Germany, France, and the U.K.—unless they cede to his demands to acquire Greenland.

Trump also threatened a 200% tariff on French wine and Champagne to pressure French President Emmanuel Macron to join his Board of Peace. Trump’s favorite “Mr. Tariff” is back, and bond investors are unhappy with the volatility.

But if investors keep getting caught up in the volatility of day-to-day politics and shun the U.S., they’ll miss the forest for the trees, Ermotti argued. While admitting the current environment is “bumpy,” he pointed to a statistic: Last year alone, the U.S. created 25 million new millionaires. For a wealth manager like UBS, that is 1,000 new millionaires a day. To shun that level of innovation in U.S. equities for gold would be a reactionary move that ignores the long-term innovation of the U.S. economy.

“We see two big levers: First of all, wealth creation, GDP growth, innovation, and also more idiosyncratic to UBS is that we see potential for us to become more present, increase our market share,” Ermotti said.

But if something doesn’t give in the standoff between the European Union and Trump, there could be potential further de-dollarization, this time, from Europe selling its U.S. bonds, George Saravelos, head of FX research at Deutsche Bank, wrote in a note Sunday. Indeed, on Tuesday, Danish pension funds sold $100 million in U.S. Treasuries, allegedly owing to “poor” U.S. finances, though the pension fund’s chief said of the debacle over Greenland: “Of course, that didn’t make it more difficult to take the decision.”

Europe owns twice as many U.S. bonds and equities as the rest of the world combined. If the rest of Europe follows Denmark’s lead, that could be an $8 trillion market at risk, Saravelos argued.

“In an environment where the geo-economic stability of the Western alliance is being disrupted existentially, it is not clear why Europeans would be as willing to play this part,” he wrote.

Back in the U.S., the markets also sold off as the Nasdaq and S&P both fell 2% Tuesday, already shedding the entirety of Greenland’s value on Trump’s threats, University of Michigan economist Justin Wolfers noted. Analysts and investors are uneasy, given the history of Trump declaring a stark tariff before negotiating with the country to take it down, also known as the “TACO”—Trump always chickens out—effect. Investors have been “burnt before by overreacting to tariff threats,” Jim Reid of Deutsche Bank noted. That’s a similar stance to the UBS bank chief: If you react too much to headlines, you’ll miss the great innovation that’s pushed the stock market to record highs for the past three years.

“I wouldn’t really bet against the U.S.,” he said.

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Business

Trump added $2.25 trillion to the national debt in his first year back in charge, watchdog says

Published

56 minutes ago

January 20, 2026

Jace Porter

Trump’s first year back in the White House closed with the U.S. national debt roughly $2.25 trillion higher than when he retook the oath of office, showing how fast Washington’s red ink is piling up even amid DOGE hype and promises to pay it down. Over the calendar year 2025, the growth in the national debt was even higher, some $2.29 trillion.

The acceleration in borrowing, with the national debt standing at $38.4 trillion and growing as of January 9, is sharpening warnings from budget watchdogs and Wall Street alike that the country’s fiscal path is becoming a growing vulnerability for the economy. The total national debt has grown by $71,884.09 per second for the past year, according to Congressman David Schweikert’s Daily Debt Monitor.

Over the 12 months from the close of trading on Jan. 17, 2025, to the end of day Jan. 15, 2026, the federal government added approximately $2.25 trillion to the national debt, according to calculations shared exclusively with Fortune by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation. That period roughly captures President Donald Trump’s first year back in office, as it is the last business day before last year’s Inauguration Day and the most recent day for which data are available. The jump from $37 trillion to $38 trillion in just two months between August and October was particularly notable, with the Peterson Foundation calculating at the time that it was the fastest rate of growth outside the pandemic. Michael A. Peterson, CEO of the nonpartisan watchdog dedicated to fiscal sustainability, told Fortune at the time that “if it seems like we are adding debt faster than ever, that’s because we are.”

As for how these figures compare to recent presidencies, the Peterson Foundation provided calculations (below) for each calendar year over the last quarter-century, revealing that President Joe Biden owns the highest year of national debt growth outside the pandemic, with almost $2.6 trillion in 2023. President Trump far and away holds the record, with nearly $4.6 trillion of national-debt growth occurring during the pandemic year of 2020, when massive federal spending occurred in the form of economic relief measures.

Trump and Biden together own the top five highest-debt-incurring years, two for Trump and three for Biden, across five of the last six years. While the figures are not adjusted for inflation, by and large, Trump and Biden have roughly doubled the rate of debt accumulation under President Barack Obama and tripled, even quadrupled the rate of growth under President George W. Bush, depending on which term you’re looking at. To be sure, both Bush and Obama presided over the aftermath of the Great Recession of 2008, with experts still debating whether their fiscal responses were large enough.

Interest costs explode

The surge in debt is landing just as interest costs on that debt become one of Washington’s fastest‑growing expenses. The specific line item for net interest in the federal budget totaled $970 billion for fiscal year 2025, but the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) calculated that, including spending for net interest payments on the public debt, this broke the $1 trillion barrier for the first time. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, another nonpartisan watchdog, projects $1 trillion per year in interest payments from here on out.

Trump has repeatedly argued that his ambitious tariff program will be enough to tame the debt burden, casting duties on imports as a kind of magic revenue source for Washington. Treasury data show tariffs are bringing in significantly more money than before—likely in the $300 billion to $400 billion‑a‑year range—but even optimistic projections suggest those sums only cover a fraction of annual interest costs and an even smaller slice of total federal spending. As Trump retreated from many of his tariff threats—before the January 2026 spike that he threatened in relation to his desire for U.S. possession of Greenland—the CBO calculated that $800 billion of projected deficit reduction had also vanished.

At the same time, the administration has promised to share some of that tariff revenue directly with households through a proposed $2,000 “dividend” for every American, a pledge that independent analysts estimate could cost around $600 billion per year and further widen the deficit unless offset elsewhere. Economists say that the combination—more borrowing, high interest rates, and new permanent commitments—risks locking in structural deficits that keep the debt rising faster than the overall economy.

Markets and America’s ‘Achilles’ heel’

Financial markets are taking notice. As Washington auctions hundreds of billions of dollars in new Treasury securities each week, yields on longer‑term notes and bonds have moved higher, reflecting both tighter monetary conditions and investor unease about the sheer volume of U.S. borrowing. Recent analysis from Deutsche Bank and others has described America’s mounting debt load as an “Achilles heel” that could leave the dollar and broader economy more vulnerable to shocks, particularly as geopolitical tensions and tariff fights escalate.

Those worries are amplified by the prospect of future recessions or emergencies that could force the government to borrow even more heavily on top of today’s already‑elevated baseline. Rating agencies and international lenders have not sounded any immediate alarm about U.S. solvency, but they have increasingly highlighted fiscal risks in their outlooks, pointing to widening deficits and a political system that has struggled to impose discipline.

Voters are paying attention

If there is one thing Americans still broadly agree on, it is that the debt problem matters. Recent polling sponsored by the Peterson Foundation found that roughly 82% of voters say the national debt is an important issue for the country, even as they remain divided over which programs to cut or taxes to raise.

Trump first won office vowing to erase the national debt over time; a decade later, after his return to power, that figure has instead climbed to record highs. As the administration prepares for another year of governing—and another season of fiscal showdowns on Capitol Hill—the question is shifting from whether the debt is growing too fast to how long the world’s largest economy can keep outrunning its own balance sheet.

For this story, Fortune journalists used generative AI as a research tool. An editor verified the accuracy of the information before publishing.

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Business

Gen Z’s nostalgia for ‘2016 vibes’ reveals something deeper: a protest against the world and economy they inherited

Published

1 hour ago

January 20, 2026

Jace Porter

Gen Z’s “2016 vibes” fixation is less about pastel Instagram filters and more about an economic and cultural shift: they are coming of age in a world where cheap Ubers, underpriced delivery, and a looser-feeling internet simply no longer exist. What looks like a lighthearted nostalgia trend is something more structural: a reaction to coming of age against the backdrop of a fully mature internet economy.

On TikTok and Instagram, “2016 vibes” has become a full-blown aesthetic, with POV clips, soundtracks of mid‑2010s hits, and filters that soften the present into a memory. Searches for “2016” on TikTok jumped more than 450% in the first week of January, and more than 1.6 million videos celebrating the year’s look and feel have been uploaded, according to creator‑economy newsletter After School by Casey Lewis. Lewis noted that only a few months ago, “millennial cringe” was rebranded as “millennial optimism,” with Gen Zers longing to experience a more carefree era. Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton, although it debuted in 2015, arguably has a 2016 vibe, for instance. Some millennial optimism is downright bewildering to Gen Z, such as what it calls the “stomp, clap, hey” genre of neo-folk pop music, recalling millennials’ own rediscovery (and new naming) of “yacht rock.”

Meanwhile, Google Trends reports that the search hit an all-time high in mid-January, with the top five trending “why is everyone…” searches all being related to 2016. The top two were “… posting 2016 pics” and “... talking about 2016.”

Creators caption posts “2026 is the new 2016” and stitch side‑by‑side footage of house parties, festivals, and mall hangs, inviting viewers to imagine a version of young adulthood that feels more spontaneous and frictionless. At the risk of being too self-referential, the difference can be tracked in Fortune covers, from the stampeding of the unicorns, the billion-dollar startup that defined the supposedly carefree days of 2016, to the bust a decade later and the dawn of the “unicorpse” era.

And while the comparison may feel ridiculous to anyone who actually lived through 2016 as an adult and can remember the stresses and anxieties of that particular time, there is something going on here, with economics at its core. In short, millennials were able to enjoy the peak of a particular Silicon Valley moment in 2016, but 10 years later, Gen Z is late to the party, finding the price of admission is just too high for them to get in the door.

Everyone used to love Silicon Valley

For millennials, 2016 marked a time when technology expanded opportunity rather than eliminating it. Venture capital was cheap, platforms were underpriced, and software functioned to your personal advantage, with aforementioned unicorns flush with cash and willing to offer millennials a crazy deal. The early iterations of the gig-economy ecosystem—Uber, Airbnb, TaskRabbit—were at their peak affordability, lowering the cost of living and making urban life feel frictionless. And at work, new digital tools helped young employees do more, faster, standing out from the pack.

For older millennials, 2016 evokes a very specific consumer reality: Ubers that were often cheaper than cabs and takeout that arrived in minutes for a few dollars in fees. Both were the product of what The New York Times‘ Kevin Roose labeled the “millennial lifestyle subsidy” in 2021, looking back on the era “from roughly 2012 through early 2020, when many of the daily activities of big-city 20- and 30-somethings were being quietly underwritten by Silicon Valley venture capitalists.” Because Uber and Seamless were not really turning a profit all those years while they gained market share, as on a grander scale Amazon and Netflix were underpriced for years before cornering the market on ecommerce and streaming, these subsidies “allowed us to live Balenciaga lifestyles on Banana Republic budgets,” as Roose put it.

Gen Z never really knew what it felt like to take a practically free late-night ride across town, or feast on $50 worth of Chinese takeout while paying half that. And they certainly never knew what it felt like to see unlimited movies in theaters each month, for the flat rate allowed by one MoviePass app. For the generation seeking the 2016 vibe, $40 surge‑priced trips and double‑digit delivery fees are standard, not a shocking new inconvenience, and the frictionless urban lifestyle of the millennial heyday, before they entered their 40s, had (a declining number of) kids, and fought their way into the suburban housing market amid the pandemic housing boom, reads more like historical fiction than a realistic blueprint.

Tech and digital culture was also just fun. Gen-Z remembers the heyday of Pokemon Go, the only app that somehow forced the youth outside and interacting with each other. Viral trends felt collective rather than segmented by algorithmic feeds. Back then, Vine jokes, Harambe memes, and Snapchat filters could sweep through timelines in a way that made the internet feel weirdly communal, even as politics darkened the horizon.

That helps explain why The New York Times‘ Madison Malone Kircher recently framed the new 2016 nostalgia as part of a broader reexamination of millennial optimism on social media. Celebrities like Kylie Jenner, Selena Gomez, and Karlie Kloss have joined in, uploading 2016 throwbacks that signal a desire to rewind to an era when influencer culture felt less high‑stakes and more experimental.

The moment tech stopped being fun

Then, something shifted. The attitude towards tech companies as nerdy but general do-gooders who “move fast and break things” for the sake of the world faded into a “techlash.” The Cambridge Analytica scandal rocked what was then called Meta and fueled panic around data privacy. Former tech insiders like Tristan Harris started popularizing the idea that the algorithms were addictive.

Thus, when Silicon Valley entered another boom cycle after the release of ChatGPT in 2022—producing a new generation of young, ambitious entrepreneurs and icons like Sam Altman and Elon Musk with a new breed of unicorns to go along with them—the moment was met with skepticism from Gen Z. Where millennials once found a quite literal free lunch, Gen Z increasingly sees threat.

The entry-level work that once functioned as a professional apprenticeship—research, synthesis, junior coding, coordination—is now being handled by autonomous systems. Companies are no longer hiring large cohorts of juniors to train up, often citing AI as the reason. Economists describe this as a “jobless expansion,” with data showing that the share of early-career employees at major tech firms has nearly halved since 2023. The result is a generation of so-called “digital natives” left to wonder whether the very skills they were told would future-proof them have instead been commoditized out of their reach.

Instead of innovation making technology feel communal and fun, as it did in 2016, generative AI has flooded platforms with low-quality content—what users now call “slop”—while raising alarms about addictive chatbots dispensing confident but dangerous advice to children. The promise of technology hasn’t vanished, but its emotional valence has flipped from something people used to get ahead to something they increasingly feel subjected to.

Gen Z’s view from the present

Commentators stress that this is largely a millennial‑led nostalgia wave—but Gen Z is the audience making it go massively viral. Many were children or young teens in 2016, old enough to remember the music and memes but too young to fully participate in the nightlife and freedom the year now symbolizes. For those now juggling college debt, precarious work, and a cost‑of‑living crisis, the grainy clips of suburban parking lots, festival wristbands, and crowded Ubers feel like evidence of a slightly easier universe that just slipped out of reach.

In that sense, “2016 vibes” is a way for Gen Z to process a basic unfairness: they inherited the platforms without the perks. Casey Lewis argues that, even if Gen Z may be driving this trend’s surge to prominence, even a new kind of monocultural moment, it’s by definition a “uniquely millennial trend,” part of an ongoing reexamination of what is emerging with time as a culture created by the millennial generation. Lewis argues that 2016 has an “economic” hold on the cultural imagination, representing “a version of modern life with many of today’s technological advancements but greater financial accessibility.”

Chris DeVille, managing editor of the (surviving millennial-era) music blog Stereogum, tracked a similar trajectory in his introspective cultural history of indie rock, released in August 2025. He documented, at times with lacerating self-criticism, how the underground musical genre grew out of Gen X’s alternative music scene of the 1990s and turned into something that openly embraced synthesizers, arena sing-alongs and countless sellouts to nationally broadcast car commercials.

And that may be what the “2016 vibes” trend represents more than anything: an acknowledgement that the internet is fully professionalized and corporatized now, and the search for something organic, indie, and authentic will have to take place somewhere else.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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