Sup memelords,

Y’all know I'm the founder of memelord.com and I'm known as the "unhinged marketing guy".

So all I'm saying is this is NOT gonna be your normal boring marketing predictions.

Here's my 2026 marketing trends predictions on: gambling, degeneracy, vibe coding, patriotism, Timothee Chalamet, memes, guns, movies, and sex (read until end for Sydney Sweeney ads):

#1: Rise of the “Marketing Engineer”

I built memelord.com

to $100K ARR and then raised $3M all without knowing how to code.

Let me say this first before you do: I am NOT unique!!

I think we'll see a lot more people like me in 2026: marketers who have good taste and distribution hacking together software.

With AI and vibe coding tools getting better every day, marketers are able to ship their ideas they usually would’ve needed engineers for.

Every marketer on my team is vibe coding tools and prototypes. At this point, it's a requirement for being on my marketing team. Marketers ship. No excuses. If my dumb ass can do it, so can you. Teams will get smaller as expectations rise of each individual employee.

While I still don't know how to actually code, I spent this Christmas drinking coffee and learning Cursor and even CTO said I’m cooking:

Expect to see a lot more crazy marketers like me making software and raising money this year.

#2: Resurgence of Movie Marketing

Everybody knows that movie theaters have been falling due to streaming.

But this year, I think we'll see a resurgence in movie marketing in 2 big ways:

Timotheé Chalamet is going 10,000% hard

Between his "I want to be one of the greats" speech and his legendary Marty Supreme marketing run, actors are feeling inspired and envious of Chalamet.

This is good for movie lovers.

I expect actors to start trying harder in their movies and marketing like madmen just to keep up with Chalamet. It's like Roger Bannister breaking the 4-minute mile barrier. Nobody knew an actor could market and perform like this. Now that we know it, it sets the pace for everybody else. Competition is good for movies just like it is for business

And before you go saying, "Oh, Timothee Chalamet can't save Hollywood," let me remind you, he is Lisan al-Gaib….

Letterboxd is on the rise.

What is LetterBoxd?

It's a movie review site mixed with a social network.

And here is their organic traffic over the last 5 years....

Why is Letterboxd growing?

Here's the weird true answer.

Writing movie reviews is the flex for over-educated under-fulfilled people

In today's world where people's attention spans suck and everyone is doomscrolling slop, people are seeing the act of watching movies and writing reviews about them as a form of fulfilling "deep work".

Before TikTok, sitting around and watching movies was lazy for stoners. Now it's a form of deep work and practiced focus. Letterboxed is a hedge against brainrot and degeneracy.

Have we fallen off as a society? Absolutely man. But hopefully we get some good movies from this.

#3: “Shorting degeneracy” → $$$

An essay recently went viral on Twitter about being “long on degeneracy”.

The idea: We have a gambling epidemic in America on the rise. Screen time addiction is through the roof. And oh yeah, AI girlfriends are here.

While many entrepreneurs are building in the long degeneracy space, I think we'll see billions of dollars created in the “short degeneracy” space.

For every problem degeneracy creates, there is a solution to be made.

I expect a lot of funding in these categories this year and apps by solo hackers who are fucking around solving their own problems.

#4: Pro-Americana Branding is in

Last July 4th, I boycotted the energy drink Celsius to change their name to Fahrenheit because "America fuck yeah"

I think we're going to see a lot more Pro-Americana branding like this this year. Being a patriot is officially cool again (it always was). But now it's safe.

Brands are already leaning more into Americana.

With the 2026 Olympics coming up, Ralph Lauren already dropped their collection. I'm seeing it around New York, people wearing Ralph Lauren Americana proudly that they wouldn't a decade ago.

If you believe that fashion is at the forefront of culture like I do, then expect other brands to follow like lemmings. Speaking of lemmings...

#5: Next president is a memelord

At first, it was just Trump and the right posting memes.

But Gavin Newsom and the Democrats are learning….

I'm not going to say I fucking called it, but I fucking called it. Here's an article about me in Slate from August referring to Gavin Newsom's memeing.

Newsom is leaning into being self-deprecating and unhinged humor.

His team must have hired some memelords because they are posting some unhinged shit on the cusp of the internet.

Newsom hates Trump so much yet he wants to be him so bad.

He'll never be as funny, but he can be crueler and hotter. In fact, the scariest part about Newsom to me is that he's so goddamn hot. My wife knows Newsom is evil, but even she thinks he's hot.

For fuck's sake, I even think he's hot. It's terrifying.

And speaking of sex appeal....

#6.9: A lot more sex ads

Okay, now the moment you've all been waiting for.

Throughout the entire history of marketing, sex was a huge part of it.

It's literally called "sexvertising". Sex sells. Everyone knows this.

And then America got extremely politically correct and suddenly it was fat non-binary people on billboards for a weird 3 years.

Well, it turns out fat non-binary people don't sell hot girl's lingerie very well.

And now everyone's on Ozempic and skinny and feeling sexy.

Add in the fact that the political climate is leaning towards based anti-cancel-culture and what happens?

You get boobs back in ads.

Hell yeah, brother.

American Eagle woke up to this and hired Sydney Sweeney.

And instead of caving like a little bitch to every critique, the brand and Sweeney doubled down.

More sex ads in 2026.

The 2026 Meta: The most entertaining thing is the most likely.

The world trends towards entertaining.

When Elon tweeted this, most people thought it was a joke.

But he wasn't joking.

The rise of gambling. The rise of presidents posting memes. More sex. Etc.

The most entertaining thing is the most likely.

If you want your brand to be the most likely to win, then you have to be the most entertaining. It is the beginning of the age of memetic warfare, and that is why we are building memelord.com.

“Wait wtf is Memelord????” if you’re new here you may be wwondering

Memelord.com is "Google Trends for memes" mixed with "Canva on crack".

If you want to stay up to date with marketing trends, join the 1000s of CMOs and social media managers at public companies and unicorns using memelord.com

Happy New Year

Cheers to many new memes.

And for a recap of the best memes from last year, check out this video from our team…

Jason "The Memelord" Levin

Create some cool shit this week.

Jason “The Memelord” Levin

Founder of Memelord.com