No Mercy / No Malice: World Cup Experience

**SPEAKER_1** (0:01)
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**Zoe Deutsch** (0:33)
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**George Hahn** (0:38)
Hey Meta, where's the nearest metro station?

**SPEAKER_4** (0:40)
Closest metro to you is Union Square, about three blocks away.

**George Hahn** (0:43)
Hey Meta, text Mom, I'm getting on the train now.

**Zoe Deutsch** (0:46)
Sending message. Juggle your itinerary, take calls, and listen to music with open ear audio. No digging for your phone, no stopping for a map, just you and your glasses. Ray-Ban Meta, iconic style meets Meta AI, available at Walmart and other authorized retailers.

**SPEAKER_5** (1:03)
LinkedIn is pretty great at a lot of things, like helping you tap into the latest trends and insights in your field. We cannot stop your coworker from tapping her pencil. LinkedIn can help you find new jobs that align with your career goals. We cannot help you find the source of that weird smell in the office fridge. While we can't stop your coworkers from bringing their hobbies into the office, LinkedIn can help you bring your career to the next level.
LinkedIn is the network that works for you.

**George Hahn** (1:34)
The experience economy is booming. That's good news for building connections with other people. But like everything else in the K-shaped economy, access is unevenly distributed. World Cup experience, as read by George Hahn.
I've seen more men embrace during the past two weeks than in the past two years. The beautiful game, football, generates a beautiful byproduct, togetherness. The World Cup isn't an anomaly. The biggest trend of 2026 isn't AI chatbots, it's IRL experiences.
In a 1998 Harvard Business Review article, Joseph Pine and James Gilmore coined the term Experience Economy. Their thesis? Economies progress from extracting commodities to manufacturing goods, to delivering services, and, ultimately, to staging experiences. With each evolution, value becomes more personalized, immersive, and emotionally resonant. As they wrote, commodities are fungible, goods tangible, services intangible, and experiences memorable. Since 1960, US consumers have increased their share of discretionary spending devoted to experiences by 60 percent, while the share devoted to goods has fallen by 35 percent.
Writing the same year Google was founded, Pine and Gilmore couldn't have anticipated a society atomized by smartphones and social media. Digital technologies, supercharged by pandemic-era social distancing measures, rendered in-person experiences scarce, i.e. more valuable. In 2021, as the world began to lift COVID restrictions, consumers embraced revenge travel. The following year, a spokesperson for the American Society of Travel Advisors told CNN, It's another way of saying, life is short, I want to experience the world and seek experiences that make me feel alive. The YOLO attitude persists, especially among young people. A 2026 American Express Report found that 74% of millennials and Zoomers considered travel non-negotiable, while two-thirds said they would take a job with fewer benefits if it gave them more flexibility to travel. That says a lot about the value young people place on experiences, but it also suggests that young people are spending money on what they can, like experiences, as opposed to saving for purchases that are increasingly out of reach, like homes.
It took significantly longer for the pendulum to swing in the other direction with respect to digital technology. Only in recent years have schools begun restricting smartphone use. In 2025, Australia became the first country to ban social media for anyone under 16 This year, another 13 countries are taking similar steps. The side effects of the digital revolution act as an accelerant to the trend Pine and Gilmore first identified in the 1990s. According to a 2026 MasterCard survey of 27,000 European consumers, 60% prioritize offline experiences to balance out time spent online. According to a 2026 McKinsey report, consumers are prioritizing experiences that make them feel connected, relaxed or excited and those feelings often translate to a desire to splurge. But in a K-shaped economy, splurging is relative. The same McKinsey report found that the prolonged cost of living squeeze has led more than three quarters of consumers to engage in trade-down behavior. This has significant consequences for the loneliness epidemic, as live experiences tap into the hard wiring that drives us to seek out and sustain relationships. Digital experiences are low cost, low friction. By comparison, IRL experiences are high friction, but to the extent that they're also high cost, the antidote for loneliness is sequestered to those who can afford it.