Day: August 14, 2025

• While I was off traveling and getting an advanced degree, most of my friends were having kids.
• Some of them are dropping kids off at college while I’m still in the grade school pick-up line.
• I started my family in my 30s, which means younger moms have become my allies — and friends.

In my 20s, I watched my friends raise their families.

I sipped a margarita while their kids had bedtime tantrums, and provided moral support as they folded the mounds of dirty cloth diapers and onesies. I watched them parent and juggle the responsibilities of work, meal prep, and taking care of the home.

While I was busy not settling down, most of my friends already had — and they’d been moms for nearly a decade by the time I had my first child.

Life experience and education gave me a lot, but couldn’t prepare me for everything

I became a mom at 31 after spending my 20s doing exactly what I wanted — painting murals, trips to Europe, and earning an advanced degree in philosophy. While those experiences might not sound like traditional prep from motherhood, having time to do all of that helped me feel ready to be a mom. I learned about myself, what I could handle, and what kind of life I wanted.

Were my 20s a crash course in parenting? Not exactly, but they gave me a deeper understanding of the world, one that I hoped to pass on to my own children. I lived a great adventure, so when it came time to settle down, I had no regrets.

However, becoming a mom did knock me off balance at first. I know now, becoming a parent is a shock for everyone, but after a decade of independence, I found it incredibly disorienting. The biggest shock was the slow realization of what “settling down” actually meant.

Instead of talking about politics or traveling, I was plunged into the foreign world of the “mom circle,” where conversations were more about nipple cream, onesies, and parenting methods. These topics weren’t wrong, just different, and it took me time to adjust and realize that these women were giving me exactly what I needed. They were giving me the extraordinary tools of mothering through very ordinary conversations.

I went from being an expert to a beginner

I was used to feeling competent in my career and studies, so starting over as a beginner mom among all my veteran mom friends was intimidating and humbling. Yet I learned quickly and realized the importance of asking for help.

These friends were a wealth of knowledge, and I did my best to draw from it. But there was a catch — these moms were no longer sleep-deprived zombies, and what I also needed besides veteran parenting wisdom was someone who could relate.

Younger moms became my lifeline

I wouldn’t normally reach out to younger people for help and advice, but I needed friends who shared my life stage. And yes, I was self-conscious about my age when I found them, but that quickly dissolved over coffee-fueled, spit-up-intensive playdates.

These moms have since become lifelong friends, and — added benefit — they keep me feeling surprisingly young, as well.

My timeline was right for me

Now, my oldest is entering seventh grade, and being an older mom has stretched me in all the right ways. It taught me humility and to lean on the wisdom of others, while reaching out to broaden my peer group. Everyone’s timeline is different. I’m thankful for all my experiences in life, and as a mom. They were right for me, and I wouldn’t change a thing.

• Adam Pretorius, a real estate agent in Iowa, was nearly scammed into selling a $200,000 lot.
• Pretorius said fewer safeguards are in place to protect vacant lots.
• He’s trying to spread awareness and make sure agents don’t skip steps when verifying sellers.

This as-told-to essay is based on conversations with Adam Pretorius, who’s been a real estate agent in Iowa since 2009. Pretorius was targeted as part of a vacant land scam in which scammers impersonate property owners and solicit agents to fraudulently sell their land. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

I’ve been practicing real estate since 2009. I focus just on residential, and as a top performer in town, maybe I got complacent.

I’d heard of scammers being out there, but not specifically on land or listings. Maybe it was my own complacent belief that it wasn’t going to happen to me because I’m smarter than my colleagues.

That kind of naivety is what gets you into these situations. These scammers are very smart, very clever, and very disciplined, and they have a pattern that they use again and again.

Land is a very easy scam because there are some different safeguards: You don’t need access to a property — it’s just a raw parcel. It’s not the same value, per se, as a home, but it doesn’t have the transferring of utilities and other little things that would get caught in the way of a transfer.

And apparently, in me looking into this more and talking to more colleagues, I learned scammers actually do have success with it from time to time.

Until this happened to me, I was not aware it was a major issue. After it occurred, I realized how common this actually is — which made me feel a little bit better after feeling so sheepish about the situation, which didn’t just cost me time, but a lot of money.

I’m not the first agent to fall for this scam, and I won’t be the last

Land is our biggest shortage and issue, even in the Midwest, particularly Iowa. Farmers just aren’t selling farms, and when they do, there’s a lot of red tape in getting land developed. Finding raw land or developable land is a rarity.

We do a lot of infills out here. An infill lot is a lot that is in an established neighborhood that, for one reason or the other, wasn’t built on — whether it was an existing lot that maybe the neighbor bought to have a little cushion next to them, or it was just never built on, or maybe it was a piece of land that’s been parceled off over time. But the lot itself is not part of a new subdivision.

An infill is going to carry a premium because you have an established neighborhood.

The land of subject was $200,000. So we’re not talking an insignificant figure. Not as much as, say, a single-family home that might average around $400,000 to $500,000, but enough that it would be a significant return for a scammer.

I was contacted by phone and followed up by email and text in early January. Someone who I thought was the prospective seller contacted me, letting me know that they had a lot that they had not built on. They said they’d now moved out of state and weren’t planning to come back because they live in Illinois. It’s just a piece of land that they had attempted to sell before, and that agent was unsuccessful.

They said they canceled with that agent after a couple of months, and they would like to have me interview both on the price and how I might approach it differently to make sure we can get the lot sold this time.

This isn’t uncommon, so to this point, it sounded valid. I did some checking on the MLS, and in fact, it was listed before and was canceled after two months.

I verified, by public records, that the owner does in fact live in Illinois, worked for a medical occupation, and had lived there for some time.

At this point, things were checking out. The email that was used was an Outlook email with the owner’s first and last name, with a few characters.

I do have an extra verification where I am able to look up phone numbers — I did use that in this case, as the number was listed as unlisted and unregistered, but that’s not uncommon for medical professionals. Though it was a small flag, it wasn’t enough that I was seeking the additional verification that I should have, given hindsight.

I did my typical interview process, sent them a market analysis, recommendations on the price, what I charge, how I get paid.

Then we discussed getting the lot ready for the market. I sent the paperwork, they signed it, and I got a couple of additional details that we needed for the file. I spent almost $1,000 in marketing to get it ready, shot it live in the MLS.

Seven hours later, I got an angry phone call from the apparent actual owner who claimed that this is the third time this has happened to him.

These scammers keep coming back to the same lot that he owns, and the last time it was listed, he notified that agent, hence why it was canceled. That one took a couple months. In this case, it took just a day because he realized he’s being targeted again and again.

I shouldn’t have skipped steps when asking for verification

Much to my surprise, many more agents have been contacted for the exact same lot since this incident.

They haven’t sold it, but there have been enough agents who have been duped, and there’s a lot of time and money that’s been lost in the fraud. The main party, much to their relief, has not been affected.

We’re in a very digital age, and the process moves quickly with online signatures, e-platforms, and e-filing.

It’s very easy now to do these things quickly and maybe not ask for the extra verification that we should ask for. We don’t do things face-to-face; that’s not uncommon.

When you can’t get enough verification, you need to ask for them to provide some form of ID, whether that be a driver’s license or a passport, or something that makes you feel more secure about the individual that you’re talking to.

Since the incident, my process changed: I need to get at least three forms of verification. For me to feel very good, one of them should be either a driver’s license or a passport when I have somebody who’s out of town who I’m unable to verify.

My hope, and why I am telling my story, is that if we go to a place where we’re sharing this and we’re reporting it, rather than feeling guilty about it, our collective information will be our strongest weapon, and we can help fight back on this.

It’s human to make mistakes, and it just shows that no level of experience or diligence is going to make any agent or person immune. The vulnerability exists in high-end and vacant land alike.

It’s easy for myself as a top producer to say, “Well, that’s not going to happen to me,” but that’s complacency at its finest. I made a mistake. Hopefully, others will learn from this, too.

Deborah has fast become one of Nicole Ramirez’s favorite colleagues. She’s quick to deliver compliments, sharp-witted, and hyper-efficient. Perhaps best of all, there’s no internal competition with Deborah at the health marketing agency they work for, because she isn’t on the payroll. She isn’t even human.

Ramirez, a 34-year-old who lives in the Pittsburgh area, says she randomly chose the name Deborah as a way to refer to the generative AI app ChatGPT, which she began using about a year ago to help her with basic tasks like drafting emails. As time went on, she asked Deborah to do more complex work, such as market research and analysis, and found herself typing “thank you” after the results came back. Eventually the relationship got to the point where the app became akin to a coworker who’s always willing to give feedback — or listen to her gripes about real-life clients and colleagues. And so the bot became a bud.

“Those are things that you would usually turn to your work bestie over lunch about when you can go to ChatGPT — or Deborah, in my case,” says Ramirez.

People are treating AI chatbots as more than just 24/7 therapists and loyal companions. With the tools becoming ubiquitous in the workplace, some are regarding them as model colleagues, too.

Unlike teammates with a pulse, chatbots are never snotty, grumpy, or off the clock. They don’t eat leftover salmon at their desks or give you the stink eye. They don’t go on a tangent about their kids or talk politics when you ask to schedule a meeting. And they won’t be insulted if you reject their suggestions.

For many, tapping AI chatbots in lieu of their human colleagues has deep appeal. Consider that nearly one-third of US workers would rather clean a toilet than ask a colleague for help, according to a recent survey from the Center for Generational Kinetics, a thought-leadership firm, and commissioned by workplace-leadership strategist Henna Pryor. Experts warn, though, that too much bot bonding could dull social and critical-thinking skills, hurting careers and company performance.

In the past two years, the portion of US employees who say they have used Gen AI in their role a few times a year or more nearly doubled to 40% from 21%, according to a Gallup report released in June. Part of what accounts for that rapid ascendance is how much Gen AI reflects our humanity, as Stanford University lecturer Martin Gonzalez concluded in a 2024 research paper. “Instead of a science-fiction-like ball of pulsing light, we encounter human quirks: poems recited in a pirate’s voice, the cringeworthy humor of dad jokes,” wrote Gonzalez, who’s now an executive at Google’s AI research lab DeepMind.

One sign that people see AI agents as lifelike is in how they politely communicate with the tools by using phrases like “please” or “thank you,” says Connie Noonan Hadley, an organizational psychologist and professor at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business.

Like junk food, it’s efficient when you need it, but too much over time can give you relational diabetes.Laura Greve, clinical health psychologist

“So far, people are keeping up with basic social niceties,” she says. “AI tends to give you compliments, too, so there are some social skills still being maintained.”

Human colleagues, on the other hand, aren’t always as well-mannered.

Monica Park, a graphic designer for a jeweler in New York, used to dread showing early mock-ups of her work to colleagues. She recalls the heartache she felt after a coworker at a previous employer angrily responded to a draft of a design she’d drawn with an F-bomb.

“You never know if it’s a good time to ask for feedback,” Park, 32, tells me. “So much of it has to do with the mood of the person looking at it.”

Last year she became a regular ChatGPT user and says that while the app will also dish out criticism, it’s only the constructive kind. “It’s not saying it in a malicious or judgmental way,” Park says. “ChatGPT doesn’t have any skin in the game.”

Aaron Ansari, an information-security consultant, counts Anthropic’s AI chatbot Claude among his top peers. The 46-year-old Orlando-area resident likes that he can ask it to revise a document as many times as he wants without being expected to give anything in return. By contrast, a colleague at a previous job would pressure him to buy Girl Scout cookies from her kids whenever he stopped by her desk.

“It became her reputation,” Ansari says. “You can’t go to ‘Susie’ without money.”

Now a managing partner at a different consulting firm, he finds himself opening Claude before pinging colleagues for support. This way, he can avoid ruffling any feathers, like when he once attempted to reach a colleague in a different time zone at what turned out to be an inconvenient hour.

“You call and catch them in the kitchen,” says Ansari. “I have interrupted their lunch unintentionally, but they certainly let me know.”

AI’s appeal can be so strong that workers are at risk of developing unhealthy attachments to chatbots, research shows. “Your Brain on ChatGPT,” a study published in June from researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, found that the convenience that AI agents provide can weaken people’s critical-thinking skills and foster procrastination and laziness.

“Like junk food, it’s efficient when you need it, but too much over time can give you relational diabetes,” says Laura Greve, a clinical health psychologist in Boston. “You’re starved of the nutrients you need, the real human connection.”

And if workers at large overindulge in AI, we could all end up becoming “emotionally unintelligent oafs,” she warns. “We’re accidentally training an entire generation to be workplace hermits.”

In turn, Hadley adds, businesses that rely on collaboration could suffer. “The more workers turn to AI instead of other people, the greater the chance the social fabric that weaves us together will weaken,” she says.

Karen Loftis, a senior product manager in a Milwaukee suburb, recently left a job at a large tech company that’s gone all-in on AI. She said before ChatGPT showed up, sales reps would call her daily for guidance on how to plug the company’s latest products. That’s when they’d learn about her passion for seeing musicians like Peter Frampton in concert.

But when she saw the singer-songwriter perform earlier this year, it was “like a non-event,” she said, because those calls almost entirely stopped coming in. “With AI, it’s all work and no relationships,” she said.

Workers who lean heavily on AI may also be judged differently by their peers than their bosses.

Colleagues are more inclined to see them as dependent on the technology, less creative, and lacking growth potential, says David De Cremer, a behavioral scientist and Dunton Family Dean of Northeastern University’s D’Amore-McKim School of Business. “It’s objectification by association,” he says.

Company leaders, however, are more likely to view workers who demonstrate AI chops as assets. Big-company CEOs such as Amazon’s Andy Jassy and Shopify’s Tobi Lütke have credited the technology for boosting productivity and cost savings.

Workers who spoke with BI about using chatbots — including those who work remotely — say they still interact with their human peers, but less often as they did before AI agents came along.

Lucas Figueiredo, who lives near Atlanta and works at a revenue management specialist for an airline, says he previously struggled to tell whether the AirPods a former colleague constantly wore were playing music whenever he wanted to ask this person a coding question.

“You don’t want to spook someone or disrupt their workflow,” the 27-year-old tells me, though he admits he has done just that.

These days, if Figueiredo gets stuck, he will first go to Microsoft’s Copilot before approaching a colleague for an assist. The new strategy has been paying off.

“I’ve learned to be more self-sufficient,” he says. “You don’t want to ask those silly questions.”

Sarah E. Needleman is Business Insider’s leadership & workplace correspondent.

• The New York Federal Reserve found a surge of student-loan borrowers in serious delinquency.
• It puts more borrowers on track to default and face wage garnishment this summer.
• Trump is also condensing the number of available income-driven repayment plans.

The second half of the year is looking grim for millions of student-loan borrowers.

That’s not necessarily a surprise — President Donald Trump’s Department of Education restarted collections on defaulted student loans in May after a five-year pause, meaning borrowers are once again subject to negative credit reporting and the withholding of federal benefits, like wages.

The New York Federal Reserve’s quarterly report on household debt and credit showed how stark the surge in delinquencies for student-loan borrowers is — it found that 10.2% of student borrowing was serious delinquency in the second quarter, which is more than 90 days past due. For borrowers above the age of 50, the serious delinquency rate ticked up to just over 18%.

While there’s still time for borrowers in delinquency to avoid default — which typically happens for federal student loans after 270 days — it’s a step closer toward the most severe consequences of defaulting, which include wage garnishment.

A Department of Education spokesperson told Business Insider that the department “expects wage garnishment to resume later this summer,” and did not provide a specific date. The department also previously paused garnishment of Social Security benefits in early June. While it did not specify the length of the pause, Federal Student Aid’s debt resolution website said those garnishments will resume “sometime this summer.”

About 5 million borrowers are currently in default, and a recent analysis from credit reporting firm TransUnion found that of the 5.8 million newly delinquent borrowers as of April, 1.8 million of them could default in July, with an additional 1 million entering default in August and 2 million more in September.

“That number is either high because people cannot afford to pay their student loans, or don’t think they can afford to pay their student loans, or people can afford to pay their student loans and they’re just either choosing not to, or don’t know they need to,” Joshua Turnbull, senior vice president and head of consumer lending at TransUnion, previously told Business Insider.

Once a borrower enters default, they have three options to return to good standing. The first, loan consolidation, allows borrowers to consolidate their defaulted student loans into a direct consolidation loan, but the record of the default would remain on the borrower’s credit history.

In contrast, loan rehabilitation would remove a borrower’s default status from their credit reports, but it’s a lengthy process; borrowers have to agree to make nine payments within 20 days of the due date over a period of 10 consecutive months, and wage and benefits garnishment would continue during that period. Borrowers can also file for bankruptcy, which would halt benefits garnishment.

The department recommended that borrowers seek out income-driven repayment plans to help them make payments. However, those plans are undergoing a major overhaul — Trump’s spending law eliminated the SAVE plan, which enrolled 8 million borrowers, and replaced existing plans with two less generous options set to go into effect in July 2026.

Some borrowers previously told Business Insider that they’re struggling to plan financially due to the uncertainty with their payments. Holly Atkinson, who voted for Trump, said she doesn’t see herself being able to retire if her student-loan payments go up.

“I don’t regret voting for him, but what I’m seeing right now makes me very uncomfortable,” Atkinson said. “We’re all in limbo right now, and I don’t like being in limbo.”

Have a story to share? Reach out to this reporter at asheffey@businessinsider.com.

Everybody wants to be Ryan Reynolds. Donald Trump wants to be Ryan Reynolds. The “SmartLess” podcast guys want to be Ryan Reynolds. Even Klarna wants to be Ryan Reynolds. I don’t mean they want to star in “Deadpool” or marry Blake Lively (though neither of those is a bad deal). I mean that they’re all slapping their brands on mobile phone networks in an attempt to make a little extra bank.

If you’re familiar with Mint Mobile, a mobile phone network that offers inexpensive prepaid plans, it’s probably because you’ve seen Reynolds in an ad for it. The actor-turned-entrepreneur bought an estimated 25% stake in the company back in 2019, positioned himself as its spokesperson, and then sold it to T-Mobile for $1.35 billion in 2023, with Reynolds reportedly making $300 million off the deal.

The concept of Mint Mobile isn’t new: Virtual mobile network operators, which are telecom companies that offer mobile services without owning their own network infrastructure, like towers and stations, have been around for a long time. Some examples, besides Mint, include Cricket Wireless and Boost, though the latter is becoming a full-on wireless carrier and investing in its own 5G network. Reynolds offered a new spin by successfully attaching a big-name brand or celebrity to one. His achievement seems to have inspired others to get in on the game, including the president, some podcast hosts, and a buy-now-pay-later company.

“It’s all Ryan Reynolds’ fault. Sort of,” says Avi Greengart, the founder and lead analyst at Techspontential, a research and advisory firm.

In June, the Trump Organization announced the launch of Trump Mobile. Its website says the service will offer “All-American performance” on a $47.45 a month plan that includes unlimited talk, text, data, and calls to 100 international destinations. The Trumps are also selling a $499 gold-colored phone to accompany the plan.

Everyone else on this list is thinking that if Ryan Reynolds can do it, why can’t they?

The same month, Will Arnett, Jason Bateman, and Sean Hayes, actors and the hosts of “Smartless,” said they are starting SmartLess Mobile, which promises to be “direct-to-consumer, data-sane, and refreshingly BS-free.” Their website boasts, “Friends don’t let friends overpay.” SmartLess’ value proposition is that it offers inexpensive, limited data plans that start as low as $15 a month. The argument is that most people have plans that give them unlimited cellular data, but they don’t actually need all that download capacity, given how widely available WiFi is, so they wind up overpaying.

“The quick math is about half of the country use 10 gigs or fewer, but it’s almost impossible not to buy unlimited,” says Paul McAleese, the CEO of Smartless Mobile and a mobile industry veteran. “Why we did it is because we recognize that gap, that data gap, which is really unique compared to any other product category. You don’t go into the grocery store and buy 40 gallons of milk and consume two and then do it again the next month.”

As The Wall Street Journal noted around that time, celebrity cellular brands seem to be everywhere. Consumer brands are joining in, too. Klarna, the Sweden-based buy now, pay later company, is launching a mobile network of its own, too. In June, it invited consumers to sign up for a waitlist to join its $40-a-month plan. It may seem strange for an installment lender to get in the wireless game, but the company says it’s a step in continuing to build its “neobank offering.”

“Everyone else on this list is thinking that if Ryan Reynolds can do it, why can’t they?” says Craig Moffett, a cofounder and senior research analyst at MoffettNathanson, an equity research firm.

It’s not dissimilar to the rich and famous hopping on the liquor train in recent years. There’s Reynolds’ gin, Snoop Dogg’s wine, George Clooney’s tequila, Kendall Jenner’s tequila, Kevin Hart’s tequila. In a way, telecom is the new tequila.

“It’s a sign of the times that every celebrity’s reason for getting up in the morning is to think of ways they can monetize their celebrity,” Moffett says.

Mobile virtual network operators, which industry insiders call MVNOs, buy excess network capacity in bulk from major carriers — AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile — and sell it under their own brands. They profit from the differential between the wholesale rate they get and the amount they charge customers.

“It is a capital-light alternative without having to invest considerable sums in acquiring a licence, constructing a network, and so forth,” says Paolo Pescatore, a telecom analyst at PP Foresight. He says that it can also work for brands that have a similar business to tack on an extra service for their customers, such as Comcast’s XFinity Mobile, which it can tie in with its broadband service.

For carriers, MVNOs are a way to make money off of capacity they’re not using and try to reach niche markets they may not be able to connect with on their own — customers of different demographics, who speak different languages, and who have different interests. Their brands are very general, and in their marketing, they have to appeal to the general population.

It’s low risk. If the thing fails, no harm, no foul.

“Big carriers are not the most creative kind, and their advertising focuses on big customer segments. They don’t have the time, effort, and focus to go after smaller customer segments,” says Roger Entner, the founder and lead analyst at Recon Analytics, a research and analytics firm. “It’s low risk. If the thing fails, no harm, no foul.”

MVNOs are just a small sliver of the mobile market. Entner estimates there are about 15 million MVNO customers in the US (that excludes people who use MVNOs tied to cable companies, which are an additional 19 million or so). By comparison, the major carriers have upwards of 340 million.

Anastasia Kārkliņa Gabriel, the author of “Cultural Intelligence for Marketers,” says that because consumers tend to distrust the big telecom players, an MVNO may signal a “perception of independence” for potential users. It gives an “illusion of being separate from the major telco brands,” she says, even if that’s far from the case. Klarna is working with AT&T, SmartLess is with T-Mobile, and the Trump Organization says they’re working with all three major carriers.

For the brands and individuals trying to launch mobile networks, the hope is that they have enough clout with their existing fan bases to get them to switch networks and sign up. Maybe you love Jason Bateman so much you feel like you have to have his phone plan, or you’re so entrenched in Klarna’s payments system and app, you switch your network to them. Or, in the case of the Trump family, you’re MAGA. And given the president’s long history of putting his name on things and promoting them, from buildings to steaks to wine, the move seems like a natural extension.

“The only surprising thing about Trump Mobile is that he didn’t try this already,” Greengart says.

Trump Mobile didn’t respond to a request for comment.

McAleese, from SmartLess, says that while he’s aware this may look like following in Reynolds’ footsteps, that’s not what’s going on. Arnett served as a spokesperson for the Canadian company Freedom Mobile, which he also ran, back in 2018. “Will did that job, frankly, before Ryan ever did,” he says.

Just because celeb-affiliated mobile networks are blooming does not mean they will flourish. It’s a tough business to be in. ESPN failed at its MVNO efforts two decades ago, even with all the power of, you know, ESPN — though that attempt was also before the iPhone existed.

It’s an easy business to start, but it’s a hard business to operate, Moffett explains. “The MVNO network operator provides almost everything you need to get started. But once you spend money on marketing and customer service, it turns out to be a really tough way to make money,” he says. “To succeed, you need to achieve meaningful scale, and very, very few MVNOs ever do.”

Phone plans are sticky. It takes time and effort to switch your carrier from one brand to another, though the barrier is getting a bit lower these days. It’s especially difficult if your phone plan is how you’re paying off your device, or you’re on a family plan with multiple lines. Many MVNOs don’t offer plans with more than one or two lines, and few help customers finance their devices.

Where a lot of them run into a buzzsaw is when there’s not enough differentiation going on.

As much as people may idolize certain celebrities or relate to certain brands, it’s just not clear that they do so enough to want their entire consumer lives to reside in their ecosystems. Beyond the branding, a lot of these networks aren’t particularly special in terms of the price or service they offer. Maybe they’ll get some people, via social media posts and ads, but it may not be enough to grow and sustain a thriving business operation.

“Where a lot of them run into a buzzsaw is when there’s not enough differentiation going on,” Entner says. “They bring nothing unique to it.”

He was skeptical of Klarna’s move, too. “It’s a lower-cost acquisition channel, because if you’re already paying off your burrito, they can also say, ‘Hey, by the way, I know you’re broke. Here’s cheap service on top of it,'” he says, referring to Klarna’s BNPL deal that allows people to break up a DoorDash order into multiple installments. “‘I know so much about you, so I can tailor my offer exactly for you.’ That’s the logic. I probably don’t agree with it, but knock yourself out.”

A Klarna spokesperson says in an email that “unlike most new MVNOS, we’re not starting from scratch, nor are we jumping on the bandwagon” and that its mobile offering has been in the works for many months as part of a multiyear strategy. “We’re not trying to ‘win’ mobile or become the biggest carrier — this isn’t about scale for its own sake,” the spokesperson says. “It’s about solving a very real problem for the tens of millions of consumers who already trust Klarna to help manage their finances.”

SmartLess’s McAlease says they “wish everyone well” who’s trying to launch an MVNO right now, because competition is good for the industry, but “they’re just kind of on that unlimited train, and that might work for them and for their audience.” Initial marketing efforts have focused on the SmartLess guys, for obvious reasons — you’ve got three big celebrities and a giant podcast in the mix, so why not? But it will soon shift more to what actually differentiates it.

“You’re going to start seeing much more product- and price-focused things over the course of the next while,” McAelase says. “It’s always tricky for MVNOs to break through the noise, and we’re fortunate to have a brand and principles that are happy to do that.”

Pescatore says that MVNOs have been more successful in other countries, such as the supermarket Tesco’s mobile network in the UK. But it’s challenging. “There are opportunities in a mature market like the US, given the price of existing services from mobile network providers. Ultimately, it needs to tightly integrate and complement the existing service and offer something truly novel to attract subscribers,” he says.

The track record of these projects working out may not deter brands and public figures from trying. Entner says he knows of multiple MVNOs that are in development. Apple has long faced speculation that it might launch an MVNO, though it always denies it. Apple did not respond to a request for comment.

Will all these projects work out? It seems unlikely, but it could happen. Some of these packages are pretty cheap, and hey, if you like some actor enough to switch your cellphone plan for them, by all means.

Emily Stewart is a senior correspondent at Business Insider, writing about business and the economy.