Why the death of trends is the next hot trend ... So What Who Cares, 5(2)
Hello!
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One of my favorite end-of-the-year things to do at a past job was to look up tech predictions pegged to specific years and see whether or not those predictions came true. And this past December, I insisted that my colleagues and I assess our 2018 predictions to see how accurate we were.
This thing I have about knowing whether or not predictions actually reflect a forecaster's ability to discern what will go big adds an extra step to my enjoyable reading of predictive lists and reports. When I read Pinterest's trend report for 2019, I had to go back and see how they did forecasting the biggies for 2018. And when I read the 2018 report, it was striking to see how many of the trends listed got their start in earlier years (wide-legged pants broke big in 2017, for example, as did more inclusive beauty with Rhianna's Fenty Beauty launch). In the 2019 report, I was nodding along to beeswax wraps (percolating along since the early 2010s), ceramics (hipster hobby gone mainstream in 2017) and geometric shapes inspired by the Memphis Group revival of 2014.
How are these trends selected? By looking at the rise in engagement for pins that describe the trend. Pinterest's user base is "discovery-focused," meaning they are likely to search for pins that reflect their growing interest in something. In other words, Pinterest users don't invent a trend, but they define it by virtue of their engagement.
The data that comprises reports like Pinterest's is interesting because it tells us something about how long it might take for a shift in consumer behavior to really stick. Pinterest is comparatively "slow" compared to other social networks -- a pin takes approximately 3.5 months to build up 50% of its total engagement, while a tweet usually hits in 24 minutes -- which means that it's easier to accurately track trend longevity and see if external factors impede or encourage wider adoption of a specific idea or consumer product.
Something like the Pinterest trends report can't tell us how or why something turns into a trend -- social media has no analogue for Maggie Prescott declaring, "Think Pink!" or Miranda Priestly asserting the power of filter-down designer aesthetics and the curatorial power of the fashion glossy editor-in-chief. Social media is heterogeneous in a way that is antithetical to widespread trend adoption.
I think it's instructive to look at how heterogeneity has hit other industries: we've hit peak "Golden Age of Television" as broadcast network viewership has declined. Like big events people can remember watching on TV, consumer trends provided both a sense of cultural cohesion and a means for cultural isolation. The very notion of a trend is two-fold; the act of participating in a trend promises the experience of novelty while simultaneously providing affirmation (or adoption) of a specific social identity. The rise of e-commerce has blown open the novelty factor -- the same way DVRs and then streaming networks blew open the notion of "appointment television" -- and as a culture, we're deconstructing a lot of longstanding social identities.
Perhaps the new trend is to declare that the previous iteration of "trendy" as we knew it is over. One hopes next year's trend reports will identify what comes next.
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Your pop culture recommendation: My fascination with Outside magazine's complete dominance of the "Here's How to Die Outdoors" beat is well-documented. While the number-one story in my heart remains "Consumed," the story of whitewater kayaker Hendrik Coetzee's death by crocodile, my new number two is "Lost in the Valley of Death." Ostensibly about the disappearance of Justin Alexander in India's Parvati Valley, the story's a larger examination of what compels people to go into the wilderness for spiritual clarity and how spiritual seeking can leave people more lost than ever.
While reading the piece, I was reminded of two other works that have stuck with me for years. The first was Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild (the '90s ur-text on nature-questing young white men from comfortable backgrounds), where Krakauer writes very movingly of how being immersed in scaling the Devil's Thumb on the Stikine Ice Cap helped him achieve a sort of exalted state:
The accumulated clutter of day-to-day existence -- the lapses of conscience, the unpaid bills, the bungled opportunities, the dust under the couch, the inescapable prison of your genes -- all of it is temporarily forgotten, crowded from your thoughts by an overpowering clarity of purpose and by the seriousness of the task at hand.
Into the Wild book is a foundational text for understanding the appeal of Instagram accounts dedicated to outdoor adventuring.
The second thing "Lost in the Valley of Death" reminded me of was the 1999 movie Holy Smoke, about a young woman who is lured home from her spiritual quest in India, then subjected to cult deprogramming. Becuse it's a Kate Winslet movie, you know she'll end up subverting everyone's plans (see also: The Dressmaker, a fine and amusing movie, streaming free if you have Amazon Prime). But what has stuck with me for years was how respectfully director Jane Campion treats the notion of spiritual revelations and how they shape a person's sense of self.
In a year that started off with Americans trashing their national parks, we could do worse than to step back to examine the connection between our interior world and the wider one outside.
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