Its seems in today’s society that the new trends in the media have to be consumed to such a level that within a short period of time they have grown old and boring and therefore the next new big thing has to step in a replace it. Is this system unhealthy or is it good to have a new fresh medium to captivate us. Many trends usually involve parents splashing out on the new big thing such as iPhones, iPads and Kindles (the list goes on) just to fit in with the majority of their peers who already own this great new product.
Trends can spread across many different subjects from social media, games, gadgets and clothes highlighting just how hard it is to get away from this every changing want for the cool and most popular.
Social Media
With the creation of the internet social media sites have always been trend setters. Just within my life time the key social networking sites that I have HAD to sign up to are Bebo, MySpace, Facebook and Twitter. I can remember whenever the new trend would arise it would be the talk of the school and whoever didn’t have a page or account would be ‘uncool’. I find it crazy how similar this sites are with statuses, pictures, comments and messaging etc. It must be the new styles and layouts which captivate millions into transferring over.
Amongst these social networking sites lay a variety of their own trends. With the introduction of Facebook came one very ‘special’ trend… that will be remembered throughout history as one of the most influential of a generation… this is of course Farmville. Farmville allowed any Facebook user to own and look after their very own cartoon pig, cow, sheep and chicken! (a great responsibility). Whoever had the biggest and most impressive farm would instantly be catapulted to the top of your farmer Facebook friends list.
However this trend on Facebook has long since faded away with one of the new trends taking Facebook by storm. ‘Nek Nomination’. This trend involves people drinking the most ridiculous pint they can think of within the quickest period of time, after this they then go on to nominate whoever they like who has to then go on and create their own video within a 24 hour time frame. This trend is now a few weeks old so I would not be surprised if we saw the end of this within the very near future.
Apps
Trends have now started appearing within the iPhone and Andriod apps, the most recent being Flappy Bird. This app involves a small bird (doesn’t even look like one) being guided through a series of pipes, however if even a feather brushes the pipe he will nose dive to his death where the user will have to start the game over for the 752nd time. Personally it would be much appreciated if this trend decided to fade away with the others as my life recently has become a ball of rage towards this small pixelated bird. My high score is only 71… the shame.
YouTube Videos
With the ever growing YouTube audience where people consume the majority of their media today, we are always treated with a new video that sweeps the world by storm. Examples of these ‘works of arts’ are Gangnam Style, the Harlem Shake and What does the Fox say? The combined viewing total of these videos is 2,302,008,658+… proving the huge audience these YouTube trends have. However as we’ve learnt before these videos will be a thought of the past with a new cat or fails video stealing the limelight.
We will never escape the idea of trends as its just human nature to want to fit in with a crowd and want the biggest and best new thing. So what do you think will be the next ‘big’ thing?
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Thanks for reading.
Speak to you soon!
Joel Wood 