Silly bands and “Heelys” are popular items that everyone who’s anyone has multiples of. At least that is what we thought 2016 would look like 10 years ago.It’s a repeating trend in popular culture. An item or fad becomes wildly popular for a short amount of time only to leave us all looking back wondering how we ever could’ve been so immature. But obviously history doesn’t repeat itself, so there’s no way that we’ll be looking back in 10 years regretting the fads we bought into now.
1. Snapchat: Snapchat is the perfect definition of a fad, It is wildly popular with no clear path of sustainability. The only way Snapchat won’t be painful to look back on in a decade is the lack of records of what the pictures look like. Snapchat’s main feature of not saving pictures will be what saves future generation the embarrassment of bunny filter and face altering filter selfies.
2. Hashtags: Hashtags are another thing that will fade pretty quickly, especially the recently developed habit that people have of actually saying the word “hashtag” in regular conversation. The hashtag is going to have trouble when the inevitable fall of Twitter and Instagram come around, speaking of,
3. Twitter/ Instagram: Twitter and Instagram are both very popular right now, but as the extravagant success of MySpace will show you, social media websites tend to rise and fall quickly. Facebook is the clear exception to this rule, but most other social media websites don’t last. The existence of filter laden Instagram photos and brief Twitter rants will be a treasure trove of cringe inducing memories in 10 years.
4. Keep Calm and …: Beginning as a rallying cry for the British people in the midst of World War II, the phrase “Keep Calm and Carry On” has been changed into the rallying cry of every cause under the sun. “Keep Calm and …” exists for everything from supernatural to Sesame Street.
5. Bacon Everything: Everything has been turned into bacon. Today we have bacon ice cream, bacon gum, bacon clothes and bacon everything else. Bacon is a perfectly fine food, but the pop culture frenzy around it cannot last.. In a decade we’ll look back on the bacon hats and bacon shirts and wonder how we could’ve thought they were good ideas.
6. Mustache Everything: Right along side the baconized version of everything, we have mustache everything. Out of seemingly nowhere there has arisen a sudden phenomenon of cartoon mustaches adorning everything from hats to shirts to backpacks. As a culture we “mustache” ourselves if this is a trend we want to perpetuate as a society.
7. Taking Photos of Every Meal: Since the inception of photo-based social media like Instagram and Snapchat the trend has become to take picture of every single meal before you consume it. While this trend leads to incredibly adorable pictures of cooling food, it tends to just be annoying for everyone else who has to scroll past them in order to look for more dog appreciation posts and duck face selfies. But at the same time, maybe documenting life’s experiences and memories through photography is just how some people choose to live their lives. So what place do I have to be condescending on how others choose to enjoy their food.
8. Beats by Dre: Beats are incredibly overpriced headphones that don’t really offer much more than their cheaper competition. Beats are just another fad that will fade. Pretty soon they’ll give way to another business by Dr Dre, maybe a restaurant called Eat by Dre.
9. Winged Eyeliner: I don’t know anything about eyeliner, but someone told me that it’s a pretty big fad so here’s someone who knows what they are talking about. Samantha Gonski: Cat eye? Does winged eyeliner even resemble a Cat’s Eye whatsoever? Is all the effort worth that one little wing? And once you even finish, you know the wings will never be perfectly even. It’s a frustration that every teenage girl has faced in the nation.
10. Listicles: A listicle is an article that is just a list of things and not an actual article. They are pure laziness and not real journalism. In a few years we’ll all look back at all of the online articles trying to pass for real reporting that are just lists of bullets. In ten years we’ll look back on this fad of shoddy reporting and laugh at the laziness of it.
By: Zach Godwin
