Here Comes the Future and it's Blech

By now, I'm sure you've read (or at least seen) Douglas Coupland's predictions for the near future. Granted, he admits they're coming from a radical pessimist. Today, I saw another article that might be the first sign of them coming true.  According to a study by Edelman (featured in a Fast Company article), brands matter as much as ethnicity and religion in terms of identifying oneself. I commented to my wife that Coupland's made me feel like the future was going to be like the 7th grade all over again: malaise coupled with cliques of horrible, stupid people with no values. Apparently that's the case as Millenials think what they buy and use defines them.

I understand that brands have meaning and people often adopt a brand because of that meaning. But I'm not going to say that the brands I use are important in how I identify myself or others. I already feel like that dog chained outside the grocery store.

New Trend: Please Shut Up

Socks

Too many consultants, news people, and infotainment sources are trying to spot the next new trend.  They want to be first. They want to create it so they can show the world how savvy and astute they are. The problem? Too often they're just full of shit.

New trends come about because people (either individually or collectively) begin to behave in the same way and then feed off of others behaving like that.  It's kind of like the wave at a football game. One drunken idiot (the forward thinker in this case) spends half the game screaming at everyone to stand up and do the wave.  At some point, the entire stadium does it a few times and then it dies down because we all grow sick of it. Chances are, you have no idea how it started and barely notice when it ends. But you may or may not take part in a little group think.

The Internet seems to have given voice to too many of these drunken idiots, I mean self-actualized forward thinkers. Too many experts are pointing at every new thing they see as a new trend (thus the picture I retrieved from a twitter feed proclaiming "New trend: fun socks for men." God I hope not). Even brands are trying to push their crappy wares onto consumers and claim them to be a trend. Occasionally consumers are duped into adopting these trends.

The best trends are the ones that happen organically. By the time the experts and Fortune 500 companies notice them, they're already played out.