In the earlier 2000 years to around 2014, popular purchases ranged from skinny jeans, galaxy print, lokai bracelets, EOS lip balms, and more. In 2018-2020, pearl necklaces, scrunchies, Hydroflasks, LED lights, and Kanken backpacks were raided from shelves. Where are these things today? In the present moment when these things are trending, do we really like them or do we just want them because they are trending?
Baggy jeans. If we were still in the phase of liking skinny jeans in 2010, we’d be horrified by what we’re seeing now in 2024.
Low-rise jeans. I like and have liked them but will not forget when a girl made a video about them in 2020 and got flamed in her comments. Now, multiple people love them and many of those are the ones who didn’t agree back in 2020.
Side parts. It was everyone’s go-to hairstyle a few years ago, but middle parts took over sooner than later. Suddenly everyone hopped on a bandwagon and decided middle parts were the only correct way.
Ribbons in hair. Some girls used to wear ribbons from Justice in their hair because of Jojo Siwa. As for the plain ones, how long will they last before people get tired of them?
EOS lip balms. They were girls’ prized possessions and I no longer see them in stores now; Summer Fridays lip balms have taken over.
Girls ages 8-12 watch TikTok and are buying retinol from Drunk Elephant, inspired by the hauls they watch online. They feel the need to have something simply to have it in their possession – maybe because it looks nice, or it works on someone else – suddenly they need to buy it.
TikTok. For a good bit of time, TikTok was absolutely dead in its prime. Few people started gathering along on the app “as a joke”, however, that “joke” did not last long. Soon enough, everybody was on the app and it became one of the biggest sources of our entertainment.
It makes me think, what will happen to Instagram? With people so addicted to social media now, will we stay on Instagram or leave it behind?
Trends are all over the place and people are heavily influenced – it’s like they will never dress the way they feel anymore, but instead, what fits the standard of today. One minute something is trendy, the next, it’s not.
It has caused people to think in a way where if they have a different opinion, they are automatically considered wrong by majority. Just how easy it is to convince people how to dress, act, and look from the outside, the same goes for the inside.
One example is celebrities. Those who quickly rise to fame will reach a certain amount of love once they enter the spotlight when suddenly someone wants to stand out and switch their opinion. Soon enough everyone follows, claiming they never liked the person in the first place. We need to be able to form thoughts without being brainwashed or scared to be judged by others.
Big influencers use their platform to spread information about political views, and that can easily change the minds of impressionable young generations.
In 2020 during the BLM protest, I watched a YouTube video of an influencer explaining she’d no longer be buying from Brandy Melville as she doesn’t support its exclusivity of sizes and specifically race and ethnicities. A few months later, she received Brandy Melville for her birthday and explained that it wasn’t her who bought it for herself, it was her grandparents (apparently meaning she was not supporting the brand). A year or two later where she believed most everyone would forget, she bought from the brand again. While most people don’t notice, it shouldn’t take what’s “trending” and what most people are doing for someone to make a decision. In addition, why do you make that decision temporarily? If it was something you truly believed you cared for, you’d actually do something about it rather than say it for an audience and then contradict your actions soon enough after.
We don’t all collectively decide something; we just follow one another because we like to feel validation from agreeing with others. It’s so important to find friends with whom you can talk about your feelings and opinions without feeling judged, degraded, and belittled.
Not everything is black and white. People should be open to everybody’s opinions, and the last thing they should feel is bad about their own. There is a difference between forcing your view onto others and respectfully talking with those who own opposing views about them.
