2014’s Weirdest Social Media Trends (So Far)

We are four months into 2014 and already we can already ascertain some trends we will laugh at in ten years when you’re on a Facebook nostalgia binge. This is the first trend by the way, Facebook has the capacity to handle a re-experiencing of things that happened and were documented on your Facebook.

Nostalgia is so in:

Facebook celebrated ten years a company in early February, and to commemorate the event it developed a personalized video with pictures dating back to your first day as a user, for each user. The embrace of throwback will help define what the main trends of 2014 will be, which is weird because people are nostalgic all the time. How can experiencing nostalgia be a trend? Well, it happens every Thursday on Instagram, and it started out as nice, heartwarming and something refreshingly new but certainly not old. It will get annoying though, I can guarantee it.

Remember planking? It was, and for that matter, is the weirdest game or fad that came about on social media. After that came owling, Tebowing, Kaepernicking, and a slew of other stupid fads with pictures that got old real quick. That is why a new ‘ing’ had to be popularized every week or so.

The issue of nostalgia being a trend is not temporary, obviously nostalgia is a part of the human experience. What is trendy at the moment is the expression of nostalgia, and the hyper sense of individuality creates a need in some people to express it. Now, I hope not to be a Debbie Downer, but a lot of people do not care about your trip to the Wisconsin Dells in 1996 with your annoying sister. Really.

Being Unique and an Individual is so in right now:

Look, various institutions in our society preach for individualism among, well, individuals. People want to be unique, from the hipster community, to the yuppie community. The only issue is that, once again, the expression of individuality is sort of the same across the board. How do some girls (or guys I guess) show off their new manicure? Well, choose your social networking client and prepare for the claw.

The default position for showing off your new manicure online is something I refer to as the claw. It is when a user shows off their new manicure by positioning his or her hand in front of the camera in a strikingly strange but copied technique throughout the social networking world.

Instances include:

As you can see there are a wide variety of styles, but if everyone is different (and here comes the hard and abstract description) then that is the conformist variable. To be cool and to be like everyone else you have to look, act, and behave differently, which means the individuals who look, act, and behave in a relatively reserved fashion are actually the most individualized because they’re in the minority. I know, it’s complicated, but the fact of the matter is individuality as a weird trend is slowly eating itself of its meaning, and as such we’re all left wondering what the hell the point is of the claw.

The List becomes Unbearable:

Anytime a user is on Facebook, they are bound to come across a link to a list of some sort, listing content in a very loose framework is something people are used to. In the realm of the writing world lists are the easiest to write because the requirements involved are a number, and then a corresponding subject to this number. That is all you need to make a list, obviously.

The list is being used more and more in social media and trending articles because lets face it, they are easy to read. I’m guilty of it, you’re guilty of it, everybody is guilty of reading these lists. It takes only the most skilled writer to compile a list of some referential concept and distill quality from the issue.

One website which overwhelmingly embraces the list is the viral powerhouse of BuzzFeed. Lists upon lists of absolute garbage. This is not to say BuzzFeed does not produce quality content, they actually do, and it is very impressive stuff in what they call “long form.” Their politics section is filled with very competent writers that avoid lists, and embrace a semblance of old school journalism. When BuzzFeed started there were mostly lists, some of which were pretty good because the writer quantified a countdown of something familiar to the millennial audience, and then would provide a description and a reason for its placement. It has evolved to slim the description and reasoning and instead just produces a list of images, and rank. This is not all, a prediction can be made that people will tire of the current state of lists, after all this is a piece on trends, and a trend can only be called a trend if it eventually loses the element which grants it “trendiness.” Lists are trendy, which means lists will eventually not be trendy.

If readers want evidence of the unbearable symptoms of lists, all you need to do is visit any updated website with a blog. Actually, in researching this article, I Google searched “Social Media Trends,” and the results had a majority of lists. The smaller the list, the more information is probably conveyed. On the other hand, the greater the list, the less information is probably conveyed.

Here is a list of lists that I think contain no information which will attribute to the downturn of trendiness in lists:

The 33 Best Geeky Things to Buy on Etsy (BuzzFeed)

39 Celebrities Who Had Unbelievable Jobs Before they were Famous (BuzzFeed)

27 Things You Should Never do in London, Ever (BuzzFeed)

• This one is particularly painful, because it is a list of gifs exploiting English stereotypes in order to get a laugh, but we all know the English are the ones who are much more apt at exploitation.

35 Things you Probably Forgot Happened at the 2004 MTV Movie Awards (Buzzfeed)

• This is sort of like a super trend because we have a list and we have an expression of nostalgia.

The point here is, lists are a weird trend, one which operates in waves. As users get older this content above will not do the trick, because the odds are a guide to London will not be researched on BuzzFeed.

The Mainstream Embrace of the Meme:

It is very likely that if you’re reading this, you know what a meme is. In the philosophical realm, a meme is: an element of a culture or system of behavior that may be considered to be passed from one individual to another by nongenetic means. We know that is not what memes are in popular society. A meme in the contemporary aspect is an image, with an associated theme, which conveys information based on their theme.

Gawker created a beautiful infographic on what we understand is a meme, and what goes into it. Also, it is pronounced as if you were rhyming it with gene, or seem.

Now, the question is, why is this a weird trend? Well, it would not be the first time something from social media has made the jump to mainstream, after all, selfies, hashtags, and status updates under 140 characters have all made the jump. The difference here is, internet memes are a beloved modality of conveying information. It would be sort of tragic, but at the same time interesting to convey information, be it on a network television show by meme. It can be said that memes are here to stay, but their viability in the mainstream is teeming with possibility and that’s just weird.

Exclaiming Dependent Clauses:

We are near the end of this pseudo-list where all the topics are equally weird. Perhaps this issue way more annoying, than weird, but to people who speak English, it is both.

Have you ever heard someone say, at the beginning of the sentence, without being prompted: “I mean,”? This phrase, “I mean,” ought to only be used when someone prompts it, usually by prompting with the phrase: “What do you mean?” My own personal theory is people say “I mean,” when unprompted because they are responding to his or her own thought in their mind, and perhaps they respond to the thought of needing to explain it in words. Now, why is this a weird social media trend? It is because people are posting content, be it an image or article, and as the caption or status they write: “I mean…” This is weird because the writer does not mean anything, he or she effectively removes or conceals any sentiment of meaning.

 Other dependant clauses that have migrated to social media include:

“I can’t even.”

“Killing it.”

“Just, ugh.”

Predictions:

There are only a few, but if you want to be weirdly trendy in 2014 your best bet is to avoid trends, at any cost.

By: ParadigmNext https://paradigmnext.com.com

Google+: https://plus.google.com/+ParadigmNextChicago

ParadigmNEXT, Inc. is a digital agency headquartered in Chicagoland. We provide branding, identity, integrated marketing, social media strategy, art direction, web-design & development, startup incubation, commercial video production, product development, and commercial storefront development services to a wide array of clients ranging from bootstrapped startups to successful longstanding companies.