Trends
As the title suggests, this article is on trends and the associated effects of following them. Trends also known as fads can be defined as forms of behavior which becomes popular in a collective group of people and is followed enthusiastically by them. Trends mostly develop as the product of peer pressure and also because such behavior is espoused to be cool by the social or other media.
Such behavior by people is explained by an effect called “Bandwagon Effect” which states that more the people following a particular fad, more will be the number who will join in that particular fad. The year 2014 saw the emergence of the “Ice Bucket Challenge” which challenged people to dump a bucket of ice-cold water on themselves and then nominate others to follow suit. This act designed to raise awareness about the ALS or Lou Gehrig’s Disease saw a lot of takers in several countries across the world. India also saw numerous celebrities taking up the challenge. This led to the practice being followed by members of the general public who just blindly aped the trend without any gain to their knowledge about the disease.
Hashtags And The Hogwash
This is not the only example of situations in which people were intent only on blindly aping the celebrities and this certainly leads us to think about the general degeneration of the public mindset. We are content to think that following a few social trends on the social media makes us valuable citizens of the society and also takes care of all our social responsibilities. This is certainly a deplorable situation.
Perhaps, one of the most irritating trends of today is the excessive use of hashtags. Hash character is quite a common computational symbol. But, when combined to a word or phrase it acts as a label by which specific topics can be accessed. This certainly is a useful characteristic and is hence used by microblogging sites like Twitter and picture sharing sites like Instagram. Unfortunately, we have indulged in misusing such a powerful tool by creating useless content. We have often come across posts on social media platforms which tend to have an astounding number of hashtags in them. These hashatgs which have no apparent use certainly serve to exacerbate the pain of reading through the post. Hashtags like #lonely, #mafia ,#chilling_out when combined to an innumerable number of tags does not make one seem cool. Rather, it shows the ignorance of the user , seemingly intent on aping a raging trend.
Concluding Note
This article might seem like a diatribe against the popular culture of our times. It is not certainly meant to be such a piece. Rather, it is just an attempt to dissuade people from indulging in blatant imitation of fads as they serve no purpose to anyone. We should be aware of the reason behind a particular fad as blindly aping them is like a mockery of the social causes which induce them. Trends in fashion are certainly not related to these and following them depends on the personal likes or dislikes. But, awareness is certainly essential for trends which require our conscious efforts.
