3_TRENDS_Vol.16: Rachel Greenspan: Fake Authenticity, Meme Fatigue + Reply Guys

Blueberry-milk nails. Hot rodent boyfriend. Tomato-girl summer. What do these things have in common? Absolutely nothing. They are all utterly meaningless. That and, within the last year, each one has become a micro-trend, a niche and short-lived yet pervasive fad that sweeps the Internet.

If scenes begin to emerge these days, they don’t stay local for long as their digital reach goes far beyond the manor. They trend online and become bought into or appropriated by the masses and diluted designed by committee — a fragment of what it once was. The gestation period is cut short and all before the scene has really reached its cultural e... See more

“As memes dominate our lives, we’ve fully embraced our role as carriers, reorienting our behavior and identities towards emulating the most powerful—and often the most primal and base—models of desire. Taken to the extreme, this could be seen as a horrifying loss of human capacity to build and create in new and surprising ways.”