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♪ [music plays]
Block of feta cheese right in the middle.
Everything was so beautiful.
[pop]
So many trends, so little time.
♪ [theme]
Hey, guys. Welcome back to another episode of
"Hey Alexia, What's Trending?".
If you've been watching this series for a while,
you know that my job is to cover trends.
Everything from baby Yoda to hot chocolate bombs
to potential aliens.
So you might be wondering what goes into the decision process
of making one of these episodes?
Out of all the trends that are out there,
how do I decide which one to cover for each episode?
Well, it takes a lot of research.
♪ [upbeat]
Child:
Um... very important research.
Like I said, a lot of research.
Then I go back and forth with my producer
and the
Trends pop up out of nowhere all the time.
We're only five months into 2021
and we already have
[fart sound]
Crystals.
Online chess.
TikTok
The return of
♪ ♪
And the driver's license challenge.
[indiscernible whining]
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle,
The Tales of Ladybug and Cat Noir,
book talk, the mosaics challenge,
the slipping through my fingers challenge,
the tell me this without actually telling me challenge.
I don't know. I think I listed off all of them.
So how exactly does a trend start
and why do we all jump on the bandwagon?
In the book, "Trending: How and Why Stuff Gets Popular",
Kira Vermond and Clayton Hanmer
take a look at a bunch of trends over the years
and explain where they come from
and how trends affect us as a society.
This book has already won a ton of awards, including
the Ontario Library Association's
Yellow Cedar Award.
Here's how it went when I sat down with them
to nerd out about our favourite fads and trends
and also learn more about their book.
Can you give me like a rundown on what fads are
and how they come to be?
Yeah, sure. Absolutely.
OK, so fads and trends are a little bit different,
but fads are anything that becomes really popular
really, really fast and then drops off in popularity
really, really quickly, too.
So Clayton's going to draw for us.
Clayton is my illustrator on trending.
Here we go.
He's going to draw us the chart, basically.
So at the very beginning of the chart on that first
little area, that's basically where the fads just start.
Like somebody, let's just say they are wearing, OK,
they're wearing
One person -- I know, I just happened
to have these in my office.
One person is wearing
start to see them wearing
Now, if this person is one of the cool kids
and they're wearing
to sort of entice other people to wear them too.
And then, yeah, more kids start to wear it.
And then as soon as you see more kids wearing them
that even more kids are wearing
Maybe it starts to like, you know, spread to other schools
when you're seeing each other,
when we finally see each other again
and then suddenly everybody is talking about wearing
and wearing them, you're seeing them everywhere.
And then at one point, you hit that sort of crescendo
of the popularity of the fad, yeah, who cares?
Everybody says, "Oh, my gosh, those are so 2020".
I cannot believe anybody ever wore that stuff.
It is like I don't I can't be seen dead wearing these things.
And then they, they just they fall in the toilet.
That's what happens.
So that's how fads actually are created.
What was the second part of that question again?
Did I answer it?
Yeah, no, it was just how they come to be.
Yeah. So that's it.
Well, also how they come to be.
Maybe it's sometimes, you know, word of mouth.
Somebody who is cool is actually kind of pushing it.
Sometimes it's on the media, in the media and
somebody, you know, I don't know, is talking about
in the media and lots and lots of people hear about that
and then they start wearing them, too.
But what's really, really interesting and what the book,
"Trending", a lot of it is about is how
fads are actually manufactured.
They're created by companies and organizations
hoping that people will actually
jump on board and follow the herd.
Yeah, I can totally relate to the
because I know kids in my school started wearing them.
They started wearing them with like funky socks,
like tie dye socks or whatever.
And then everyone was like obsessed about like the little
Jibbitz or whatever in their
So what's the difference between a fad and a trend?
Is there a difference?
So there's a fad, which is what we just described.
It takes off really quickly and then falls really quickly.
Then you've got a trend.
And a trend is something that usually starts a little slower,
becomes popular, and takes a lot longer for it to die off.
And then you have something even more interesting,
which is called a classic.
So it starts off as a fad. You think it's --
Clayton is just drawing like crazy here. I love it.
I'm always amazed. I always forget
what you're doing there, Clayton.
Anyway, with the classic, it starts as a fad,
it takes off really, really, really quickly.
And then it sort of turns into a trend
that lots of people are using it or wearing it or doing it
or hearing it, listening to it, eating it, whatever.
And it stays popular.
It becomes basically part of our society, part of our existence.
I think about the wristwatch. Okay.
Wristwatch is a really good example of that.
It started -- Clayton's like,
"I got to draw some wristwatches now".
So basically with the wristwatch,
nobody wanted to wear a watch on their wrist back, you know,
around World War One, and
they wanted to wear a pocket watch because everybody wore
pocket watches. But when the guys went off to war,
it was way easier and way faster just to look at your wrist
and look at what the time was.
They went back to society after the war was over
and some of them kept wearing them.
And that became a bit of a trend.
People were still stuck around with it for a little while.
And but eventually it just never went away.
And it became what we call a classic now.
So, yeah, we're stuck with them, although now we're
using these things to tell the time.
So I think wristwatches are kind of on their way out.
How come these fads have such a big impact on people?
Why does that happen?
They really speak to how we feel about ourselves.
I know when I was doing some research into fads and trends
that kids will actually sort of want to follow the herd
and actually get caught up in a trend and the hoopla
because they want to fit in.
They want to fit in with their friends,
they want to fit in and look cool or feel like they're part
of the crowd, part of their community.
Now, adults are interesting.
Adults actually follow the herd or get caught up in trends
and fads because they want to show off.
They want to, you know, keep up with the Joneses
and show that they have the cool stuff, too.
So there's a bit of a different driver.
I saw that you had a chapter about bad fads.
Can you give me an example of what that would be?
I know you know where I'm going with this, Clayton, right?
We're talking about
You have to understand about a fad is that it's not the thing.
It's not that the
It's the idea that the
That's actually what is moving and grooving
from person to person to person.
So bad idea can really have a really bad influence on people
because they get caught up in the hoopla,
they get caught up, they don't do things
that they're supposed to do.
They're doing things that might be even illegal.
That's a bad fad for sure.
So
it started out as this cute little fun thing for kids.
And then adults got involved and they started selling them
for like super high amounts of money online.
And people actually lost like hundreds --
like a hundred thousand dollars that they put aside
for their kids education. They lost that.
Another guy had gone into a store and he actually held up
a store for
He just wanted the
To me, that's a bad fad.
That's something that goes seriously wrong,
that people become -- it's actually called a craze
and people just sort of forget themselves.
Would you rather spend $1,000 on
OK, so like, I think this
tells you everything you need to know.
I would spend $1,000 on
and then I would give them to kids in hospitals
because I think that's a good way to use them.
They're very squishy.
[he laughs]
Yeah. You know, I just learned about these
today, really, and I think I would probably
do the
Which food theme would you prefer?
Unicorn's food or mermaid food?
[laughter]
OK, so we did talk about the Unicorn Frappuccino in the book
and I came to really hate them because
they were made to be
They tasted horrible.
That one was just not good.
It was gross. Yeah.
So I would say I would go with mermaid just because,
you know, it's kind of glittery and fun
and hopefully it tastes better.
Clayton, what do you think?
Um, you know, I think I'm doing unicorn on this one.
[laughter]
Which trendy accessory would you rather wear?
Dad hats or 90s style sunglasses?
I already have a dad hat on right now I think.
So I guess I have to go with dad hats,
although I also wear 90s sunglasses so...
As for me I would totally do dad hat
because I am rocking pandemic hair right now,
and I totally want to just cover it up.
So dad hat for sure.
Thank you so much again to Kira and Clayton
for talking fads and trends with me.
What do you think? Would you rather spend $1,000 on
Squishmallows
I'm going to fall.
I'm Alexia for
Thanks for watching. See you next time.
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