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Perfect.
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Hi, and welcome back to the first episode of
"Hey Alexia, What's Trending?" in 2021.
Going into a new year, I thought that it would be fun
to look back on trends in the last decade
and cover some of the best ones
and even try to make some predictions of my own
for ones we might see in 2021.
Let's rewind and kick things off with a blast from the past.
With all the new music that comes out every year,
obviously there's going to be one or two
viral sensations in there.
For example, "Gangnam Style", "Baby Shark",
"What Does the Fox Say?", and "Old Town Road",
just to name a few.
But the one that I want to remind you of
brings us back to 2012 when the movie
Pitch Perfect
It goes a little something like this.
[singing] When I'm gone, when I'm gone.
I haven't done that in a while.
The Cup Song was everywhere.
Kids and adults were all trying to learn it.
It's like a
before
Speaking of challenges, a big challenge in 2014
that you might remember is the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge.
This challenge was originally created by
Pete Frates and Pat Quinn.
Unfortunately, Pete passed away in 2019
and Pat passed away in 2020.
Both had ALS and the goal of this challenge
was to raise awareness to the disease
and also raise money for the research.
Everyone and their mother was dumping the ice cold water
onto themselves and nominating their friends to do the same.
You might remember some of your favourite celebrities
taking part in this challenge.
Kim Kardashian, Taylor Swift, One Direction.
I got you, One Direction fans.
Bill Gates and even Kermit the Frog.
[water splashes]
[Kermit shudders]
The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge proved that social media
can really bring people together,
but it can also tear people apart like...
[dramatically] ..Dun, dun, dun...
..the dress.
The dress in question went viral
after a woman named Cecilia Bleasdale
posted it on her
What colour does it look like to you?
Some people see it as blue and black,
while others see it as white and gold.
Everyone was debating this on social media.
Even celebrities popped in to give their opinions.
Not to be controversial,
but I personally see it as blue and black.
Uh, no. It's definitely white and gold.
What? Who even are you? I'm trying to film a video.
Get out of here.
OK. Rude.
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Anyways, back to past trends.
Do you guys remember The Shoot, Orange Justice, dabbing,
and, of course, The Floss?
No one's catching me doing The Floss on camera ever.
Can you pull up a clip of that?
Let's go.
You might recognize this dance from "Fortnite",
but the original creator's name is Russell Horning.
You might also know him as the Backpack Kid.
The Floss was starting to trend in 2017.
And Russell was even invited onto
with Katy Perry to perform the dance.
There's even been a song to come out about it.
It's like [sing songy] I be flossing.
And there's been some
complications with him and "Fortnite".
The legal drama is about whether "Fortnite"
had the rights to use the dance in their game or not.
Talking about drama and dances,
a similar issue is happening on
It's an ongoing conversation about
crediting the original creators of these dances.
We saw this with one of the most popular dances, Renegade.
The Renegade was a huge thing in the beginning of 2020.
It was even performed at the NBA All Star Games.
The original creator of the dance is a 14 year old girl
named Jalaiah Harmon, but not many people knew that.
So shout out to you, Jalaiah.
You started one of the biggest trends of 2020.
Back to 2021 and the trends that we might see this year.
But before I make my predictions,
let's talk to an expert.
I decided to call up Jim Carroll,
a Canadian futurist, whose job it is to predict future trends
based off what's happened in the past.
Futurist sounds like such a cool job name.
Tell me a little bit about exactly what a futurist is.
Well, I study the future.
I found myself falling into this very odd career
in which I've been advising organizations
like
you name it, global organizations, on trends,
what comes next, what's going to happen in our world.
I'm going to go over back to my desk
so we can continue talking
and bring myself through the space ship here.
And, you know, you're talking about memes
and it's absolutely fascinating because that's
all part of what is driving our world of trends today.
What makes the big trends
become these super big trends and get spread everywhere?
It's part of this connectivity and people use memes
simply to drive humour. In other cases,
the ice bucket challenge, for example,
we want to feel good about our role in the world.
We want to give back.
We're all in this complex COVID world.
We're all trying to cope every day.
We're all trying to get in a headspace we can survive this.
And so we are drawn to humour, little diversions
of time that help us to get through.
TikTok
They align to the fact that our
attention spans have disappeared.
Do you have any tips for me for predicting trends in 2021?
You've got to track a lot of offbeat people.
I think the challenge is a lot of people
read information and follow information
of people who are just like them.
The more offbeat information you follow, the better.
Become an information sponge, just an open mind and realizing
that the world you're going to be in ten years
is not going to look anything like it does today.
Jim had a lot of good advice for me
to predict some future trends. So let me give this a try.
I took Jim's advice and researched
what's going to happen in 2021, like scheduled events,
and I took a look at what's
happening in the world right now.
U.S. politics has been trending everywhere
for the first few weeks of 2021.
Joe Biden is getting sworn in soon as president.
So are we going to see a resurgence
of the Biden Obama bromance?
Are we going to find out more about
Joe Biden's mystery grandson?
The Super Bowl and the Olympics are also this year.
Are we going to get some memes with The Weeknd's performance
like we did last year with Shakira,
and the weird tongue thing?
And with all the social
justice campaigns that we saw in 2020,
will that message be spread at the Olympics?
Well, I guess we'll have to check back at the end of 2021
to see if any of my predictions were correct.
But until then, happy New Year.
It can only go up from here, right?
Thanks for tuning in.
I'll see you back here in the next episode of
"Hey Alexia, What's Trending?".
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