Trends

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Lets talk about TRENDS.

In fact, let's talk about the EXISTENCE of trends - on the Lex's LJ in a recent post dubdobdee said he basically didn't believe in them, or at least found them harmful as a way of thinking about stuff (dunno if he was specifically referring to music or what). Boyofbadgers agreed.

I am interested in this perspective - do you think that thinking about music in terms of trends is useful? Do you think the ebbs and flows of musical fashion as documented by journalists has any relation to real life experience? If anyone else likes it, is it a bonus? (Or a PENALTY?)

Am I being too vague?

Comments

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I come into contact with the idea of 'trends' a lot at work. Generally this means either finding quantifiable large scale patterns in consumer data and working out which are the most important, or it means someone trying a spot of "coolhunting" and trying to pick up on a "street trend".

The latter is almost always disasterous, because in order to do it well you need to be i. an actual expert in what you're talking about and ii. prepared to report on what is happening not what you'd like to be happening. In my perhaps jaded experience, most non-full-time "coolhunters" (I haven't worked with the real pros, if such there be, just researchers and planners trying it out) are well-off late-twentysomethings and report that the world is getting altogether more comfortable for other well-off late-twentysomethings. One 'trend newsletter' I was given to edit had one 'thinkpiece' which was basically a list of the writer's favourite designer handbag shops, for instance. You need to have a fairly pitiless eye for your own obsolescence to do it properly, I guess, and most writers don't.

[boyofbadgers.livejournal.com]

This is one of my beefs with the sort of trendspotting stuff you get in the mainstream media: the typle of people who do it are from precisely the same narrow demographic. Hence the ridiculous 'having babies and settling down is the new all night rave' articles that pop up every few years.

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

ha ha ha surely we are due that very article on Freaky Trigger any day now.