Chomping Away from 1985
My personal feeds vary based on the type of social media I am using. My Tumblr is a chaotic mess of cute animals pictures/videos to social justice posts to hilarious vines or “Tumblr memes”. Whereas my Twitter feed is all posts from newspapers and magazines; this is how I get my news. Finally, my Facebook is a combination of the two previous plus I get to see what goes on in the lives of my friends and family.
When my friends share things on social media, it usually has something to do with an oddity like “world’s tinniest houses” or some social justice post involving gender/race/sexuality equality or animal rights. The people I follow also like making comedy posts that include GIFs or puns.
Over the past week on my Tumblr feed, people couldn't stop posting about the Superbowl halftime show. Not that I am surprised, Katy Perry’s halftime show was a sight to behold. People mostly seemed interested in creating posts relating to the costumed shark back up dancers during “Teenage Dream” (refereed to by #left shark and #right shark). The sharks are tagged in posts about the Super Bowl, Katy Perry, the John Mayer Late Late Show, and Back to the Future Part II (know as #backtothefuturepredictions).
I believe it all started when the sharks became off tempo during the dance, which made one shark look more dedicated to the performance than the other. After that, people started talking about it because it was funny. The sharks were later guests on the John Mayer Late Late Show which added to their popularity.
The dancing sharks also became popular thanks to the new 2015 trend #backtothefuturepredictions. In the 1980s sequel, Marty traveled to the year 2015 and showed us all what the future had in store. Now that it is 2015, people are trying to see what the writers got right. What do these things have to do with each other? As you can see from my last link, the dancing sharks look remarkably similar to the 3D shark from the “Jaws 19” ad outside the the future movie theater that almost ate Marty.
Now I really love the Back to the Future predictions trend. I think it is going to be present for the entire year without becoming boring or overdone. It will grow and develop with the year. As far as the dancing sharks…well they are definitely cute.
Trend example links:
http://johnmayeritalia.tumblr.com/tagged/left-shark
http://irwinand.tumblr.com/post/110149183752/you-know-he-just-got-those-sharks-on-the-show
http://mintypartdeux.tumblr.com/post/110374942424/this-kind-of-joke-just-isnt-right
http://erikpreston.tumblr.com/post/109837814725/backtothefuturepredictions-superbowl-katyperry