#micro trends

[toadlessgirl]

After a decade of stalking ebay auctions I finally have my very own monogram fan - the product of an short-lived 1896/97 obsessive micro-trend among teenage girls on the East Coast.

Though this particular young lady was either flirting with danger, or being staunchly neutral, by having both a Harvard AND a Yale flag on her fan (also a Cornell so she may have just been playing pokemon with the Ivy League).

I love the White Star Line logo that still included Ismay, Imrie & Co.

[candyperfumedgirl]

📺 🤍

[maryjanelbw]

no actually circling back to my last post bc i’m not done yet. the amount of normalized that shein and fast fashion has become is absurd. i get that the price is was entices people but seriously you guys it’s the same price if not cheaper for better quality clothes at the thrift or somewhere second hand. not to mention making/customizing your own clothes is always an option but god forbid you guys actually get of tik tok and try to do something. i don’t wanna see one more person complaining about “not having money to have good style and dress the way they wanna dress” when they’re spending $100 on shein every week. it’s honestly ridiculous. you guys complain about your lack of individuality but then are first in line for the newest microtrend of the day. maybe if you realized that lack of money isn’t the problem and it’s actually lack of creativity and common sense, maybe you would have your dream closet. but no, you’d rather sit on tik tok and let someone else tell you what your dream closet should be and the next useless item you just need to buy that’s linked in their caption. put your phone down for 5 seconds and use your brain because i promise you money is not your problem it’s the inability to think for yourself.

[corrya]

You are under SPELLS people, SPELLS!!

[mintconditioned]

clean girl has actually not declined yet my last post was wrong but that's besides the point

So if you saw my last post, I posted “clean girl is over” and thought I was just spiteful because I look terrible in a slickback.

But I did a lot of research since then.

A lot.

So I just wanted to share what I found since I promised to update you guys.

You guys gave me more trends to test, so I expanded to these aesthetics:

Balletcore

Office siren

Indie kid

Tumblr grunge

Dark academia 

Y2K 

Coquette

Shoujo girl

VSCO girl

Downtown girl

Acubi

Goblincore

I basically tried to measure waste from aesthetic trends without directly tracking landfill data (which is almost impossible to get in real time).

So I used three proxies:

1. Value collapse

I measured this as % of listings under $15

Because in resale, under $15 = near-discard tier

2. Listing surplus

This is just total resale listings

More listings = more material committed to the trend

Cottagecore is insane here btw (356K listings)

3. Supply-demand mismatch timing

Basically a trend peaks, demand falls, but supply doesn’t

The longer prices stay low after the peak, the more likely that stuff never gets used again

Then I combined all three into one number:

Trend Waste Index (TWI)

It weights:

– cheapness (0.4)

– volume (0.4)

– how long the oversupply lingers (0.2)

And the ranking is kind of brutal:

Which leads into the second thing I measured:

Trend Half-Life

This is just:

How long until a trend loses half its attention?

Average across everything: ~2 years

But here’s a pattern I’m noticing:

Older trends (2020-2021):

~2-3 year EHL

Mid trends (2022–2023):

~1-2 EHL

New trends (2024-2026):

sometimes under 1 year

This shows trend decay is accelerating.

And when you line that up with resale data, you get this pattern:

Fast spike

Instant overproduction

Price collapse

Resale flood

Which explains why prices all cluster around like $11-$13

Everyone is undercutting each other because there’s too much supply

Different types of trends behave differently though:

Microtrends (office siren, acubi)

explode

die

create the most waste

Slower cultural trends (cottagecore, tumblr grunge)

decline gradually

still wasteful, but less abrupt

Revival trends (Y2K, dark academia)

never fully die

actually less waste because demand keeps coming back

This is basically a market failure. platforms and influencers generate demand while holding zero risk, brands produce fast and sell volume while offloading excess, and consumers and resellers are the ones stuck with depreciation, while the environment absorbs whatever is left.

The system overproduces by design because the decision-makers don’t bear the downside, which is what creates a negative externality. And it’s getting worse as everything speeds up. Trends move faster, production reacts instantly, economic life gets shorter, and waste per trend increases.

Resale markets don’t actually solve this; they just delay disposal while prices collapse. So trends aren’t just cultural cycles anymore; they’re compressed economic cycles, where value is extracted quickly at the top and waste is pushed downstream just as fast.

So I tested some other trends from Italy and South Korea. So far, they show me similar patterns, but I need more South Korean trends to really test my study. Five South Korean trends in total were used:

발레코어

하이틴

고프코어

Y2K

우아한

if you know of any more, please tell me bc i really am invested in this project.

also, sorry if any of this was unclear or anything; i’m writing this kinda late and my brain is fried. if you have any further questions feel free to message me and ask! if you want you guys can look more at my notes: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1DS2rFtq7b8t9jRk-l74gw8Ozb8qbaW34?usp=sharing they’re not finished but they give you more of an explanation than this post probably will lol.

anyway i hope you guys have a great day.

[theinterpretingbookworm]

[bideogaymes]

the 2020s are in an identity crisis

this Black creator’s video gave me a lot to think about what ive observed and experienced with the transition of fhe 90s to the early 2000s from elementary school to high school & growing up with the advent of social media. she puts to words things i couldn’t name on my own exactly really well, tying into her analysis of contemporary fashion, consumerism, technology, feminism and economics.

Some would argue subcultures have transitioned to being online, but id halfway disagree. nonblack ppl proliferating the misuse of AAVE and buying the same fandom merch hardly counts as true subcultures to me. also, i do think this analysis doesn’t take into account the subcultures currently being used and created in a non-US or western context. But i think her focus in this video is specifically the West so i cant charge her for it anyway.

[andyundercover7]

I guess it just irks me a little to see people buying 15 dvds in one day from a thrift store just to fit the analog trend.

And I’ve specifically chose not to exaggerate the median number of dvds I see people buying on TikTok or Instagram because it should be seen as absurd to buy FIFTEEN movies at once.

We cannot not let social media warp our perception of what is normal to buy.

And the reason I’m bringing up consumption is because this analog trend is based on consumption.

It’s hardly just about getting off of social media when you have 5 unread books at home and you’re buying MORE (not to say I’m not guilty). Or you just bought a dvd player and ten dvds in one day without thinking about if that’s actually practical for you. Or a cheap cd player off of amazon.

You’re being shown cool pictures and aesthetic rooms that are made to make you want to buy. Even if it’s not directly from corporations or ads or influencers telling you to buy.

Capitalism isn’t just companies, it’s the basic set up of American life (I’m not saying it’s only here, I just can’t speak for other countries). The social system of the united states is money, buy, get rid of, repeat.

And we all encourage each other to participate BEVAUSE ITS ENGRAINED IN OUR WAY OF LIFE even if we don’t notice it. Hauls, trends, day in the life, grwm, fit checks, ALL OF IT. Even if those videos aren’t made to sell you something, we are taught to think that way. So I’m not saying the landfills are every influencers fault, it’s the system. And there are people who are trying to change it.

Back to my thesis

Even if you’re showing the things you do to oppose capitalism or screen addiction, people will still see that as a reason to buy a puzzle, a brand new bike, a knitting kit, instead of looking at what they definitely already have at their disposal.

Also, buying something from a thrift store doesn’t make it better. I know we like to pretend buying second hand and donating is SO MUCH BETTER but really it’s a minor difference and only if you’re buying at a normal pace.

Buying thirty thrifted items you’re going to throw away by July is still a problem for the countries our shit is being shipped off to when we’re done with it.

AND LET ME ADD THIS LAST THING

analog bags are stupid. And not a thing. It’s a fucking bag. People have always carried their books, music device, cell phones, and cameras at the same time. It’s just rare now because everything is on our phones.

Go look up a what’s in my bag from 2008. These are from Flickr from 2012, 2007, and 2005. PEOPLE HAVE ALWAYS CARRIED THEIR STUFF.

Okay now if you liked my post go watch Drama Kweens YouTube video