Well, everyone get ready https://t.co/iXGO9DzVDR
— The Cut (@TheCut) February 17, 2022
In a new article for The Cut, Allison P. Davis speaks to trend-forecasting consultant (and K-HOLE founder) Sean Monahan about what he refers to as an upcoming vibe shift in pop culture.
Previous "vibes" included:
Hipster/Indie Music (ca. 2003–9) [e.g. Arcade Fire and cocktail bars]
Post-Internet/Techno Revival (ca. 2010–16) [e.g. Blood Orange & normcore staples like New Balance]
Hypebeast/Woke (ca. 2016–20) [e.g. Drake, sneaker flipping, and virtue signalling]
Writing on his substack, Monahan (who somehow makes a living doing this) wrote about how changes in pop culture can take people by surprise and how some get frozen in time:
One day everyone was wearing Red Wing boots and partying in warehouses in Williamsburg decorated with twinkling fairy lights. VIBE SHIFT! Everyone started wearing Nike Frees and sweating it out in the club. Now some did not make it through the vibe shift … ‘Why are you all wearing the same sneakers!’ they would plead. ‘Don’t you care about authenticity? What’s with all this sudden interest in branding!’
What's the new vibe going to be? He's not sure - the pandemic has halted progression, but he has some theories:
“I feel like the trajectory of the 2010s has been exhausted in a lot of ways. The culture-war topic no longer seems quite as interesting to people. Social media isn’t a place where you can be as creative anymore; all the angles are figured out. Younger people are less interested in things like quote-unquote cancel culture. These were kind of, like, the big pillars we used to navigate pop culture in the 2010s. And we had the rise of all these world-spanning, like, Sauron-esque tech platforms that literally have presences on every continent. People want to make things personal again.”
He thinks the new vibe shift could be the return of early-aughts indie sleaze. “American Apparel, flash photography at parties, and messy hair and messy makeup,” he riffs, plus a return to a more fragmented culture.“People going off in a lot of different directions because it doesn’t feel like there’s a coherent, singular vision for music or fashion.” He sees Substacks and podcasts as the new blogs and a move away from Silicon Valley’s interest in optimizing workflow, “which is just so anti-decadence.” Most promisingly, he predicts a return of irony.
So ONTD, I ask of you - the people who are still on livejournal in 2022 - are you seeing shifting trends? Where do you think pop-culture is headed? Do the mods need to make a 2020s tag to contain the new vibes?
Source: 1 / 2