Trends are nothing new

Anyone in the creative life knows there’s not really anything new under the sun. There are only seven stories; all art is derivative; fashions are cyclical.

But technology? That keeps changing. It keeps moving forward, inexorably, leaving behind those who can’t get with the program.

Or does it? What hit me was that although technology changes, although the delivery method changes, many emerging online trends mirror things from the past. Things which have come and gone – ebbed in and out of our way of life. And it made me wonder whether the same will happen again.

The stimulus for this realization was learning about Pinterest’s ‘live shopping events’ with ‘creators’, where regular people will watch richer people talk up their products and sell things with their charm and sparkling wit.

And I couldn’t help but bitterly mutter ‘millennial QVC’. Indeed, I shook my fist so hard that I put my back out and needed to play Parappa the Rapper for a while to calm myself down.

Now, look, I love Pinterest. It’s one of those things that just needed to exist. I don’t resent anyone doing their thing and participating in communities that bring them joy, or spending their money how they wish. I’m not saying that these live events are bad.

I’m just noting that in 1999, an 18-year-old would have scoffed extremely loudly at the idea of buying something from a TV shopping channel. We would have considered it gullible, tacky and extremely uncool. What’s changed?

The presenters are trendier, a self-defeating argument that just means that they’re more in tune with the tastes of a new generation, and perhaps a bit cannier.

The tools we use to access this kind of media are more – infinitely – flexible and adaptive now, meaning that you don’t pigeonhole yourself merely by participating. Shopping TV was something people watched while you were out doing something cool. Now a 20-something can watch a creator-led live community event on an iPhone 13 amongst the monsteras and terrazzo of their local WeWork. Or I can watch it in my dressing gown while I wash up my kids’ breakfast.

Meanwhile, culture and commerce have become ever more intertwined – where youth culture always had an anti-commercial vein in the Old Days™, that’s vanished now. Being young and expressing your identity has never been more urgently conjoined with buying things. There is a counter-culture that pushes against this, of course – the sustainability movement – and young people being Toried into having less disposable income and job security than at any other point in modern life. But certainly buying stuff – a lot of stuff – with no more effort than a few swipes and taps means Asos packages and Amazon boxes are as common in student halls as posters of Che Guevara and alcopops were in our day.

Which segues nicely on to online shopping. This was around in the 90s too – and it was called mail order. The thing your nan did. Who would want to do that? Who would be caught dead in clothes ordered from a catalog, from models staring into the middle distance? And who would want to forgo the vital experience of wandering around the indigo jungle of denim jackets in your local Gap?

Of course, mail order originated in the 1950s, when it was the coolest thing since sliced bread, which in turn was the coolest thing since, well, bread. I wonder if there were scathing articles in 1928 laying into the downfall of the traditional methods of obtaining slices from a loaf. What I’m trying to say is something that was cool in 1950 was only for grannies by 1990. What’s so special about the 2020s that it won’t happen again?

Horoscopes have solidified themselves into semi-ironic-sorry-not-sorry millennial culture. Horoscopes! That’s stuff that your Mum eventually decided was too corny for her! Co-working spaces offer gong-baths and crystal reiki – it’s all just the new-age healing of the 70s with better graphic design. Dating apps are fancy personal ads. Instagram is showing your friends the slides of your holiday to Knossos. Surely some of this is going to fall out of fashion with the next generation?

Might our kids even laugh at our obsession with our phones? With our online avatars and relationships? With our need to be in a dozen different places at once?

Or is the instant-gratification, perfectly-curated, absolutely-validating online life our manifest destiny, inescapable and fine-tuned to heroin-purity?

Do I have a point? I don’t know. I’m 38. Possibly I’m just ranting as I’m ushered by the invisible hand of the free market into a category called 40-59, lumped together with Lisa Stansfield, Paul Hollywood and David Cameron. There is a tangible air of desperation as I take pointless and bitter shadow-boxing swings at the tastes of a generation more relevant and exciting than me. As I write I’m wearing long black shorts and a white t-shirt, practically cosplaying David Rose from Schitt’s Creek, probably showing something about my state of mind.

Maybe, from a marketing point of view, the point is don’t obsess over the medium or the technology. Be sympathetic to people’s basic needs and desires.

Maybe, if you realize how cyclical these things are, then you can have a guess at what’s coming next.

Maybe technology has won. Maybe we’re the dumbest generation, maybe we’re the smartest.

I have no idea, and look, I’m a creative director, so what do I know? But, for the sake of starting a debate, here are a few predictions.

1. Things change. People will get bored – of styles, routines, opinions. It’s always just at the point where we can’t imagine things changing that they do. This is such an obvious thought that it doesn’t require substantiation, but just as an anecdote, I remember watching a Vodafone ad launching the idea of ‘picture messaging’ and thinking, I cannot imagine a single situation where I would ever want to do that. (Perhaps that says something about how much insight you can garner from my predictions, but anyway...)

2. We will continue to use mental gymnastics to justify whatever identity-validating vitamin-shot we can find, even if it means us pouring money down the throats of big corporations. We have never, ever, been so self-obsessed. Technology – from algorithms to the simple ubiquitous behavior of defining a profile with every new app we download – has created a life where the importance of our individuality and identity is constantly reinforced. And we’re lapping it up. I struggle to see a way out of this.

3. The critical, fundamental truth of any medium or technology is not what it can do, but how you use it. I’ve exaggerated, speculated and anecdoted my way through an article, which has basically become a journaling therapy session for me. We’re all ridiculous, we’re all driven by emotions and we all want to be entertained.

Perhaps the conclusion is, whatever you think, get over yourself. Your cool thing will become the next generation’s figure of fun; what you sniff at will come right back round; what’s cool right now is only cool because young and wonderful people like it. Your aspirations and taste, what you’re biased towards or against, is less logical than you think and based more on what you pine for from your early adulthood. Get therapy, drink some water, do a bit of yoga and tell your friends you love them.

Pete Gomori is creative director at Wilderness.

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