Why online trends burn out in days

HostI was looking at some old photos recently and realized how long we used to hold onto things. A single joke or a specific style of shirt seemed to last for years when I was in school. But now, if I put my phone down for a weekend, I come back and feel like I have missed three new dances and a whole new way of speaking. Why does it feel like the world is moving so much faster than it used to?

GuestIt's not just a feeling. The time it takes for something to go from brand new to totally over has shrunk by a massive amount. A few decades ago, a trend moved like a slow wave. It would start in a big city or a movie, and it might take a year to reach every small town. You had time to live with it and get used to it. Today, the way we share things online has turned that slow wave into a flash of light. We have gone from trends that lasted for years to what people now call micro-trends that can burn out in a few days. The main reason is that we no longer have to go looking for what's cool. The apps we use do the looking for us and then push that one thing in front of every single person at the exact same time.

HostBut wait, isn't that just because we have more choices now? I would think having more things to look at would make the good stuff stay around longer because it has to be really special to stand out.

GuestYou would think so, but the math the apps use works the other way. Think of it like a fire. A slow-burning log lasts all night, but if you throw a bucket of gasoline on it, you get a huge bright flame that dies in seconds. These apps use code to find one specific sound or one type of dress that people are clicking on. Once the code sees that people like it, it shows that same thing to millions of people all at once. It forces the trend to its peak almost instantly. You see it twenty times in one hour. By the second hour, your brain is bored of it. We're basically speed-running the life of a trend. We use up the joy of a new thing so fast that we have to move on to the next one just to feel anything at all.

HostI don't know, I feel like people just like new things. Maybe we were always this bored, and we just didn't have the tools to change the channel so quickly. Is it really the code doing it, or is it just us?

GuestIt's a bit of both, but the tools have changed our behavior. Take clothes as an example. It used to take months to design a shirt, make it, and get it into a shop. Now, there are huge companies that use computers to watch what people are talking about on their phones. If they see a new look start to get clicks, they can have a cheap version of that look made and ready to sell in less than two weeks. They call this ultra-fast fashion. Because the clothes are cheap and made so quickly, people buy them, wear them for one photo, and then the trend is dead before the clothes even arrive in the mail. We have built a system that treats culture like a paper cup. You use it once and throw it away.

HostThat sounds pretty bleak. Does it really matter if a joke or a shirt dies fast? There's always a new one coming right behind it. I like having something new to look at every morning.

GuestThe problem is that when things move this fast, they don't have any roots. Think about the old memes or songs that we all still know. They stayed around long enough to become part of our shared history. They meant something to us because we lived with them. When a trend only lasts for forty-eight hours, it doesn't leave a mark. It's just noise. We're losing the ability to have one big shared thing that we all talk about for a long time. Instead, we have a thousand tiny things that nobody remembers a month later. It makes everything feel a bit hollow. You're constantly running to keep up with the new thing, but the new thing doesn't give you any real lasting connection to other people.

HostI see what you mean. It's like trying to eat a meal while someone is already pulling the plate away to give you the next one. But surely some things still stick? Big movies or huge stars still seem to have some staying power.

GuestEven the big stars are feeling the squeeze. They have to post every day just to stay in the view of the code. If they stop for a week, the math decides they're old news and stops showing them to people. We're seeing things get squashed. A movie that used to be a huge deal for a whole summer is now talked about for maybe one weekend before everyone moves on to the next big show. The space between the start and the end of our interest is getting smaller and smaller. We're reaching a point where the next big thing is already over by the time we even give it a name.

HostThose old school jokes stayed fresh because we kept them to ourselves, while today everything we touch gets spread so thin it just disappears.