Do you have Pokemon cards somewhere in your room? Did you have a Tamagotchi? Have you planked? If so, you were part of a fad.
Fads are intense but short-lived trends. They seem to have existed for as long as humans have formed communities. Perhaps a prehistoric cavewoman put a red flower in her hair. Then another one did, and then everyone in the clan did until one day, suddenly, the exciting thing to do was not to wear a flower. The fad died.
That's a fad. A few people start doing or buying something new or novel. Other people close to them see it and join in, eager to be part of the new, cool thing. A bandwagon effect starts, in which more and more people want to be like the group with the still-cool, still-novel thing. The number of people following the fad increases rapidly. But one day, it suddenly stops. Fads die because something new comes along to replace them or because the object of the fad has been around too long to be considered new.
As far as we can tell, fads exist because of our instinct to fit in with a cool crowd. Peer pressure can make people do ridiculous things, like buying a pet rock in the sixties. That's right, five million Americans had rocks as their pets.
Many fads seem silly after they're over. In 1920s America, flagpole sitting was a brief fad. Yes, people thought it was cool to sit for days on top of a flagpole. Mood rings were a hit in the midseventies, but were out of date within five years.
Japan has given us some major fads: Tamagotchi, Pokemon, and Doraemon, to name a few. Some of Japan's fads have turned into long-term trends. Hello Kitty shows no signs of stopping, and pachinko has been popular for decades since its rise.
We haven't seen the last of silly fads; we never will. The next new thing is always around the corner.
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