For Katie and her bell-bottomed jeans sporting a butterfly patch Tag You’re it K V To my beautiful wife and daughter jogging pants and flower dresses will always bee in style in my heart CTONN Thank You Kindly Being a writer is one of the best jobs in the world but books are a lot of fun work The reason Trending exists at all is because so many people worked together to make it happen Thank you Karen Li and Katherine Dearlove for your thoughtful edits and patience Clayton Hanmer you’re a humble genius dude Barb Kelly for the spiffy design work Nicole Andy and The Bookshelf thanks for the quiet workspace Jean Mills and Lisa Dalrymple you’re the best book idea listeners ever But most of all I’m so thankful for the input of my amazing kid writers Annika Asha Beatrice Daniel Francesca Jaya Katie Kiran Leo Leopold Nola Nadia Sierra Stella Zola And Dave Nathan and Nadia and You’re the opposite of a fad True classics I’ll love you forever
FAD MAG Contents Introduction 4 Chapter 1 6 What Makes a Fad a Fad How seemingly random toys games and fashion turn into the NEXT BIG THING Chapter 2 16 Spread the Word and the ideas and feelings that How fads drive them spread and catch fire Chapter 3 26 Made Not Born How some fads are carefully crafted to make us want to jump on board Chapter 4 36 Bad Fads How fads can have serious and even dangerous effects Conclusion 46 Index 48 selected sources 48 What fad are you into right now Counting jelly beans Wearing your socks inside out Collecting dryer lint Jean lint is worth way more than white underwear lint Everybody knows that Some bizarre fads rise and fall so quickly they might be over by the time you’ve finished reading this book
Introduction Would you ever Swallow a live goldfish Spend a whopping 10,000 on a stuffed ZZZ animal Dance for nine hundred hours 6 straight Pour a bucketful of ice water over your head Eat nothing but cabbage soup for weeks Run naked through a crowd of complete strangers You’re probably shaking your head There’s no way you’d ever do any of those things Who the heck would Yet for centuries regular people just like you have made some pretty irregular decisions in order to follow the latest craze or fad All of these ones really did happen by the way Even the one involving the ill-fated goldfish Gulp But here’s the thing While most fads might seem just silly or trivial on the surface dig a little deeper and you’ll see they can have major far-reaching and long-term impacts on our lives and even on those who live far away Here’s a classic example ripped straight from the history books beaver felt hats Leave It to Beavers Hats crafted from felted beaver pelts skins once swept across Europe as the latest fashion craze By the 17th century everybody had to have them
FOR SALE Only one problem Nearly all the beavers in Europe had already been hunted to extinction In order to keep up with growing demand trappers set off for North America Things just got worse for beavers So many were ten to fifteen million in killed in North America the 1700s alone that they were nearly wiped out Without beavers to dam waterways many ponds and marshes dried up Ducks flew away Muskrat and otter homes froze or flooded Marshes became meadows and minks and raccoons no longer had tasty water-loving frogs and snakes to eat Ecosystems went belly-up When the traders ran low on their furry supply they pushed farther and farther into the territories of North America’s Indigenous people Traders from France and Great Britain allied themselves at various times with the Wendat the Algonquian and the Haudenosaunee among other groups Fighting broke out in the 17th century over the best beaver-filled lands what’s now known as the Beaver Wars It became one of the bloodiest conflicts in North American history Between war and diseases introduced by the settlers entire Indigenous communities were wiped out See One fashion fad in faraway Europe changed ecosystems shaped the creation of new countries started wars and disrupted even destroyed communities and traditional ways of life Fads trends and crazes have existed throughout our history well up until today But how exactly do they spread from person to person town to town and even country to country we follow the herd in the first place and why do
