Some, or most, trends that have evolved (or came back) in the past year have been nothing more than more than ways of making yourself look like a fool with you friends.  Although some sincerely funny - here are a few trends we should be thankful are in the past and long gone.

Carsurfing

    One primary example would be car surfing.  This dangerous activity that some of the seniors tried to do our sophomore year, could have cost us our lives.  First seen in the 1985 movie Teen Wolf starring Michael J. Fox, car surfing became a trend again after being displayed again in the 2007 movie, Death Proof and also numerous Youtube videos such as the one shown of people doing this. Car surfing can cause brain contusions, fractured skulls, neck injuries, broken bones, loss of consciousness, internal bleeding, paralysis, and death.  A 2008 study by the US Centers for Disease Control identified 58 reports of deaths due to carsurfing and 41 nonfatal injuries.  2008 was long before the trend fired up again - imagine how much the number has risen!

Snapchat

    Snapchat was an app on smart phones where you could take a picture of yourself and send it to friends - which would then quickly delete itself to never be seen again.  If you tried to screen shot a photo, the person whom it was originally from would quickly be alerted of this.  This app started out as an often funny way of taking photos of yourself and friends where you even had the option to doodle on the photos, and you’d never have to see your embarrassing photo again.  But it became a problem when people began sending each other explicit (aka naked) photos to others so they would never be deleted.  It has also be used as blackmail, where if the original photographer was not informed that someone screenshotted their embarrassing selfie, their friends might use it as blackmail to do other stupid things.  While there are worse trends and apps- snapchat is one that in proper hands can be fun, but when given to immature, manipulative people can turn into a disaster.

Gangnam Style

    This “hit” song is just annoying.  Let’s all face it.  We first heard it and saw the funny Asian guy dancing, and we loved it.  But then it was played on the radio, by our younger siblings, on commercials, everywhere.  While other songs are treated this way as well, this one was particularly annoying because you could never understand what it was even saying.  All of it sounded like jibberish, so when you tried to sing, or rap, along, it would sound like “ahgabishowowooganino!”  I even tried to look up the lyrics in English and the song doesn’t even make sense like that.  Hey, if you’re Korean that’s cool - if you’re any race that’s cool too.  It would just be nice if when your lyrics are translated they make sense in any language.

KONY 2012

    A 30 minute viral video that spread like wildfire, KONY 2012 aimed to aware the public of the war Lord in Uganda, Joseph Kony.  The film advocates stopping the youth military service and restoration of social order.  People on facebook were encouraged to change their profile pictures to ones involving KONY, and on April 20, 2012, members of the organization “Invisible Children” who supported this video and campaign were encouraged to cover all their towns in Stop Kony.  It had a smaller turnout than expected.  This trend had good causes, but it mostly became a bandwagon.  After a few days of its release, people changed their facebook pictures back to their own, and no one really took the time to get involved in helping the Invisible Children.  Not only that, but this was very one-sided and did not encourage the viewer to look into the issue.  It also sparked many memes involving Kony, such as this one.

This really did not help their message.  The memes were often explicit as well, and got posted on facebook and twitter months following KONY 2012 more than Stop Kony posters.  These memes became rather obnoxious, many times taking up a whole newsfeed.

Swag

    There’s not much to say about this one.  Swag has become bigger and bigger in my time in high school and reached its peak with Justin Bieber’s music where he would repeat swag 50 times or more per song.  People began copying the way Bieber dressed, with tight pants, flannels, with flat bills.  If you dress like that, let me tell you - you look like an idiot.  What happened to the days where we would wear normal pants and t-shirts, or would even dress nice, in khakis and collared shirts?  Your kids will look at you like how we view our parents who grew up in the 80’s and just say, “What were you thinking?”  Also, fun fact.  Swag used to mean in the 1920’s to be stupid.

Hipsters

    On the opposite trend of the style spectrum, we come across hipsters.  Hipsters think that they did everything “before it was cool” and wear clothes that look like they were from a dumpster, wear beards and wear stereotypical ray bans and tend to smoke cigarettes and never wash their hair.  Most of these people consider themselves fashion forward, saving the environment, or artists, sometimes it’s a little bit (okay, a lot) difficult to take them seriously.  They are very similar to modern day hippies.  Many times they post photos of their food on instagram.  Yes.  I really like seeing what you’re eating on my instagram feed, please continue posting those (not)

    Some trends are dangerous and others will make you look silly in 20 years.  Some start with good intentions but in turn, are quickly shot down.  Most trends are just annoying.  No matter what year it is, a new trend will evolve and each one will be equally as silly as the one before.  We can only hope that they don’t begin to get worse!