Pop culture trends usually start in large cities where young, hip metropolitan professionals congregate. Trends or FADs sometimes come out of nowhere but tend to be born, ferment and eventually permeate into the wider world. But as with all fashion, nothing lasts forever, and trends come in and out of popularity; some disappear for good. However, there are some trends that looked like any other, but somehow found a niche in society and stuck around.

Commuter bikes

Many people don’t cycle to work because of the risk that comes with it. A person on a bicycle whizzing around the city at rush hour, weaving through, in and out of traffic, avoid collisions at every corner…Doesn’t sound fun at all. It isn’t just that, it was the practicality of lugging around a great big bike, having to run the risk of leaving it in public for hours on end and not being very maneuverable in obscenely tight streets; such that you find in congested capital cities. Folding bikes like the tern link c7, changed the game forever. Now anyone can save energy and money simply by carrying around their own little mobile transport. It stuck, and hasn’t gone away; in fact, it spawned an entirely new consumer market.

Large-scale communication apps

The very first large scale communication concept that caught on was the Blackberry messenger service. Anyone who had a Blackberry smartphone could communicate via text messaging with another Blackberry, free of charge. However, the company ran into a design brick wall, as other smartphone offered more to consumers while Blackberry couldn’t find a way to innovate effectively. Snapchat, Facebook live streaming, and Twitter exploded onto the scene. With the power of giving anyone a voice, while also providing the option of staying anonymous, Twitter and Snapchat are still used worldwide to communicate with video, text and picture sharing. Facebook streaming opened up a new avenue. Although very recently coming onto the scene, the platform has seen great success with the app extension as anyone around the world can live stream their life for anyone to watch for free.

YouTube

It goes without saying, the most remarkable social achievement in the modern age, is the birth and flourishing of the online video sharing platform YouTube. With over 1.3 billion users worldwide, 300 hours of video uploaded every single second, 5 billion videos watched every day, averaging 30 million visitors a day, and over 1 million views from smartphone each day, YouTube has become a colossus of the modern world. Anyone and everyone can access unlimited content, for absolutely nothing, as well as share their opinions, get feedback, follow current affairs, be informed on the news and become famous stars themselves. Nothing like YouTube has ever done before, and the success of the platform is a marvel of pop culture.