Looking Deeper on Cultural Trend Reports

"To see what’s coming, we must respect the bizarre and validate the weird." 

Reddit's Head of Cultural Forecasting Matt Klein says every trend report discovers the same things about the same audiences using the same technology. 

Klein synthesized five years of reports from the top agencies and has found trends within the trends.

Yes, he’s gone full meta.

Matt’s findings were remarkably samey. First-world problems, technology and the emotion of fear have been ongoing themes for the last half-decade. Across thousands of presentations, decks and insights, the internet hive-mind mostly agrees on all things Gen-Z, sustainability, consumption and ChatGPT. 

Luckily there's a way out of the echo chamber. Klein suggests looking to cultural fringes and subtle cultural signals as the solution. 

"Rather than treating these Meta Trends as an accurate forecast, we must now also use them as filters to seek out what’s NOT discussed," he says. 

Subtle forces often shape culture. According to Nassim Taleb's *Black Swan theory, the future always ends up way crazier than we expect because we have a habit of overlooking the things which create the most impactful change. 

Most reports analyse the same type of person. The audiences are Western-centric, well-educated, and tech-savvy. These studies are undertaken by similar agencies with similar employees who have similar commercial goals.  

"All of the trends over the past five years reflect a first-world “developed market” outlook... what we have today are not cultural trends, but one culture's trends," Klein says. 

What would trends look like if more reports focused on overlooked demographics rather than surveying the average Joe and Josephine? How about low-income Gen Z, or the less digitally savvy, the under-educated and the unhealthy? What about trends that aren't informed by tech? 

Learnings from Five Years of Analyzing Hundreds of Trend Reports

Last year's meta report

*I used an asterik there because I’ve tried reading Nassim Taleb's Black Swan book several times, but I always find it just a bit too dense to finish. Three quarters complete is the current record. Congratulations if you’re on 100%.

What Comes After Social Media, Influencers and Content?

I really enjoyed reading "After The Creator Economy," which is a publication by Berlin research studio co-matter and creative publishing platform Meta Label.

The zine, which you can buy or download for free, explores what the future of the creative economy might look like. It explores sustainable alternatives to how creatives currently publish “content” on platforms owned by other people.

My favourite quote - "The creator carries on the myth of the individual creative genius, more interested in their own influence than in supporting the social and collaborative networks of which they are a part."

Over the course of 50 pages, they analyse and redefine how we create, distribute and monetize creative work. One of the big ideas is publishing content as a “Meta Label,” which is a collection of people with shared interests hosting and controlling the distribution of their own work. Loads to think about, plus it's nicely designed too.

Link here.

Flow states, Ethnography and Skateboarding As Therapy

Photography by me.

Yes, “skating rules,” but it rules for a different reason than you might have thought.

I recently eavesdropped on a spirited conversation. The air was buzzing with human connection. Two skaters chirped like parakeets. What forged their bond? What element sparked this chemistry? It wasn't a band, a trick or someone famous. It wasn't that summer was approaching or there was a solar eclipse tomorrow. No, it was much more surprising than that. It was the shared experience of skateboarding as therapy. 

Let's set the scene. Skater A wore a Scottie Pippen singlet, dressed in Gen-Z's reincarnation of the 90s. Skater B wore a business shirt and sweater, his grey-flecked beard neatly trimmed for the office. They had more than a decade between them. They were strangers, yet laughing like brothers. Naturally, my ears pricked up. 

“You could take a few weeks off from skating... something could go wrong in your life and suddenly you'll be like, man, I just need the board," confided Skater A. 

Skater B nodded in agreement. "I don't know what people do without it, I feel sorry for them.” 

Using a plank for therapy sounds odd, but it's not uncommon. A psychology student told me skating was part of his mental health plan. After a bad day, people push through their feelings. They "leave it all on the board."

In Tim Seifert and C. Hedderson's heftily titled "Intrinsic Motivation and Flow in Skateboarding: An Ethnographic Study," the duo investigate why people skate and how finding peace through flow is a part of that equation. It's a good question. Why would a person push through hours of frustration, wrecked clothes and snapped bones just to learn a new trick? 

Skating is hard. It can be social, but it's mostly solitary. There isn't a committee overseeing your performance. There's no team riding on your board. It's just you trying to achieve a task with your body, your deck and your coordination. You either clear the obstacle, grind the rail, survive speeding downhill... or you don't. 

"Intrinsic motivation" is at the core. This internal force propels skaters through physical and mental pain. Seifert and Hedderson report that skaters are driven by deep cognitive engagement, problem-solving, and self-esteem. Perhaps most importantly, skaters are motivated by flow.

This peaceful state is the mental dimension where time disappears, every distraction falls away and you hyper-focus on a single activity. Whether you're a computer hacker, ballet dancer or Bungy jumper, part of the reason you do these activities is flow. Some might call it being "in the zone." Others call it transcendence. 

"People get really into meditating and spirituality - things that make them not think. With skating you get that peace, you get worn out and you get to focus on a trick. When I'm in a trick... there's nothing. Who gets that? Who else gets that every day for an hour or two besides monks?" -Andrew Reynolds, Epicly Later'd, Vice.  

It's hard to think about that comment your co-worker said when you're trying to stay on top of a moving object. Often when your concentration slips that's when your body meets concrete. So yes, leave your ordinary troubles behind. Access your inner buddha, grab hold of intrinsic motivation and use skating as therapy. 

*On another note, the paper also mentions that sports research could be advanced through the use of ethnography as a means of gaining insight into the behaviours, values, emotions, and mental states of a group. If you want someone to immerse themselves in your audience and discover something interesting in the process, you know who to contact. 

Read Tim Seifert and C. Hedderson's "Intrinsic Motivation and Flow in Skateboarding: An Ethnographic Study in full here.