HYPE culture
Local teens have conflicting feelings about society obsessed with next ‘big thing’
“It comes at a price,” said Santa Fe High School junior William Dietz, talking about the consequences of being involved in hype culture — the countless and constant trends that develop in today’s world and are often accentuated and driven by social and pop media outlets.
Desire to conform to those trends comes with a cost, and it’s more than the $460 sticker on that Supreme sweatshirt.
Hype culture — the concept of a society obsessed with finding the next “big thing” — is now a common staple in the lives of youth. Whether it’s buying a $650 Gucci belt, watching the newest hit TV show, or eating something they shouldn’t on a dare, people will do just about anything to fit into this ever-demanding world of trends and the unattainable criteria for being cool.
And local teens express conflicting feelings about it all.
“I don’t think it’s a good thing because … I feel like a lot of times if you don’t have the stuff that is hyped, a lot of people don’t like you,” said Santa Fe teen Mikayla Mier. “I think that it’s OK to have things that are considered cool, but … I think that it’s creating a divide between people who are a part of it and people who say, ‘That’s ridiculous and I’m not gonna pay $80 for a shirt that says ‘Supreme’ on it.’ ”
“I like it, but I also don’t like it, because I think it creates some [elite] status,” echoed Dietz. “But it also creates this kind of following, like [a] group, you feel like you’re a part of something.”
That part of something is largely characterized by human interaction that can lead to a more connected and informed world — whether that be in person or through cyberspace. In his book Contagious:
Why Things Catch On, University of Pennsylvania Wharton School of Business marketing professor Jonah Berger explores how these things become popular, looking specifically at the secret messages behind social transmission.
Berger told Generation Next that social interaction is much more influential on people’s desires and beliefs than other methods: “Word of mouth is 10 times more impactful than traditional advertising,” he said. “People trust it more and it is more targeted.”
Rob Henderson, a research assistant at the Yale Mind and Development Lab, wrote in a Psychology Today piece, “One lesson from social psychology is the influence others have on us. Research shows we do not have as much control over our thoughts and behavior as we think. We take cues from our environment, especially other people, on how to act. … Following the crowd allows us to function in a complicated environment. Most of us do not have time to increase our knowledge of all merchandise and research every advertised item to measure its usefulness.”
“Instead, we rely on signals like popularity. If everyone else is buying something, the reasoning goes, there is a good chance the item is worth our attention.”
The popularity of purchasing items is much like the spread of trends, and those trends are becoming more popular because, “Technology has also made things spread faster and easier, which means trends ebb and flow faster than ever before. Social media has made it easier to see what others are doing, which has only increased the power of social influence.”
And we all know how much young people like the internet. According to a 2015 Pew Research Center report, 92 percent of teens go online daily — and 24 percent of them say they use the internet “almost constantly.” Social media is now one of the most prominent information-sharing platforms — especially when it comes to hype culture.
With all of these platforms providing access to the constant flow of new information, it is not only easy to feel the need to fit in with ever-changing hyped-up ideals, but to feel the need to do something radical to stand out. It raises the question as to whether everyone doing the same “popular” thing creates a loss of individuality, or if it creates more of an opportunity to diverge from the norm and decide what one wants to represent or be involved in.
Santa Fe teen Athan Chance Coleman believes the choice is up to the user: “I really think it’s really up to you to decide … how you want to express yourself.”
How involved is she, on a scale of 1 to 10, in hype culture and the sentiments of others that come with it? About a 7, she said: “I’m pretty involved. I like to wear clothes that are considered trendy, [and then] post something on my social media [so] I can see how other people feel about it.”
As exciting as it can be to “hype up” and share certain ideas and new movements, the result can at times lead to unrealistic expectations and then disappointment. For example, when a movie trailer only features the best parts of a film, a shirt doesn’t look the way it did when you saw it online or using expensive makeup products doesn’t make someone look like Kylie Jenner, consumers may feel unsatisfied with the outcome because it doesn’t live up to the hype.
In “The Hype Culture Epidemic,” a 2017 piece written for The Bagpipe, the student-run newspaper of Covenant College, Aline Sluis said, “Patience is going out of style [because] instant gratification is the popular mindset encouraged by hype culture.”
The ultimate price? A more connected and informed, yet also opinionated and perhaps unsatisfied, world that provides, in the words of Sluis, “excitement and adrenaline — almost to the point of self-exhaustion.”