Analysis Of What Fresh Fad Can This Be?

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What Fresh Fad Can This Be? An integral part of human behavior is the mimicking and awareness of the actions of those around us. In no better way is this demonstrated than the existence of trends and fashions. While “modeling” behavior lends an advantage to early and present mankind by catalyzing learning with progression unhindered by relearning mistakes made by predecessors (Bandura 5), fashions and novel trends do not offer such distinct benefits. Despite this appearance of irrelevance, fashions have swept in and out of societies in waves ranging from hairstyles and games to medicine and leadership for thousands of years. As humankind progressed, the desire for communication fueled the technology for interconnection and with it the influence of fashion. In the19th and 20th century innovations such as telegraph infrastructures, the radio, and broadcast television groomed society for larger fashions to take hold. Blumer finds the occupation of “prestigious figures,” openness towards repeated introductions to propositions of social behavior, and receptivity of these propositions from outside individuals and events to be vital for fashions to exist in an area (286). New means of communication efficiently filled these criteria, greatly increasing the area an individual fashion could exist in. Propositions could quickly …show more content…

Meyersohn and Katz believe that fads in areas such as games, music, and clothing offer a “functional alternative for its predecessor”(595). Businesses too seem to be aware of this attribute, as Hirsch notes that “one of its[the corporations involved in the production of cultural items] goals is to create and satisfy consumer demand for new fads and fashions”(642). This can easily be observed in the yearly cycle of the previous must-have toy for Christmas being forgotten about in lieu of a new product, or the constant stream of pop mega-hits trampling over their

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