👶✨The Nexialist #0193

trendbaby | rebranding trend research? | kerfuffle | deep doubt era | (non)conforming in 1982 | smorgasbord | 6 feet pole | snobbery vs. spicy | architecture of the invisible

Oct 03, 2024

welcome to another week of cyber-physical flâneuring, the nexialist

hey, you! i hope this message finds you (or at least your last two brain cells) skipping like the gif above. this week, the nexialist got a shoutout from

Maria Clara Villas

, who runs one of my favorite newsletters from Brazil,
Galáxia
, and many new people arrived with that, so welcome everyone and get ready for some brainsparks 🥰 this week, you get a mix of irl and url references, from shifts&trends and new words i learned, to shifts in fashion and taste, to the power of choreography and dance. enjoy! 🫀✨

—Rodrigo Turra

3 years ago » ⚙️✨The Nexialist #0040 : Lollygag | A Measure of Sacrifice | Solarpunk and the End of Capitalism | Dark Solarpunk | Antiwork

Buy Me a Coffee? ☕️

👶trendbaby

last week i had the opportunity to attend the trendwatching event in amsterdam. it’s the second time i join them at the beautiful eye museum and enjoy a day full of inspiration and provocations. the biggest theme this year was AI, of course. it was great to see the excitement paired with critical thinking.

AI can do a lot of great things like helping independent workers like me to leverage their skills and organize their work life, like the M.E.O trend. or pushing us to reject the algorithmic oppression and prioritize serendipity like in the ‘age of imperfection’ trend. BUT do we really need ai for everything, especially because it’s so energy intensive? does my company need to release an ai product because everyone else is doing it? and let’s not use ai to deceive.

i was proud to see my friend gustavo in the panel bringing a more ecological and long-term perspective to the table, as well as

Michell Zappa

’s talk about autonomous futures.

i’ve been following trendwatching’s work for so many years, and i’ve always enjoyed their view and methodology on consumer trends, which gives a structure and set of questions to work with when looking at trends.

Consumer trends emerge when the relatively constant Basic Human Needs (like community or self-expression) bump up against ever-changing Macro-Trends (climate crisis, aging societies). When this intersection occurs, tension arises. Game-changing Innovations resolve that tension and create new consumer trends and expectations.

now i have a trial do their platform amplify, where you can find use cases and analysis, toolboxes, reports and lots of great stuff. they also released their trendbaby tool, which has a free version. trained on their data, you can input the information about your business, sector, with trends from their repertoire, audience, innovation type and timeframe, and it spits out innovation ideas which can serve as a starting point.

brainsparks: 2024 trend reports (tn#151), polyfutures (tn#158), life trends 2024 (tn#147)

📈rebranding trend research?

Dimas Henkes

shared this link, which caused a bit of a kerfuffle in the trends group we’re in. julia kakhalova-chi asks: ‘is it time to rebrand trend research?’ when a tiktok core/fad that lasts a week or two start being called a trend (remember namecore?), then a “trend” has lost its meaning. julia calls it semantic inflation —community, influence, authenticity, content… all of these were victims of that same process.

Right now, two very different phenomena are being called the same thing. When looking at data footprints, here is what a meme looks like, and here is the data imprint of ‘cultural insight.’ While one spikes in culture and burns through it, cultural movements stick around and represent a major cultural force that can redefine what’s next in culture. Both are helpful on their own, but they don’t mean the same thing.

but this is tale as old as time, years ago we had to make distinctions of what a fad was, a hype, something going viral, a meme. macro-trends, micro-trends (are there nano-trends?) i mean, remember when clients asked: can we create a viral? 🙄

these are different concepts and might even have overlapping aspects, but even working in the area, their meanings start blurring. but it’s good that we exist, so we can keep ourselves checked and help our clients filter through the noise. they all have their importance in this business that we do. i think including memes in social listening, for instance, should be a common practice, but not the only one.

i love

Matt Klein

’s social_commentary series, “a reading of our memes — theorizing what they say about the zeitgeist — an expression of collective truths.” i also love

Elodie Marteau

’s hoardiculture series, where she plays with the process of collecting signals— “hoardiculture: collecting so much junk there are piles of random shit cluttering everywhere possible and then claiming it’s a cultural trend.” protein agency also has a series of reports, dirty words, that aim to reclaim these words that suffered semantic inflantion.

these examples show how it’s part of the “trend research” craft to question and play with these semantic shifts. it is important to explore how these terms are changing, and their role as tools to help us understand the pulse of culture. julia suggests cultural insights as a way to define what we do, and it’s actually the one i feel most comfortable with. (mental note to start saying that at dinners, instead of the usual trend research followed by disclaimers that i’m not working at a consultancy).

Intuitively, ‘cultural insights’ means exactly what it sounds like: a deeper understanding of culture, allowing us to grasp the nuances of audience-led movements that give voice to unresolved cultural conflicts. According to how things usually go, the term ‘cultural insights’ has about two years left, but we can always rebrand it, too.

brainsparks: trends are bullsh*t. long live the trends (tn#190), namecore (tn#71), hoardiculture (tn#191), meta trending trends '24 (tn#158), 2024 trend reports (tn#151)

🫠kerfuffle

kerfuffle (noun) | ker·fuf·fle | kər-ˈfə-fəl
: a disturbance or commotion typically caused by a dispute or conflict

Michell Zappa

from

Artificial Insights

used this word when we were chatting before his amazing presentation about autonomous futures at the trendwatching event. and now i’ll be adopting it.

brainsparks: lollygag (tn#40), interrobang (tn#188)

🤔deep doubt era

i’ve been noticing in my whatsapp family groups some ai-generated images: from good morning messages with flowers to the baby catwalk. it all seems harmless, but i do think there is some harm: it normalizes ai-generated images and might make the less media literate to lose track of reality. remember when we (almost) fell for the pope in balenciaga?

in this article by benj edwards he talks about the era of deep doubt:

Deep doubt is skepticism of real media that stems from the existence of generative AI. This manifests as broad public skepticism toward the veracity of media artifacts, which in turn leads to a notable consequence: People can now more credibly claim that real events did not happen and suggest that documentary evidence was fabricated using AI tools.

he also talks about cultural singularity, a new term and idea for me:

Deep doubt impacts more than just current events and legal issues. In 2020, I wrote about a potential “cultural singularity,” a threshold where truth and fiction in media become indistinguishable. A key part of the threshold is the level of “noise,” or uncertainty, that AI-generated media can inject into our information ecosystem at scale.

in the efforts of being propositive, edwards helps us with some media literacy tips

When we are evaluating the veracity of online media, it's important to rely on multiple corroborating sources, particularly those showing the same event from different angles in the case of visual media or reported from multiple credible sources in the case of text. It's also useful to track down original reporting and imagery from verified accounts or official websites rather than trusting potentially modified screenshots circulating on social media. Information from varied eyewitness accounts and reputable news organizations can provide additional perspectives to help you look for logical inconsistencies between sources.

brainspark: synthetic media (tn#18)

🧑‍🎤(non)conforming in 1982

messy nessy chic shared this timecapsule from 1982 youth:

A veritable smorgasbord of UK youth subcultures - including punks, skinheads, new romantics, rockabillys, mod revivalists, rockers, goths and almost everything in between - discuss their clothes and how the wider society reacts to them.
Why do they dress the way they do? Should they have to dress differently to get a job? Is there pressure to conform to the norms of their tribe? How do these disparate groups view each other?

it’s uncanny how this is 42 years old, yet the world seems to be the same, but also not. some questions are quite contemporary. while women are questioning the aesthetic pressures on them, and some question how they should not be judged by the way they dress, wearing jeans to work was not acceptable. also it’s fun to see the fascination with subcultures, still present today.

brainsparks: gen z subculture (tn#91), counter-culture x counter-futures (tn#10)

🇸🇪smorgasbord

smorgasbord (noun) | smor·gas·bord | ˈsmȯr-gəs-ˌbȯrd
1: a luncheon or supper buffet offering a variety of foods and dishes (such as hors d'oeuvres, hot and cold meats, smoked and pickled fish, cheeses, salads, and relishes)
2: an often large heterogeneous mixture : mélange

another word for my vocabulary mentioned on the video above.

🐾6 feet pole

i just learned about safe mind, the project of Augustus Muller of Boy Harsher & LUCY - Cooper B. Handy, and i’m loving this. it’s an 80s-synth-punk-indie-groovy kind of situation, if i had to label it. it made me simultaneously headbang and shake my ass. wait… is the this a mix of the 6 feet under and the 10 foot pole expressions, maybe saying they’re (not) playing with death?

brainsparks: boy harsher, electronic body music (tn#84)

🌶️snobbery vs. spicy

messy nessy also shared this npr link: How Snobbery Helped Take The Spice Out Of European Cooking. living in amsterdam, this explains a lot of things… it also shows how snobbery and classism move trends, in this case (and probably many others) for the worse (yes, i’m judging). a fascinating read, that shows how taste changed along centuries.

Serving richly spiced stews was no longer a status symbol for Europe's wealthiest families — even the middle classes could afford to spice up their grub. "So the elite recoiled from the increasing popularity of spices," Ray says. "They moved on to an aesthetic theory of taste. Rather than infusing food with spice, they said things should taste like themselves. Meat should taste like meat, and anything you add only serves to intensify the existing flavors."

brainsparks: warmer climate, spicier food (tn#145), methexis in darkness (tn#85), cosplaying as poor (tn#62)

🐠architecture of the invisible

this weekend juan and i went to the hague and it was super inspiring. juan got a new tattoo, we went for a walk, saw the dior exhibition at the kunstmuseum and watched three dance performances under the title architecture of the invisible, by NDT, Nederlands Dans Theater. all the performances were fascinating, but i’ll focus on their new piece that got me almost going in a trance: christos papadopoulos’ ties unseen.

16 dancers moving together (video above) like a school of fish, with a hypnotizing synchronicity to the music. to me it’s always impressive the memorizing abilities of dancers, and in this case it was 16 of them, never leaving the stage, working in unison. i could see one or another wandering a bit further, or doing slightly different or even opposite moves. it got me thinking how current it is to do a piece that has no solos or duets, prioritizing the group over the usual “couples” or individuals. i got chills watching it.

Christos Papadopoulos' new work explores our subtle, everyday social connections, revealing the beauty within the most profound connections that often go unnoticed. Drawing from the unadorned fabric of the human experience, the choreographer illustrates the simplicity of shared moments: the unspoken understanding between friends, silent nods of solidarity among strangers, and the quiet resilience threaded through collective struggles.
A new voice for NDT, the Greek-born choreographer favours a minimalist and precise language of movement. Through small gestures that belie an intense physicality, Papadopoulos has created an ode to the power of invisible forces and transports the audience to a mysterious space in which there is neither beginning nor end.

after the show, i had the opportunity to talk to christos and some dancers and i had to share my impressions with them. christos said that he encourages the dancers to go beyond the structure of the choreography, as breaking the rules is part of the routine. barry, one of the dancers, said in this piece he’s tapping more into a kind of swarm intelligence, rather than a storyline or emotions, which is a different channel than usual. i’m still thinking about that.

brainsparks: the hidden networks of everything (tn#126), lines of desire (tn#171), art predicts (tn#1), scenius aka communal genius (tn#31), bronfenbrenner's bioecological model (tn#85)

see you next week, trendbabies 👶✨

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I truly believe innovation comes from bringing improbable areas together, and that’s why I called this project The Nexialist. Some sectors are known to be self-referencing and hermetic. Sometimes, teams are on autopilot mode, focused on the daily grind, which hinders innovation. As a Nexialist, I like to burst these bubbles, bringing references from different areas, and maintaining teams inspired and connected to the Zeitgeist.

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