"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
*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%.