Trends

In class we learned about flamingos and how they have affected the American society in the 50s. According to the author, flamingos were made famous due to the rich admiring the animals and almost worshipping them.  Back then, people tried to recreate the natural beauty of a flamingos in all forms, size and shapes, as a symbol of wealth, pleasure and fame.  A building structure was even built and named after it.  This is the beginning of the explosion of the plastics industry that had no regard for our environment. Today, in our modern world where we all are connected via social media, trends can easily pop up. America has a huge bandwagon populace, almost like herds of mindless sheep.  More recently athletic shoes like “Yeezys” and “Air Jordans” became popular due to celebrity and athlete endorsements.  And again plastics are a major material in manufacturing them.  Companies like Adidas and Nike have raked in big profits with these celebrity endorsements. This craze is so big that there are websites like StockX where people can auction shoes and have a “shoe stock market” to track the correlation of popularity and price. People have dedicated their lives to buying and selling shoes in what is known as a “hype beast”. Ten years ago, people would be ridiculed when paying any more than 200 dollars for a pair of athletic shoes, but today that is extremely common and some pairs go for more than 4,000 dollars. This craze drastically increased the price for shoes in such a short time. It’s hard to find shoes that cost less than 100 dollars, and the sad thing is that, even the ones that could not afford it, would spend most of their savings just to own one. Trends like the flamingo and intense shoe craze benefited  the multinational companies.   Who, to be begin with, are the ones who started the existence of such craze. These trends have rewired our minds “if you got one, you’re in, you’re cool”. Did one get the value of their money or where they a victim because they fell for it?