If you’re down for a good metaphor, you can think of a trend as a ✨ constellation ✨ made up of different behaviors, values, and cultural anomalies that indicate a meaningful shift is on the horizon — that a coherent story is emerging. And like IRL constellations, every trend has a shorthand identifier that’s, well, entirely too important if we’re being honest.
Remember Normcore? That’s like, the Milky Way. It’s not any one signal, but rather a cluster of discrete occurrences that were observed in connection with one another. And the relationship between those signals was given the (in)famous label that put K-Hole on the map.
So whether we’re talking about macrotrends with massive, long-tail implications, microtrends that nest comfortably inside their bigger brethren, or countertrends that act like ripple effects or reactions to existing macro or micro trends and their drivers...the identification process starts the same way: with signal scanning — which is why what we do everyday in the discord is so important.
And while trends aren’t everything when it comes to foresight and futures work, they are a critical piece of the puzzle — a core input to the possible and preferable futures we’ll ultimately work together to imagine and develop through our process.
We’re cleaning up the way we share signals across the discord so our channels are easier to navigate — i.e., less information overload and easier engagement. As part of the process, you’ll be ‘naming’ the trend or theme that your signal speaks to and sharing why you find it interesting.