Tuesday, December 12, 2006

Trendiness

Tall platform shoes

I remember back in the 90's, tall platform shoes like this one was very trendy in Hong Kong. Almost every girl was wearing some variant of tall platform shoes. My honest opinion? I think that they were very ugly. I do like girls wearing high-heeled shoes because they enhance the curly characteristic of their legs. However, those tall platform shoes actually destroy this curliness because of the thick platform in the front portion of the shoes. Besides, those shoes could hurt their ankles very badly if they accidentally twisted their feet.

Dance Dance Revolution

When I went back to Hong Kong in 1999, Dance Dance Revolution (DDR) was extremely popular. No matter where you went, you would hear the song "Butterfly", which was the most popular DDR song then. After I came back to LA, I started to play it and fell in love with it. In 2000, I went back to Hong Kong again. I was expecting that I need to wait a long line before I could play a game but I didn't! Just one year later, no one was playing DDR anymore. Instead, lots of people were playing new music games like DrumMania and Dance Maniax. Were they a lot more fun than DDR? I don't think so. The basic idea of all those game was the same. You just need to follow the music and make some body movements.



Doing what others are doing

Why this phenomenon? Because those stuff were trendy. Yes, only because they were trendy and all their friends were doing the same thing. Being trendy is an important culture in many cities/countries in Asia, such as Japan, South Korea and Hong Kong. The peer pressure is so great that if you're being not trendy, people would think that you're weird. Personally, I hate this kind of thoughts pretty much. Why?

Why I dislike trendiness

First of all, it is so damn boring. How will you feel if every song you listen to is pop because it's trendy? How about seeing movies that are all comedies because comedies are very trendy this year? I bet you'll feel bored after seeing 100 comedies, not matter how funny there are.

Second, people who like to be trendy don't have the ability to think independently. "Oh, famous_female_star is carrying an LV bag, since she's a fashion icon, let's follow her!" And suddenly all the women on the street are carrying LV bags, whether they were made in China or made in France. Hey, famous_female_star looks good with an LV bag, but are you famous_female_star? Think about it, famous_female_star is very pretty, so basically she looks good with any handbag she carries!

Third, pursuing trendiness makes you shallow. There are many human traits worth paying attention to: conscientiousness, honesty, kindness, politeness, thoughtfulness, sense of humor, to count a few. Judging a person by his/her appearance is just not fair and it makes you miss some good people. This point is so obvious that I don't think I need to say much about it.

The irony of being trendy

I think that most people who pursue trendiness somehow want to appear special or different from regular people. They want to show people how cool they look. Ironically, by getting all the trendy stuff, they end up looking just more or less the same as the trendy people, which is the majority of the crowd, and in this case, that straight A's nerdy Computer Science student with a pair of thick oily glasses actually stands out from the crowd :P

Respecting different values and cultures

A friend of mine said that he likes one aspect of the US culture and I have the same feeling. No one wouldn't say that iPod is very popular in the US nowadays. However, no one would think that you're weird because you don't have an iPod. I guess this is because of the great variety of races and ethnic groups here so everyone learns to respect other people's cultures and life styles.

Yeah, I still play DDR everyday, though it is an 8-year old game. I still love it and I think it's a good workout.

Yeah, I still like Hey Jude although it was written more than 38 years ago.

Yeah, I still don't have an iPod.

"Get lost man, you're so 20th century." Oh thank you, I take that as a compliment :)

Note: I do have an iPod now :P

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