The Ultimate Vampire Resource and Directory

Eventually every subculture, belief, or practice "sprouts" a trend.

There are various causes for 'sprouting' trends.

What effect (if any) positive, or negative do you personal feel trends have upon genuine individuals?

What Identifies a trendster?

Is it acceptable to dabble/delve in a subculture (etc), and simply acknowledge that one is inquisitve/ curious?

What effect (if any) positive, or negative do you personal feel trends have upon genuine individuals?

Misrepresentation, the subculture (etc) is often sensationalized, and the stereotypes attached to that subculture are perpetuated by gratutiously engaged trendsters.

What Identifies a trendster?

The closet, they may have one outfit for their alledged
subculture, along with other subcultural garb.
Candor identifies a trendster, example, in the midst of
a subcultural group they may ponder out loud something irrelavent to the atmospher they are engaged in. This is a sign that they are not exposed to sufficiant subcultural docterine, or have a trivial (steroetyped) reference base.

Is it acceptable to dabble/delve in a subculture (etc), and simply acknowledge that one is inquisitve/ curious?

Yes, and for a subculture to avoid stomping its own toes, they must be able to distinguish, trendsters from "initiates/novices". To avoid trensters "highjacking" others by accusations of Elitism, and snobbery.

trendsters also phish, asking redundant questions (often with intent to get answers that conform to their preidealized answers) this is so they have content suffice to reguritate to their peers. Thus the sensationalization of trendsters spreads.

Another Inquiry

How would those involved with a subculture, suggest an intrested person screen for trendsters?

This site is a perfect example of the dabbling you spoke off. I mean, is every vampire here Romanian. Or is every Lycanthrope French? Maybe every Wiccan is of a Celtic or Norse background? I am sure this is totally not the case.

I believe the reasoning of the dabbling is much like "Survival of the fittest". If you can spread your culture around farther than another, it will living longer.

so a question arises, how does the subcultures integrity get effected by the spreading around.

When goth came out from the underground, the trendsters jumped on the image.. just one relative example.

How much " water" can be added to koolaid, before it is no longer kookaid?

Dabbling is one thing, often such individuals are seeking to learn about a subculture ( etc).

The trendster is more likely to ask a general probing question ( that provokes testimony) then as results are presented they expand their " testimony". A practice called phishing.

A curious person with an other then novel, gratuitious interest seeks to learn.. while a trendster simply wants to gleen enough fodder to build their
projected " deep of knowledge" when ulimately they have a superficial facade, based on unemerged assumtions.

Small towns are a prime example of how trendsters can taint peoples perception of a subculture.

I guess I would fall into your catagory of "phishing." But, instead of "phishing" from one pond, I do it from many. I also try not to addopt anything I learn in this maner. It is very hard though. If my mind absorbs something, it is hard to keep it from seeping back out to the surface.

I really don't know why I do this. I could be trying to start the next big trend, a conglomeration of many differnt culture and beliefs.

Oh, and if you add enough sugar to Koolaid, it prolongs the flavor, no matter how much you have to water it down. ;) In other words, we may stretch cultures thin, but they will still have shades of their form selves.

No I don't see you as a phisher. You obviously don't build your image on fragments of the testimony of others. You are inquisitive, about topics, rather then presenting your self as being a " devote such and such".

Phishers are set to pass off gleaned testimony to craft the image that they
" have always known/ thought that way", what us funny is when a phished group/ collective generates intentional fax pas' for a phisher, and the phisher
attempts to pass it to others, sure the info may be absorbed by uninitiated peers.. but not seasoned devotees.. Punk, Metalheads, and Stoner subcultures are adapt at flushing out such poseurs in this manner.

here I use trend more as a fad, or artificial factor. I understand your reasoning.

Trends or fads seem to die out with time, and yes it may come alive agian at some point in time, yet some trends or fads evolve to become a living part of society.

So trend spotting dwells within the subject of a fad that has come to be because of some part of society yet does not make it to be part of society, soons fades into record books, Disco, bell Bottom pants, parchute pants and such.

yet to survive and blend is what many trends have done to stay with society.

when a trend hits, it becomes the norm, and all are at least affected by the trend.
for instance...a current trend is rap "music".
it has a surprisingly (for it ubiquitousness) small share of music sales, but still it shows up in so many movies as part of the soundtrack one would think it the dominant music form today. it affects fashion, it affects vocabulary and social mores. even if you dont listen, you still encounter those that do, and have become "normed" to said trend.
there are always trends...always will be. often however the trend is to copy the emperors new clothes.
~W~

There are many trends in amny things that effect outr lives.

Many people have thought as Wicca as a trend stemming from much older practice , yet it is still around and much has spun off of that as well.

There are many trends that we cannot escape from, such as clothing. Whatever is fashionable at the time will reflect that generation.

As for a trendster, one that is a blank canvas and clings to others for an identity and lacks a unique opinion of any kind. Well, I think the trends they follow are from misconceiving what is being done and why it is being done. They just know IT IS being done and so they accept it, build their own reasons around it, then say it must be done to fit in.

Example: Before goths, night/dance clubs used a lot of black lights, and black lights make white clothes light up like a light bulb. So the DJ's and regulars to these clubs would tell everyone to wear dark clothes and not to wear anything white, not even white socks. Socks should be black or anything but white. Then by the late 90's it was a fad to dress in all black and no one even remembered how and why it started.

Aside from this example, I would say another example is how fans may idealize their favorite band and try to dress like them. I never understood this, but it brings up a good example of how people think. This can be good or bad depending on how you look at it.

A trendster isn't someone who fits a label or stereotype, but one that jumps from label to label and from stereotype to stereotype. They know not how to look inside to find who they are, so they cling to everyone around them and they only see what is on the surface.

Selective, The last paragraph resonates my thread

If people act the part of a metalhead, that is one matter, yet if after the curtain falls they persist to play the role they breach the subculture, then if they represent themselves as a devote metalhead, they are a posuer!

My objective may have been missed in symatics.

I read plenty of post allude to " roleplayers", and " wanna-bes" ( less then when I first joined the rave) so I hope that is an indication that people gained perspective on the matter.

However , I still read threads that, if I was an inducted member of a subculture ( belief etc.) I would take offense to, and be suspect of the individuals intent behind opening the thread.

The attempt of men to look at themselves is
pursued in various ways. There are those who
"look within" according to the instructions of
some mystical tradition, following the charts of a
particular literature, and often making reports of
their subjective experience which confirm the
findings of those who have preceded them in the
same tradition. Of greater interest, I think, are
the discoveries of individuals whose intensity of
being makes them unable to "follow" anyone, and
whose communications bear the strength of
independent vision. Its easy to influence people if you know how to apply the pschology of persuasion. Psychology of persuasion is effective because of the law of association. You associate whatever your selling with something that’s currently hot or in-demand. I admire most those who do not follow the current raves, but instead, follow their own.

well stated.

I find people that declare a new allignment each month, or week to be less then engaging, contradictuve, and consistantly socially inadapt.

Scatter Brained comes to mind, along with Social butterfly.

Re: ~Selective~

"There are many trends that we cannot escape from, such as clothing. Whatever is fashionable at the time will reflect that generation."

No trend is something that society cannot escape from. Trends are things that are stereotyped into one sub-culture or another. There are no rules for trends simply because they are "fashion statements".

The term trend is just to bring out a thought or action depending on what an individual is trying to personify as something to mainstream with importance, ie "I am wearing this because I am a role model, now you need to wear it because I am your role model."

Everything has an escape, this escape is called "the choice to ignore". Move on from it and not succumb to what the sheeple want you to comform to. Turn of the telly already and WAKE UP!

Those that trend shift, are often heard assuming that general society is " so down on them".

The object appears to be to shock people through imply affiliation through costume, and stereotypical perpetration.

When/If such I individuels go to subculture related venues they stand out for the shallow unfoundational fadist they are.

Stereotypes have been around than the life I have led, and will remain long after, stereotypical issues or idealists seem to be the forfront of many cultures. Fads, trends or what ever you may use for the terms.

soon another trensd will develop, history shows many fasinating trends that communoties have been through.

Yet, when an established subculture is mistrepresented by posuers, what effect does that have on the subculture?

The media runs with any story that hints that a subculture is a significant
factor.

Media is the worst for claiming stereotypical actions that may not be based on true facts. For if they look the part than no matter what they are. The fault of media, whether they are posers or not median blanketing is not what it use to be, for a story is only as good as they can mix the words or coverage.

The peers of posuers are impressionable as well. Stereotypes are unchallenged. If I said I was a metal head, and declared that all metal was glorifing Satan, and that to to be a metal head meant you worshipped Satan, one could suspect that I lijely based my idea of what a metal head is from a third party source ( possible fundmentalist preachers)

So stereotypes are perpetuated more by trendsters imatating fashionable a subculture. Sometimes such individuals clash with established acylotes of said subculture.