Fad
[3] Similar to habits or customs but less durable, fads often result from an activity or behavior being perceived as popular or exciting within a peer group, or being deemed "cool" as often promoted by social networks.
[4] A fad is said to "catch on" when the number of people adopting it begins to increase to the point of being noteworthy or going viral.
Apart from general novelty, mass marketing, emotional blackmail, peer pressure, or the desire to conformity may drive fads.
[8] Early adopters might not necessarily be those of a high status, but they have sufficient resources that allow them to experiment with new innovations.
[2] When it comes to collective behavior, the emergence of these shared rules, meanings, and emotions are more dependent on the cues of the situation, rather than physiological arousal.
[2] This connection to symbolic interactionism, a theory that explains people's actions as being directed by shared meanings and assumptions, explains that fads are spread because people attach meaning and emotion to objects, and not because the object has practical use, for instance.
[1] They begin to recognize that their preoccupation with the fad leads them to neglect some of their routine activities, and they realize the negative aspects of their behavior.
A marketing professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business, Jonah Berger and his colleague, Gael Le Mens, studied baby names in the United States and France to help explore the termination of fads.
[9] Other than fads, collective behavior includes the activities of people in crowds, panics, fashions, crazes, and more.
[9] Robert E. Park, the man who created the term collective behavior, defined it as "the behavior of individuals under the influence of an impulse that is common and collective, an impulse, in other words, that is the result of social interaction".
[9] A fad's popularity increases quickly in frequency and intensity, whereas a trend grows more slowly.
Some people might start to criticize the fad after pointing out that it is no longer popular, so it must not have been "worth the hype".
