Which trends are you a part of?

In the book “Microtrends: “The Small Forces Behind Tomorrow's Big Changes”, Mark Penn outlines more than 70 ‘microtrends’ that are emerging in the US today (though there are also some international trends). He believes that it takes about 1% of any given population to adopt something for it to become influential. He also maintains that America is no longer a melting pot of immigrants from different countries and ethnicities joining the American mainstream, but instead, is a country increasingly made up of microtrends, with small populations increasingly doing their own thing, adding up to dozens, if not hundreds of microtrends.

Some of the current trends include:

Cougars, Office Romances, Young Knitters, High School Moguls Wordy Women, Ardent Amazons, Stained Glass Ceiling Breakers, Pro-semites, SouthPaws Unbound, Black Teen Idols, Surgery Lovers, Powerful Petites, Social Geeks, Video Game Grown Ups, Neo Classicals, Smart Child Left Behind, Mammonis, Eurostars

I personally am part of at least 2 trends (I think!) and have observed many other trends that Penn outlines. One very interesting trend is Italian males who stay at home- a whopping 80% or more of Italian men between the ages of 18-30 stay at home with their parents! The main factor contributing to this is higher unemployment due to jobs moving to low cost locations such as China.

It does seem though, that some of these trends have been around for a very long time and are not really new microtrends. After all, office romances have been around since the beginning of time (or shortly thereafter) and Wordy Women is a long standing stereotype. Some trends are extremely self evident and don’t really warrant a mention in the book - you’d have to be living in a cave to not have noticed the rapid growth in Surgery Lovers.