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I am obsessed with the historical occurrence of the fad.
Fad is a word that sounds contemporary but is actually much older, having been coined back in the 1830s as a probable variation of the French word ‘fadaise’ (meaning a trifle and/or nonsense), which was ultimately derived from the Latin ‘fatuus’, which is basically another word for stupid.
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And there have been a lot of stupid fads. Some have become lovable and enduring forms of nostalgic lore, like The Macarena, the Hacky Sack, and the Hula Hoop. Others serve as an external testament to human gullibility and the power of marketing, like the Pet Rock, the Sauna Suit, and vibrating exercise belts.
No longer confined to the “fashion-craze” 1880’s definition of the word, the fad lives on as a societal organism, even in the age of the algorithm. It existed long before the word that we now use for it, and has endured through every phase of recorded history and technological advancement.
We’ve even cycled through a few in the NBA.
‘Positionless’ basketball. The proliferation of small-ball centers. The theoretical softness of European players. The idea that ‘tweeners’ (players who didn’t slot into a traditional 1-5) should be avoided in spite of skill.
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There’s even one that’s become an integral part of the modern game: the ABA three-point line.
My favorite fad was introduced to the world in the early 90’s, an epoch rife with Pogs, and Slap Bracelets, with the immortal and quotidian Furby to come, perched upon the sculptured bust above my chamber door.
Magic Eye pictures, also known as autostereograms, were all the rage when I was child.
First published in books in 1991, autostereograms are two-dimensional images that can create the optical illusion of a three-dimensional picture within the 2D image when vision is manipulated in a specific way by the viewer.
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One must look past the image in order to see this, to engage Stereopsis (a trick of depth perception caused by the different perspective each eye has of a three-dimensional scene), which is a difficult thing to explain to a 4-year-old.
I wanted to…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/learned-spurs-game-2-loss-113000118.html
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Publish date : 2026-05-22 11:30:00
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