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Comment by brianwawok | Hacker News Reader

What does fad mean to you?

If usage of something new goes up, peaks, and then heads down to 1/2 or 1/4 of the previous peak, what would you call that?

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Fad has this very negative connotation but certain types of activities do rise in popularity, stay popular for a bit, and then decline a long way. Inline skating/rollerblading in the US is a great example.

It grew from nothing to be a super-popular recreational activity for a numbber of years, and now you rarely see someone on inline skates.

Right, Inline skates is a fad.

Doesn't mean it goes to 0, but it had a moment - and it is past.

Right. No one is keeping you from putting on a pair and taking a skate on the bike path. And, once in a great while, you see someone doing just that. But there's probably no skate rental place on the bike path any longer, people don't organize group trips, and there are no mass urban Friday night skates.

I assume while frisbees are still around, they're also seemingly much less ubiquitous than they were.

Frisbee golf isn't all over your public parks?

Never seen it locally--not that I really have much in the way of public parks where I live. I was mostly referring to the fact that it seems you just see fewer people playing frisbee casually than you used to. (I did and I've never played frisbee golf in my life.)

In fairness, I'm not really sure frisbees are a fad. They've gone through peaks and valleys of popularity but they've generally stayed around in some form.

This is a bit odd, both Disc Golf and Ultimate have "gone pro" with professional leagues some of which is even broadcast.

That may be, but I live in SoCal and I seldom come across disc golf parks, too, let alone anyone playing it. And I know someone who plays on a team, though he lives hundreds of miles away, in Santa Cruz, where I understand it's more popular.

The difference is, there was no SV startup unicorn with an insane valuation making roller blades. They were basic consumer products for like $20.

The executives made 100's of millions in profits off of a fad. They did an amazing job. Some of it's just dumb luck with the lockdowns, but either way, they made something out of nothing.

Maybe they would have been if they had been the big thing 20 years later. But I think their heyday probably also predated a lot of the X-sports stuff etc. so it was mostly a recreational activity that was popular with fairly ordinary people. Skates could easily be more like $100+. They're basically hockey skates after all. (Construction details are different but level of support is the same.) Individuals made something out of nothing in the space but they didn't make $100s of millions of dollars.

Was the pandemic a fad? Yes certain segments did grow wildly during the pandemic due to in person restrictions. That growth is certainly unsustainable. If it weren't for the corresponding stock price explosion and then costs explosion to attempt to grow even more, they would have a very profitable company. As far as fitness trends they do manage to hold on to a lot of subscribers.

I'm not sure how to put a natural event as a fad... but masking surely was. It was a way to project how much of a good citizen you are. Yes it had social benefits, but it also was a badge of honor during the fad times.

Life

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