In the age of social media, trends move at a breakneck pace. One day you're brat, the next day you're demure and mindful. And by the time this story is published, the internet will already have moved on to the next big thing.
TikTok, in particular, has a lightning-fast trend cycle. Digital culture expert Veronica Smith says there are a couple reasons for this; for one, it's a hyper-visible platform, where trends can reach millions of views in a short span of time. Pair that with the sheer volume of content, and attention spans will just grow shorter and shorter.
"The rapid exposure to endless content means trends can rise and fall within days," Smith says. "They'll emerge fast and capture audiences and it'll feel like the biggest moment in time, but they can die even faster." Earlier this year, Charli XCX's sixth studio album 'brat' started a trend of its own .
It coincided with the Northern Hemisphere's summer, so then it became 'brat summer', and suddenly everything was brat-coded and lime green. While the term was inherently understood by digital natives, the cultural phenonemon took a bit of explaining to older generations. There wasn't a succinct definition for what 'brat' meant - you either got it or you didn't.
Linguistics expert and content creator Adam Aleksic, better known as @etymologynerd on TikTok, says 'brat' followed a popular trend within trends, wherein they grow increasingly conceptual in nature. In other words, there's no specific explanation, just vibes. ".