"What Was The Worst Trend That Has Ever Existed?" (30 Replies)

Some of the trends that you will see in this collection were associated with people's religious beliefs, while some, many decades or even centuries ago, were supposed to emphasize social status. Well, some just appeared literally out of the blue, because some celebrities acted in one way or another, and then numerous followers picked up the idea. But what exactly unites all these trends is that probably none of the people who followed them at that moment thought they were acting really stupid.

"History knows many ridiculous traditions. More precisely, those that today we consider ridiculous, many years ago, were considered completely logical and appropriate," says Valery Bolgan, a historian and journalist, editor-in-chief of the Intent news agency from Ukraine, to whom Bored Panda reached out for a comment. "No, many 'challenges' and flash mobs of our time or of the last decades intend to show their own absurdity - but this is already the specificity of the postmodern nature of modern culture."

"By the way, another trend that runs through the millennia of human history is the tendency to idealize the past and believe that it used to be better in the 'good old days'. After all, one of the first records about what a decline in morals had taken place and how young people were inferior to previous generations applies, if I'm not mistaken, by the second millennium BC. So, it's okay - ten to twenty years will pass, and we will remember with nostalgia, for example, 'good old TikTok'. It is likely that this will happen," Valery states.

In any case, compared to many of the traditions that people followed centuries ago, modern trends - even dangerous ones - often look like innocent child's play. After all, for example, when medieval townspeople deliberately slayed cats, considering them accomplices of witches - and then there was no one to exterminate the rats that carried the plague - these delusions really cost the lives of millions of people. Now just compare this, maybe, with the recent TikTok trend of people stealing toilets and stuff from schools. As they say, everything is relative...

In any case, there are trends without which the history of humanity would be much better, and hardly anyone will argue with this. And now we're definitely looking forward to you adding some comments with modern or ancient habits and traditions you also considering to be absolutely weird or ridiculous. After all, we might have missed something in this selection, so let's help each other to refresh our memory in the comments...