An Evolutionary Explanation For Our Kraze Madness.
Firstly, let’s take a little fun Yes/No survey.
Are you connected to/ do you frequently use the internet?
Do you use Instagram or any social media platform?
Do you own a TV/smartphone/laptop etc. at home?
If you’ve answered ‘yes’ more than 2 times , the Korean craze (K-pop, K-beauty, K-drama) is probably not a foreign concept to you. I know it is possible to be oblivious to the cross-cultural domination that is happening at the moment, because I was until 3 years ago too. I knew about Korean dramas, in the sense that they existed, but what I didn’t know was that they had a massive fandom; and I am not only talking about teens here. Often, people associate such trends to the younger generation and here’s what interested me the most: the fact that the love for anything that had “K- (Korean)” in it swept the world by surprise and it surely didn’t miss the adult population. In fact, businesses have made a huge market out of it, and I am quite impressed to see it going on strong. A lot of the trends only last a season. Do you remember the Harlem-shake? Yeah… sounds prehistoric, doesn’t it?
However, here comes the question of the day, why do we get attached to these things in the first place?
You know when people talk about addiction, the very first thing that comes to mind is drugs, drinking, gambling, smoking and other extreme cases. Not everyone, right off the bat, thinks of addiction to Instagram and TV shows, for instance. Let’s take a dive into the dictionary definition of addiction, ‘the need or strong desire to do or to have something, or a very strong liking for something’ (Cambridge dictionary, n.d). So, quite literally, whatever you have in unhealthy amounts and can’t get enough of, and results in a trigger of an uneasy feeling in its absence, can be an addiction.
Shopping, video games, texting, snapping; you name it and we are possibly addicted to it. To illustrate, I have an addiction to hooped earrings! I loosely describe this as my addiction because, in a jewellery store it is the first thing that catches my eye, despite the fact that I might have something that looks exactly the same at home, but I just have a compelling need to always buy one. I would spend hours on end looking at them in the store when my mum told me I was not allowed to get them. Unintentionally, I made it a goal to get every friend of mine to wear them if they didn’t already. This is the simple drive behind pop culture and media frenzies. One person starts something; initially, a common sentiment would perceive the trend as ‘lame’ but one individual at a time, it picks up momentum and before you know it, it becomes a case of “Yeah this is lame, but everyone is doing it so why not”.
Now, it’s easy to criticize without reading further and think “why and how does addiction relate to pop culture crazes?”
Addictive behaviours can be categorized into two: secondary and primary. Right now, I am only focusing on the primary category which, simply put, is a pleasurable survival behaviour (Horvath, 2015). All species actively engage with their surroundings in order to survive, with survival essentials including food, sex and, in most mammals, attachment (association/affiliation, connection and attention from others). For us humans, cravings (urges, desires) often promote these involvements. Without primary addictive behaviour, our species would be non-existent.
Therefore, this innate need for us to be affiliated and attached to others around us, the desire to be accepted, and our social dependency as a race, is the fuel that leads to our craze for trends . According to Lannone, Kelly, & Williams (2018), our fear of being ostracized and our inability to be socially independent is the reason why we take part in celebrity worship, why everyone feels the need to have a twitter account, why we are all buying metal straws (because, let’s face it, the turtles have been needing saving for so long) and why the teens of today are obsessed with TikTok videos.
Hopefully at this point you are having an “aha” moment.
So, here is the run down. We, humans, are intricately woven to be dependent on social bonds for survival, as suggested by Bowlby and Harlow in their various studies and research. Harlow’s monkey studies particularly illustrate our deep need for social security and connections over more material needs like food (Harlow, Dodsworth, & Harlow, 1965). This evolutionary instinct for survival, intensified by the process of natural selection, has become more dominant, and now our evolved brain is the driving force to why we are so affected by pop culture trends. It is the reason why our addiction to trends broadcasted to us on social media platforms and TV’s are hard to resist, and this evolutionary perspective is the reason why there is no age restriction on being swept by the craze.
My 56 year old Aunt and my 19 year old ex-classmate are both intensely into Korean craze, but it is not hard to know who is probably greater influenced by the trend (hint: the 19 year old) — that’s another article for another day. It is currently way past my bedtime, and contrary to the TV influenced teenage bed time that creeps well past 1AM, I love my night sleep; and it is currently way past my 8 pm mark.
References
Harlow, H. F., Dodsworth, R. O., & Harlow, M. K. (1965). Total social isolation in monkeys. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 54(1), 90.
Horvath, T. (2015, July 14). Addiction and Recovery: An Evolutionary Perspective. Retrieved from Practical Recovery: https://www.practicalrecovery.com/prblog/addiction-and-recovery-an-evolutionary-perspective/
Iannone, N. E., Kelly, J. R., & Williams, K. D. (2018). “Who’s that?”: The negative consequences of being out of the loop on pop culture. Psychology of Popular Media Culture, 7(2), 113–129.
