When the Tate McRae matcha rave has Labubu Crumbl cookies with Dubai chocolate frosting and Benson Boone moonbeam ice cream.
If the previous sentence has any legibility to you, I am very sorry. To those who haven't had their brains power washed by nonstop scrolling, let me explain.
Variations of this sentence have taken off as a meme in the past couple months. While they're largely a mishmash of phrases, brands, and proper nouns, there's a pretty simple meaning behind every word chosen: they're all either consumerist microtrends being pushed at every turn, or "basic" pop culture moments that are often incomprehensible in their ubiquity. Sometimes they're even both!
Take, for example, Labubus. Up until a few months ago, these things were pretty innocent collector's items – adorable, fuzzy dolls created by designer Kasing Lung. They're reminiscent of other cute collectible toys like Calico Critters or Kewpies. They've been around for a decade, but last year LISA from the hugely popular K-Pop group Blackpink was seen accessorizing with one, and this got the ball rolling on a microtrend that has now resulted in actual fisticuffs. Now, Labubus are everywhere, globally – you see boxes for sale in any store that can justify carrying them, and whether or not they're authentic is up to chance.
This is probably the unifying factor in all of the trends, items, or toys that get referenced in these memes: they're seemingly everywhere, and they're allegedly all people are talking about, on social media or otherwise. I know since first hearing of it a few months ago, I see Dubai chocolate – a type of UAE confection made with pistachio filling giving it a distinct look – everything everywhere all at once. I've never tasted this stuff, but I've seen Dubai Chocolate smoothies, martinis, peanut butter, cakes, parfaits, banana bread, coffees, toast, acai, and frankly, you quickly reach the breaking point and you can't take seeing green anymore for the rest of the day.
The same for Crumbl cookies. I rarely hear of people saying these things are particularly good, but I almost always see lines out the door when I pass a location in a major city. Their primary appeal, to my understanding, is not the taste – it's the social currency of posting a Gram of your aesthetic pastel pink box and sumptuously decorated cookies, and then making a short-form video of you gleefully eating them in your car. I'll concede that I'm not hugely knowledgeable here. I eat my ultra processed biscuits from the grocery store, thank you very much. Hashtag brave hashtag activism.
To say I understand where the microtrend meme is coming from is an understatement. At the risk of sounding impossibly pretentious, I've come to find the current state of overconsumption to be borderline grotesque. I really wish that one part of WALL-E didn't resort to cheap fat jokes, because I can't help but feel that (as trite as it is) we've arrived at something pretty damn close to that. I go on subways, work out at the gym, even just walk down the street and see an abundance of people glued to their phones with no hope of being unstuck. Sometimes the people is me. A lot of times, actually.
Whenever I'm foolish enough to scroll through what's popping on Facebook Reels or Instagram, I feel… almost nauseated. There's so much content that just boils down to visual shiny keys. I'm talking about endless videos (ostensibly for adults) of people scooping candy into bowls to make pretty colors, tossing different textures of slime around, and showing off their latest impractically ornamental trending food item.
The worst part is that I can't even say that I don't understand the appeal of any of this. I follow one of those candy accounts that essentially make baby sensory videos. I'm not in some transcendent cloud above the smog of avarice – yes, I may scoff at the five million signs for Dubai chocolate enemas and what have you, I may feel disgust at the proliferation of these manufactured trends, but on some level, I still get it. Labubus are cute – I love their chunky teeth and dense browbones. Sometimes I even think I might want one! So what do we do here?
Something is very clear through all this discourse and meme-ing and thinkpiecery about the current level of consumption: people are fatigued, even alarmed by it. Whether it's fast fashion clothes that heap piles of plastic into landfills or deluges of advertisements piped into every article we read, overabundance is starting to look ugly – and feel harmful – to more people.
It's become a common joke, particularly in certain circles of the internet, that people in the United States (and even the Global North writ large) are obsessed with "treats." In a superficial sense, this is often portrayed with iconography like giant lollipops, but the concept of a "treat" goes beyond foods and sweets. It's the convenience of DoorDashed meals and Instacart groceries. It's the Amazon order that arrives within hours of being ordered. It's piles of packages from TEMU, Factor, Chewy, Target, Sephora, what have you.
Concurrently, as if delivering on the promise of this stereotype, you see just as much talk of "little treats" among younger generations – small, indulgent purchases that are not large enough to break the bank in a tough economy, but also fun enough to soothe an internal hunger for something nice. Marketing professionals have already latched onto what they call "little treat culture" as a way to sell smaller luxuries, taking advantage of conditions where you assuage your inability to ever buy a home with a Dubai chocolate milkshake and a particularly cute Labubu for your purse.
Viewed in tandem, it's particularly hard to deny the "treat" stereotype. While we may argue that these little rewards are simply means of coping with turmoil and financial disadvantage, they come on the backs of people even worse off than their buyers, whether it's the DoorDash driver living out of their car between McDonald's drop-offs or the coffee for our elaborate lattes picked by child laborers in Honduras. And far too many of us choose to shrug our shoulders and say, well, the system is so much bigger than me. Might as well not try at all.
Through all these thickets of discussion, both online and off, I keep walking into the same question: What's the meaning behind all of this? On the surface, it seems like there's a moral imperative to be critical of all of this consumerist garbage. Beyond the material harm, it doesn't seem to do us much good beyond quick dopamine hits. The advent of the KonMari method going worldwide was less than a decade ago, and it feels like we've already done a complete 180 and have decided to feed the consumption beast as much as we can.
And one issue in particular keeps knocking on the back of my mind – when we mock these microtrends and tastes, are our intentions completely pure? I won't keep you in suspense. The answer is no. When people knock Tate McRae and Benson Boone, I'm sure a sizable chunk of the criticism comes from boredom with pop music that feels like it was made in a factory to appeal to everyone and thus truly resonate with no one.
But I feel like the bulk of this distaste doesn't come with Ultra Processed Art, but more so with the fact that these things are "basic." When you see someone listening exclusively to songs on the Hot 100, buying whatever their TikTok feed tells them is on-trend next, and eating the latest food to get hashtagged into oblivion, some of the disdain comes from the perceived greed and narrowness.
Still… I can cop to the fact that there's a massive blanket of pretension over my disgust here. Do I really hate that this person seemingly doesn't open their mind to other music, or am I mostly rolling my eyes because I think their tastes are boring and sheeplike? Do I really think the Dubai chocolate fad is obnoxious because laborers far, far away from Dubai are working hard for little pay to make it possible – or do I think it's cringey that everyone is following some overhyped fad?
Yes, I do feel with sincere conviction that there is a degree of moral rot to at least a few of these hobbies and trends. I also know there's really not anything wrong with liking Benson Boone or Gracie Abrams beyond the realm of personal taste. I may scoff at Labubus, but I have equally wasteful Monster High dolls sitting around my apartment that I collect for nothing but their cuteness – and I can't even wear them! And, like most people in the United States, I eat food, wear clothes, and enjoy luxuries made possible by exploited laborers every single day.
I think there's a nobility and hopefulness to the blowback aimed at overconsumption. For one, it's causing people to be more cognizant of the costs of their purchases and products. While a harm reduction mindset can only go so far in the industrialized world, I think any effort to mitigate harmful practices is better than none at all. Choosing to buy slave-free chocolate isn't activism in itself, but it's certainly better than deciding it's pointless to try anything.
These drips of discourse toward the idea that consumption is bad for us are indeed drips, perhaps transient ones that will dry down once the next talking point has crested over the internet – but maybe it can contribute towards the kind of erosion that will make the world a better place. To that end, I think it's a net positive that we at least acknowledge the uselessness of these microtrends – which are, in fact, often explicitly manufactured for the purpose of getting us to buy specific products. Tomato Girl Summer was a lie! Repent!
There's an episode of the cartoon Arthur, whose main demographic is toddlers and me, called "Arthur Rides the Bandwagon." The plot concerns a local fad over "Woogles," a squishy, stretchy, talking blob toy. They come in an array of styles and colors. Arthur's lament is that everyone in town has one except for him, including the wealthy Muffy Crosswire, who has one of every kid and will only exchange based on exact collector's guide parameters. He doesn't even like the things, but he becomes desperate to have one just to fit in.
The Brain, a talking bear character known for his intellect, explains it in plain terms: "It's a fad, Arthur. A popular fashion that briefly captures the imagination of a community." Then he pulls out his Woogle. The stress of not being in on the trend weighs heavily on Arthur, who has nightmares of his children being socially alienated by their pariah father, who lacks a Woogle.
His Grandma Thora dispenses the key wisdom: "That's how fads work. Everyone just HAS to have it now. But soon, no one will even care." The plot resolves soon after this with the community moving on just as she predicted.
The show uses 1970s Pet Rocks as an example of a now-forgotten fad, but the episode makes me think back on Beanie Babies I eventually stopped playing with. Tamagotchis I ditched after a few months. Silly Bandz and "i love boobies" bracelets filling up landfills. Ugg boots that every girl in my class (and I) had. Fidget spinners, Angry Birds, Furbies. None of this is new. But that doesn't mean it's not a problem. Overconsumption and waste doesn't get absolved just because it's become our norm. To the contrary, every year that passes with us uncritically consuming more and more just feeds the beast.
So is there or is there not a moral pride to be had in thinking Labubus are ugly? It's hard to say. Personally, I think that these micro level preoccupations are distracting from the macro level institutions that fuel a lot of these wasteful trends in the first place. It's not Sir Labubu himself who is causing overconsumption, or Stanley Cups or BookTok or Drunk Elephant or whatever is trending on the internet now. Sure, they're contributing, but the bigger problem is the machine that insists our only happiness comes from the things we own, have owned, and could own, rather than the pieces that make up a holistically good life, things like stable shelter, emotional health, social inclusion, and freedom from excessive, unnecessary financial burdens.
That being said… there's no shame in being a nonconformist. Be a rebel! Just so long as you don't let it cloud your perception of what's really at stake.