Imagine, if you will, walking down your house street unoccupied, unworried most obviously, like any other teenager, on your phone. Then, a picture of a demon child pops suddenly appears in front of your face with a caption underneath, saying, “Like this post or she will appear next to your bed while you’re sleeping.” Naturally, since you are no longer in sixth grade, you choose to ignore it, but, deep down, you are still annoyed at the fact that someone you know decided to post it. I am indeed talking about the annoying social media trends we all see when scrolling down Twitter, Facebook and, if you are on the wild side of things, MySpace. We all hate them, but unfortunately are burdened with confronting them every day. We here at Charger share this common hate and want to highlight the Worst Social Media Trends of the Month. Here are your top contenders:

1. Alex from Target

Who is Alex from Target? Well, I asked myself the same question one night at 7 p.m., and decided to do some research on Alex from Target. The New York Times reported that Alex Lee, from Frisco, Texas, is a sixteen-year-old boy who works at his local Target.  Lee was photographed, without his permission, by an anonymous user on Tumblr. A few day later, British twitter user @auscalum posted the photo on her account with the caption “YOOOOOOOOOOO.” This was the beginning of an explosion of admirational tweets in which people raved about Lee’s looks. My favorite included the caption, “I fell in love with him the way he scanned my items, slowly then all at once.” His Twitter followers increased from 140 all the way to 500,000! Alex was in every girls heart for the first half of November, nicknamed the “Viral Bieber.” Lee was later interviewed on the Ellen show, where Ellen, for his service to many young ladies out there, gave Lee a new iPad.  Thankfully, Alex’s name and photo are rarely seen when perusing Twitter, and our world is now relatively safe from the two-day sensation Alex “Viral Bieber” Lee.

2. Feel old yet?

This Twitter, Facebook and maybe even MySpace trend consists of two pictures next to each other. In one of those pictures. you will see a young celebrity. and in the next will appear an older one who is being mocked. To offer an example, in one “Feel Old Yet” tweet it depicts Toby Flenderson from The Office alongside Macklemore. Now, most of these posts are in good humour. If you search “Feel Old Yet” on Twitter, you don’t find offensive material, but rather kids pranking their friends and teachers. However, much like every other social media trend, people will always find some content to be offensive. For example, there is one picture comparing young Selena Gomez to Michael Jackson who is no longer with us. This trend ended fairly quickly for a reason, photos got boring. The whole trend became very repetitive and there are no longer any light-humoured pictures that make anyone laugh. Just like Alex from Target, “Feel Old Yet” pictures are happily no longer with us.

3. Starter Packs

A more controversial group of posts, Starter Packs have been dominating Twitter for some time now. These posts usually involve four pictures showing various items. If I were posting one of these jokes, I would say something along the lines of “BGHS Charger Starter Pack,” and in the picture I would include a newspaper, coffee, a camera and someone in despair due to an impending deadline. Again, these are usually used in good humour, but some Starter Packs are very edgy. These seemingly-amusing packs are inappropriate in the eyes of the school district, parents and teachers Therefore, “Starter Packs” are really annoying to see. The amount of offensiveness that they potentially include is unattractive to anyone who knows the difference between something offensive and humorous. This Twitter trend will only lead to problems if used in negative context; thus, is one of the worst social media trends of the month. Hopefully, this trend stops after some time.

At the end of the day (or, rather, month), one message is clear: social media trends are best kept short. During an elongated period of time, there is more room for possibly offensive material to be put on the Internet. Therefore, as a friendly reminder to all of our fellow Bison, we here at the BGHS Charger would like to wish everyone safe roaming and posting.