Open Instagram or TikTok and you’ll see it: the same memes, the same matcha lattes, the same “cool” aesthetics, the same Labubu dolls and Liquid Death lookalikes again and again… There are entire accounts dedicated to charting the irony of this sameness.
Partly, fine – everyone wants to look current. But when everyone jumps on the same wave, everything blurs into one. That’s the TikTokification of culture: marketing stuck reacting to the latest thing, instead of looking at what sits underneath.
Fast Culture vs. Slow Culture
I think about this as fast versus slow culture, culture on two speeds. Fast culture is the visible stuff, the looks, memes, formats, jokes. It spikes, spreads, disappears. It is shiny, easy to copy and has a short half-life.
But slow culture is deeper. It contains the values, habits, feelings and how people want to live. It moves slowly but it shapes the fast layer.
Every fast trend grows out of something slow. A need. A tension. A way people are trying to cope or connect.
So the smart question isn’t “What’s trending?” but why is this happening and what are people really searching for?
Human needs barely change. We all want to feel safe, seen, connected, and in control. What changes are the pressures: the money squeeze, climate anxiety, tech burnout, politics. Those winds shape behaviour.
If you only watch the surface you miss the story underneath. If you look at why people do what they do – what they want, what blocks them, what pushes them – you can see where culture is heading next.
The Culture Web: Making Sense of the Noise
At ØUTLIER, we use the Culture Web to link the visible to the invisible.
Levels of culture
• Artefacts – aesthetics, memes, products
• Acts – behaviours and rituals
• Attitudes – beliefs and narratives
• Architectures – systems and power shaping it all
Speeds of change
• Sparks (0–2 yrs) – viral bursts
• Trends (3–5 yrs) – mainstream adoption
• Shifts (5–10 yrs) – structural change
Plot the dots and today’s spark connects to tomorrow’s shift. This way you'll stop chasing noise and start building strategy on human needs that endure.
Labubu & The Rise of Kidult Culture
Take Labubu, Popmart’s big‑eyed toy, as an example. It blew up on TikTok with a never ending stream of unboxings, queues and collectors everywhere. Then hype dipped and stock followed, the timeline moved on. If you only look at the toy itself, you’d think: “That trend’s over.” But look deeper and you see something much bigger.
• What we see: cute, weird Asian pop design going global.
• What people do: adults queue, trade, film unboxings.
• What they feel: adults want comfort and fun in a heavy world – permission to play.
• What’s shaping it: China’s creative power exporting IP and cultural worlds, not just products.
The Labubu trend isn’t really about toys. It’s about comfort in chaos – small pockets of joy and control amid the weight of adulting.
The brand lesson? Don’t sell toys, sell lightness. Help people step out of the heaviness for a minute. Make things that deliver joy, imagination, relief.
What Brands Should Take From This
• Design for play, comfort, control. Whatever your category is. Food, fashion, finance, you can make adulthood lighter and more expressive.
• Embrace the beautifully weird. Stop sanding the edges. Let contradictions live in your design, tone and storytelling.
• Build with cultural fluency. Don’t borrow Asian aesthetics as curiosities. Collaborate and co‑create worlds with the people who made them.
• Aim for shifts, not sparks. Optimise for the invisible drivers that last after the hype has gone.
The bottom line is this: Fast trends get attention but slow culture builds connection. The best brands know the difference, they build for feelings and needs that don’t go out of style.
Joey Zeelen is a cultural strategist, keynote speaker, and founder of Studio ØUTLIER. With a decade leading insights at Crowd DNA and running projects for Nike, adidas, IKEA, Greenpeace, the BBC, Meta, Google and others, he builds fan-first, culture-led strategies that move markets. Joey helps brands to understand, grow and shape culture for commercial advantage and is a regular commentator on culture.
