Social media is an outlet used to communicate with your friends and your peers. Throughout the past month, Instagram has witnessed a resurgence of “nominate trends” people are doing with their friends and other users on the app. This has fostered a sense of community, and has a way of bringing nostalgia.
Some people have found that these trends have given them a blast from the past, with the first set of nominations being the USC Ice Bucket Challenge, bringing awareness to individuals that suffer with mental health struggles. Originally, around the summer of 2014, it was called the ALS bucket challenge, bringing awareness to the incurable disease called Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Participants would dump a bucket of ice water on their heads, while surfacing the issue of worldwide mental health problems. They would then nominate a few of their friends to do it as well, typically three or four, and the cycle would repeat. This trend has reached multiple countries, and is a huge growing factor for the Instagram community.
As well as the USC bucket challenge, there have been some other, less favorable nomination trends that have also surfaced on Instagram. They all begin with a prompt from Instagram, with things like “side shot nominate 6.” Participants would then insert an image of them from the side angle, with some people choosing funny pictures, cute pictures, but typically this was found to be popular within the athletic community, with athletes using this as an opportunity to showcase their action shots. Then, they would tag 6 users to also participate in the challenge and post a side shot. Some people felt that this trend was unnecessary, and were dreading the looming notification they were anticipating of a tagged story on Instagram.
Every nomination trend on Instagram has followed the same pattern typically, and reviews on it as well as participation have been mixed. Some feel that it is just another unnecessary social media trend they won’t give into, and others think it’s a fun trend to show off some pictures of themselves. As time has gone on, more and more of these prompts have appeared on people’s stories, like “you as a baby nominate 6,” “face card nominate 6,” and even “4 fits nominate 6.” With time, these trends will eventually die down, but for now they remain popular!