Trendwatch
Posted: Mon Sep 18, 2023 6:01 pm
In 2016, a Youtube channel called "Trendwatch" posted this video:
He found some random footage, and added some anachronistic fonts and music to give it the flavor of a corporate training video from the 80s. There was no point to it, it was just an experiment thrown together for a cheap chuckle. The addition of "2016" to the title drove home the ludicrous nature of the video. Vinyl siding is not an exciting new trend to watch in 2016. It was a joke.
He added one more video shortly thereafter of a similar nature, and then disappeared.
In early 2022, Trendwatch returned, inspired by the explosion in popularity of "analog horror", and specifically the Backrooms series by Kane Pixels. The new video seemed more of the same trifling stuff, but of perhaps a more pointedly unsettling nature.
The next video Trendwatch released was New Time, and here is where the story gets interesting:
New Time set the scene for all that was to come. From then on, a story was told, and if you want to know what it was about, you are asking the wrong person, because there was no way to tell what it was about. It was a story told through the stylistic lens of those same corporate training videos, but for an audience who already knows something horrible has happened, but you (the viewer) don't know what it is.
There are themes that reappear, and there are certain things you recognize, even though you don't know why. There's the triangular spaceship. Any bright circle is an alien craft hiding in the scenery. 3 and 11 are important. Beep. Beep. Beep. It's a bit too mysterious for its own good, but you might revel in picking up on the themes and the references, even if you don't know what they mean.
A few days ago, Trendwatch posted the last one, and you didn't know it until the credits started rolling. Thankfully, he's now posting "Trendwatch Explained" videos, which, yes please, because it was completely inscrutable from start to finish.
But I didn't mind that. This was an amazing series which almost nobody knew about, and grew from a few joke videos into what I'll say is the most complete vision of analog horror ever produced. Criminally underrated and overlooked.
I will miss Trendwatch a great deal.
Beep.
He found some random footage, and added some anachronistic fonts and music to give it the flavor of a corporate training video from the 80s. There was no point to it, it was just an experiment thrown together for a cheap chuckle. The addition of "2016" to the title drove home the ludicrous nature of the video. Vinyl siding is not an exciting new trend to watch in 2016. It was a joke.
He added one more video shortly thereafter of a similar nature, and then disappeared.
In early 2022, Trendwatch returned, inspired by the explosion in popularity of "analog horror", and specifically the Backrooms series by Kane Pixels. The new video seemed more of the same trifling stuff, but of perhaps a more pointedly unsettling nature.
The next video Trendwatch released was New Time, and here is where the story gets interesting:
New Time set the scene for all that was to come. From then on, a story was told, and if you want to know what it was about, you are asking the wrong person, because there was no way to tell what it was about. It was a story told through the stylistic lens of those same corporate training videos, but for an audience who already knows something horrible has happened, but you (the viewer) don't know what it is.
There are themes that reappear, and there are certain things you recognize, even though you don't know why. There's the triangular spaceship. Any bright circle is an alien craft hiding in the scenery. 3 and 11 are important. Beep. Beep. Beep. It's a bit too mysterious for its own good, but you might revel in picking up on the themes and the references, even if you don't know what they mean.
A few days ago, Trendwatch posted the last one, and you didn't know it until the credits started rolling. Thankfully, he's now posting "Trendwatch Explained" videos, which, yes please, because it was completely inscrutable from start to finish.
But I didn't mind that. This was an amazing series which almost nobody knew about, and grew from a few joke videos into what I'll say is the most complete vision of analog horror ever produced. Criminally underrated and overlooked.
I will miss Trendwatch a great deal.
Beep.