Cultural Trends

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  [Social Mood Watch] The Sort of Authoritarianism That’s “Easier to Disguise”

  If they ditch e-mail for more person-to-person communication, are we to believe that such chats won’t include last night’s poker game or next month’s wedding plans or who got drunk at the company’s Christmas party?
   
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  [Article] Mob Roots Go Mainstream in Vegas

  Mob mania hits Las Vegas! New museums reveal public’s appetite for antiheroes as evidenced by societies negative social mood.
   
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  [Social Mood Watch] If You’ve Seen This Haircut, Don’t JUST Squirm

  Other observers may “squirm at the sight,” but we suspect they’d do more than squirm if they realized that the Hitler Youth cut is more than a throwback to the 1930s – our analysis suggests it’s more like a preview…
   
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  [Social Mood Watch] “So here’s how socionomics gets practical…”

  The trends and turns in social mood really do show up in popular culture, including movies.
   
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  [Article] Game of Thrones Feeds Society’s Macabre Appetite

  “Definitive morals and heroes accompany a bull market; blurred morals and mixed heroes accompany a bear market.”
   
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  [Article] As Social Mood Rose, Parents Chose Unusual Baby Names

  “Parents tend to give their children increasingly unique names during bull markets and increasingly ordinary names during bear markets.”
   
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  [Article] Social Mood Continues to Bend Gender Lines

  In bear markets, sexual stereotypes fall from favor and society embraces a greater variety of gender roles and identities.
   
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  [Article] The Destructors

  In Chapter 14 of The Wave Principle of Human Social Behavior, Robert Prechter noted the tendency for positive social mood to impel the desire to build and for negative mood to impel the desire to destroy.
   
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  [Article] Higher Tuition: Is it Finally “Enough”?

  Includes the latest developments in the education bubble and student loan debt.
   
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  [Article] Glenn Beck’s Goodbye

  Glenn Beck had a meteoric rise to the top of cable news. He doubled his audience in 2008, and by early 2009 had more viewers for his 5 p.m. show than all his competitors combined. His popularity extended beyond the tube — with six straight number-one bestsellers and a massive “Restoring Honor” rally in Washington, D.C. Now — all of a sudden — Glenn Beck can’t buy a break. Glenn Beck’s sponsors started to pull out in mid-2009, his past two books failed to hit number one, his ratings endured the steepest drop of any cable news show during the period, and his “Restoring Honor” rally became the brunt of jokes and parodies. How did Glenn Beck go from accolades to insignificance in such a short period of time?