What Are Polar Trends?

Polar trends are topics or ideas that aren’t mainstream yet, but are showing clear signs of growing in popularity.

They could be anything, not literal trends. For instance, a polar trend would be:

• The concept of AI chatbots before they became popular
• Cars when they were first invented and it wasn’t normalised to have one
• The acronym ‘lol’ before it became a widely used neologism. 

The same goes for literally every other invention, neologism, topic etc… that is widely used today. At one stage, they were a polar trend. 

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*insert table image here

To demonstrate, this infographic basically shows the lifecycle of every ‘next big thing’ 

Stage 1 - New invention and/or innovation

At this stage, something new and revolutionary has just entered a niche community. Not many people know about it and no one knows what people’s opinions will be (unless it’s something obviously revolutionary like time travel or a cure to cancer).

Stage 2 - Pre-polar trend

The ‘thing’ in question is gaining traction within a niche community. 

Stage 3 - Polar trend

This is the sweet spot! When something is a polar trend, it is gaining traction within it’s niche community at an abnormally alarming rate. At this stage, the topic usually is also being mentioned, but not yet trending outside it’s original niche community. 

Note - By the time the topic reaches polar trend stage, it is almost guaranteed to be big soon.

Stage 4 - Trending

The topic is now being mentioned everywhere. Everyone is doing something with, about or around it. 

Stage 5a - hype dies

The topic has now become radiofied. Some things get better when more people ride the bandwagon, and some things get worse. In this case, the topic has become worse after going mainstream. 

Stage 5B - Hype continues into a long-term thing

The topic is now HUGE in every niche, industry, location etc…..

Example 1 - ChatGPT and other LLMs

1. LLMs, Chatbots are a new form of AI development which are developed as proprietary software in major tech companies. At this stage, not many people use these and while the use case can be anything, it is not specific enough yet. 
2. ter

Acai would have been considered to be a polar trend back in 2016, when it was much less popular than it is today. 

Example 2 - ‘starter pack meme format’ 

Example 3 - ‘Looksmaxing’ 

Example 4 - Drill music

The drill rap music genre would have been considered to be a polar trend in the early 2010s. Though it already existed back then, it was a niche music genre compared to where it is now -  a mainstream genre.

Example 5 - Acai

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What makes something a polar trend?

The criteria for classifying a new concept to be a polar trend varies from person to person. But here are some common reasons to consider a topic to be a polar trend: 

1. The topic is new and suddenly being discussed ALOT within a niche community 

2. People are talking about it a lot in real life

3. There’s a spike in curiosity and experimentation. People aren’t just talking about it, they’re testing it, making tutorials, or remixing it in creative ways.

4. Conversations are deep, people are saving and sharing posts, and discussions revolve around practical use, not just hype.

5. Early infrastructure or content ecosystems are forming.

New tools, integrations, or guides are appearing around the topic before it even trends publicly — a strong sign of lasting momentum.

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Why are they important? Why should I care?

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For most people, polar trends don’t really matter, but for entrepreneurs, content creators, influencers, and public figures, identifying and acting early on polar trends can make a massive difference in their growth and visibility.

Being the first or one of the first to introduce a polar trend to your platform or community results in astronomical levels of seed merit if the polar trend does actually go big in the future. 

For anyone else, I guess it would be considered to be ‘cool’ if you jumped onto a trend before anyone else, but realistically speaking, the ones who truly benefit are those who rely on algorithms for reach: creators, influencers, and entrepreneurs.

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