A trendy workout video briefly becomes the most popular thing in the house
A Craze That Arrived Suddenly
A short-lived but genuinely enthusiastic fitness craze swept through one Eton house earlier this term after a handful of boys began following a popular online workout video during free periods, a trend that briefly saw the common room floor cleared most evenings for what participants called “a surprisingly sociable way to spend twenty minutes before prep.” The trend’s sudden popularity took even its earliest adopters by surprise, with one describing the shift from “two of us doing this quietly in the corner” to “half the house joining in most evenings” as happening within the space of about four days.
A Fixture, Briefly
At its peak, the informal sessions reportedly drew a genuinely mixed crowd, from boys with a serious interest in fitness to others who admitted they had simply joined in “because everyone else was doing it and it looked more fun than sitting around.” The housemaster, observing the trend with quiet amusement, noted that whatever its actual fitness value, the sessions had produced “a genuinely nice bit of house camaraderie for a couple of weeks,” with boys from different year groups mixing more than usual during the shared activity.
A Fad That Faded as Quickly as It Arrived
True to the pattern of most such crazes, enthusiasm began tapering off within a fortnight, with the nightly sessions gradually shrinking back down to the original small core of participants who had started the trend in the first place. One of the earliest adopters, reflecting on the craze’s rise and fall, said he had “fully expected this to happen, these things always fade once the novelty wears off, but it was genuinely fun while it lasted.”
A Familiar Rhythm to House Trends
Future Leaders understands house-wide crazes of this kind, whether fitness-related, food-related, or otherwise, tend to follow a fairly predictable arc each term, with staff noting the pattern with a certain fond familiarity rather than any real surprise.
A Trend Remembered Fondly, However Briefly It Lasted
Whatever comes next, several boys say they enjoyed the brief burst of shared activity while it lasted, with one joking that the house’s collective attention span for any given craze “seems to average out at almost exactly two weeks, like clockwork, whatever the actual activity happens to be.” The housemaster has jokingly suggested keeping a running log of each term’s fleeting crazes, if only to see whether the two-week pattern holds up as reliably as everyone currently suspects it does. Even the housemaster admits he is quietly looking forward to whatever the next brief obsession turns out to be.
More from this section at Future Leaders and coverage of the wider school world at The London Prat.
For further reading in a similar spirit, see The Onion and Private Eye.
SOURCE: https://prat.uk
