There is no day when you get into a social network without going with a recipe or video selling the such: strawberry, white brigadeiro and red -tiered caramel syrup. The recycled name of the June party apple now baptizes desserts on coffee shops, personalized pots and application deliveries. , for those who want to enter the wave without paying between $ 14 and $ 20 per unit.
The logic of these fads is known. First came the Mexican palettes between 2014 and 2016. Then the Cupcakes and Naked Cakes, who dominated parties between 2016 and 2018. The mini volcano cake burst around 2020. In 2023, it was the turn of the candy, cafes and ice cream. Now, in 2025, the strawberry of love circulates in videos and menus, Oeo, a nostalgic aesthetics book, became a mania among young people. These fashions do not arise because the product is technically better. They gain traction when they seem to be everywhere and grow precisely for that.
In an experiment, sociologist Matthew Salganik showed that when the choices of others are visible, cultural successes become more unequal and unpredictable. Participants listened to songs from unknown bands and chose which one downloaded. In groups where it was possible to see previous downloads, some hits emerged quickly, others disappeared. The curious thing is that the successes varied between the groups, even having access to the same songs. What propelled the popularity was the impression that many people had already liked. The logic of “must be good, since everyone is in this one.”
This type of behavior is known as information cascade. Someone adheres, the other copy, not because they liked it, but because it saw it. The third already follows the line without thinking too much. The decision becomes contagion. It is this collective reinforcement effect that helps explain why certain products gain disproportionate attention. A candy with strawberry and condensed milk exists in any bakery. But only one gets affective name, desire label and videos.
In the case of food, there is also the logistics factor. The fad only avenges if there is available input and scales margin. Because there was already ready structure to distribute it and adapt it to recipes. Strawberry, besides being in the crop, is cheap, versatile and carries an easy -to -pack affective appeal with flashy names. The coffee shops know this. The algorithms too.
This sudden success also obeys a concrete logic of perceived value. A study by Andretti, Vieites and Eduardo Andrade shows that, among lower income consumers, the most relevant criterion in choosing a food is neither health nor sophistication, but satiety. Foods seen as more reinforced or capable of supporting longer tend to attract, especially when using family ingredients. The strawberry of love hits this point. It combines flashy look with condensed milk and fresh strawberry, two elements that are already part of the affective and food imagination of much of the population. It requires no translation or experimentation.
The price, although high for a simple dessert, also encourages home reproduction and resale, which further expands the circulation of fashion.
The philosopher Lars Svendsen notes that fashion is partly an attempt to give visible shape to a desired identity. But deep down, he says, it is also an answer to boredom. Fashions explode because they offer, for a moment, the feeling of being in tune with something bigger. A sign of belonging, updating, of being at the right pace.
So it is not enough for a product to be good or beautiful. He needs to seem inevitable. When it comes to this point, the taste matters less than the possibility of posting, commenting or repeating. The strawberry of love may already be at the end of the cycle. Some dessert, object or piece of clothing will come later. Not because it will be better, but because it will seem new.
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