‘DAB’ STYLE:
CULTURAL PERCEPTION
By mohnice Student of Gombe State university
The trending issue in our midst is the ‘Dab’ style of snapping, in almost all strata of social media the topic become popular and the hottest. What baffles me more in the ‘Dab’ issue is the misconception of some analysts regarding the invention, perceiving it as devil related. I am not in support of any form of posing to snap, be it Dab, Azonto, Galala, or whatever. As a student of business admin, who is familiar and has come across Gens202 Nigerian peoples and culture with some key concepts like cultural relativism, cultural shock, collective behaviour, fad and fashion, crazes, and beside all social change, no new invention will emerge and confuse me.
Dab style is not the biggest social problem facing our society as a whole, before the emergence of the new style of snapping, we have seen how Hip hop artist Lil wayne made our youths to behave in a craze manner of perambulating with ‘Lollipop’ stick in their mouths. Some of our youths designed tattoos on their body, while imitating Lil wayne others became drug addicts and codeine masters.
We have seen how our youths went mad with a hairstyle originated from some key European footballers, Gallas, Ballatolli among others. In core North, some youths got their hairstyle from the Hausa actor Ali Nuhu, which is known as the FKD style. Recently, our female sisters were said to have copied a new style of ‘Hijab’ from a Hausa film actress in a movie ‘Salma’ known as ‘Wankan Salma’. My fellow brothers, all the aforementioned examples are nothing but fads, for a fad is a novel form of behavior that catches on in popularity but later fades. Most of these fads were or are harmless and have no long-range social consequences.
Fads and fashions are specific types of diffuse collective mass behaviors. Generally, they arrive suddenly and disappear quickly, but they may attract great interest from large numbers of people during their tenure. A fad is a superficial or trivial behaviour that is very popular for a short time.
Aguirre and others (1988) examined the characteristics and effects of fads and tested them with data on over 1,000 incidents of streaking—running Unclad through a public area— at colleges and universities. They reviewed some characteristics of fads listed in the literature, which included their homogeneity, their novelty, their oddness when examined by existing social norms, their non-utilitarian behavior that lacks serious consequences for the participants, their suddenness in appearance, their rapid spread, as well as their quick acceptance and short-lived nature. Contrary to conventional wisdom, their analysis of streaking as a fad revealed that streaking events had clearly identifiable social structures.
To those participating in streaking, the behaviour was meaningful and consequential. Their results conform to the emergent-norm framework of collective behavior that was described earlier. The fad of streaking was made up of compact and diffuse crowds, and was greatly influenced by mass media coverage of previous events; it had a division of labor and clear normative limits and, in the words of Aguirre et al., "was spawned by social organization; it was a product of group life." In contrast to a fad, fashions are more enduring, widespread, and socially significant. A fashion is a temporary trend in some aspect of appearance or behavior. Fashions resemble fads, but they tend to be more cyclical. They are generally thought of as influencing styles of dress, but there are also fashions in music, art, literature, and even sociological theories. To be "in fashion" is to wear the style of hair and the types of clothes that advertisers are pushing and that are currently in vogue.
Fads and fashions provide many people with a sense of excitement, feelings of belonging, or a source of identification and self-esteem. Fads and fashions, however, are also big business. Packaging pet rocks, opening a hip-hop club, and selling die latest clothes are ways of making money.
Repeatedly, I am not in support of the new emerged fad of ‘Dab’ style, but let’s not deceive ourselves with distorted unempirical argument that it is a new form of satanic worship or illuminati invention. It is a fad and with time it will fade away. It is high time we concentrate on other serious alarming social problems not ‘DAB’...Gombe State university faculty of mangement sciences.

cc lala

What is this controversial DAB style? I'm not interested in googling it.