According to social media, signs of a recession are looming everywhere.
Lady Gaga headlining Coachella is a recession indicator. A new White Chicks movie? Recession Indicator. Knee-high Converse? Unfortunately, yes.
The meme, which jokingly points to returning cultural trends as harbingers of a market crash, has inundated feeds across the globe.
As far as economic metrics go, it’s the most trending. But is 2000s cringe a true indicator of our financial outlook?
And what does it say about us that we’re all in on the joke?
What is a recession indicator?
The meme’s roots can be traced back to a 2019 tweet, according to Know Your Meme, an encyclopedia for the chronically online.
The tweet asked, “When did everything become a ‘recession indicator'”, poking fun at several news publications decrying what they believed were signs of a looming US recession.
From there, the phenomenon got a shout-out in satirical news outlet The Onion, and has sporadically popped up again over the last three years.
Nothing could compare, however, to its popularity within the past months — when everything from US Army enlistments to Snooki at the club indicated economic downturns.
Even celebrity Ed Sheeran and Spotify are in on the joke. (ABC News)
Once again, it was propelled mostly by major US economic headlines.
In early April, President Donald Trump announced “reciprocal” tariffs on almost all trading partners, which he later diminished to a “baseline” 10 per cent rate.
He also ratcheted up the pressure on Beijing, slapping a 145 per cent tariff on Chinese goods.
The result? Everything from toys to toasters now faces a price increase for US consumers, while American Gross Domestic Product (GDP) decreased at an annualised rate of 0.3 per cent.
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Wait, are we really heading towards a recession?
To answer that, RMIT professor of finance Angel Zhong says the meme needs to be distinguished from actual recession indicators.
Those include things like employment data and levels of industrial production.
She says this meme instead reflects “the uncertainty, the sentiment and the confidence of consumers”.
While she adds that anxiety is “totally reasonable” given the current outlook for the US market, there have been positive signs in the Australian market, including an adjustment in interest rates.
“I can acknowledge that the past few years have been hard for a lot of Australians, with interest rate hikes and the cost-of-living crisis,” Dr Zhong says.
“But let’s also acknowledge the fact that we have seen some decrease in interest rates already.
“There is also always a time lag between interest rate adjustment and changes in inflation and thus how people are feeling.
“That is why you don’t really see an immediate effect of interest rate deductions on people’s lives.”
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Her take is backed up by the PM, who was asked the same question before the election.
“We have, if you look at all of the figures, inflation heading the right way, interest rates heading the right way, it started to rise before the election,” Anthony Albanese told reporters in late April.
Culture + economics = a divided history
Culture and consumers have a long history of foretelling a recession.
There’s the lipstick index — a theory coined by cosmetic giant Estée Lauder that lipstick sales rise when we’re nearing a recession (the idea being consumers opt for a relatively inexpensive pick-me-up as opposed to a larger splurge).
Then there’s the hemline index, which posits that when the economy goes up, so to does hemlines.
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Dr Zhong even points out the infamous avocado smash — the debunked claim that young Australians couldn’t afford a house because they were buying too much fancy toast.
And she says there’s a simple reason why we keep inventing new indicators.
“These are used because people find that they’re relatable,” she says.
“It highlights what we say in finance is the difference between Wall Street and the main street.
“In industry academia, they’re using jargon, these complex economic phrases, but of course the public loves using memes or avo smash to understand.”
Smashed avocados were once just another way of analysing the economic market. (ABC Rural: Jennifer Nichols)
This gap in financial literacy can also be exploited, depending on how we respond to certain indicators, Dr Zhong adds.
“They could be clickbait and exaggerate the situation and amplify anxiety.”
But on the flip side, they can spark a fresh interest in finance.
“[They can] inspire them, maybe to study more or even refer to some free resources online to improve their financial resources,” Dr Zhong says.
She urges consumers to always do their research using trusted sources such as MoneySmart or the RBA websites for actual recession information.
Loading…Is laughing at our economy new?
Notably, the meme plays on nostalgia for the mid-2000s , a period which included the Global Financial Crisis of 2007–2009.
Richard Scully, a professor of modern history at the University of New England, says there was similar nostalgia after the Great Depression.
In Germany, nostalgia for life under Communist East Germany even has its own name: Ostalgie.
All this to say, the phenomenon is not new.
The meme isn’t even the first of its kind, Dr Scully explains, noting how listeners in the 1990s linked Pink Floyd albums to recessions.
“People had gone back and tracked the fact that every time Pink Floyd released an album, up to and including The Dark Side Of The Moon … there had been an economic downturn as a result,” Dr Scully said.
In a similar way, satirical communication, including memes, has been used throughout history to license “otherwise very harsh emotions”.
Are politicians fair game when it comes to memes?
“If you’re going to have a society that allows for free speech and free political expression, you have to have something like this kind of satire,” Dr Scully says.
“Otherwise people won’t be sharing memes. They’ll be sharing plans for the next revolution.
“It creates communities, communities of contempt, anger and disgust, which are pretty powerful emotions, and the best way of building any community is to have an emotive basis.”
Memes are also “inherently democratic” ways of voicing discontent.
“You don’t have to be employed by a major masthead to get your message out there,” Dr Scully adds.
“All you really need is a computer and an image, text and the platform to disseminate.”
Can I offer you a meme in this trying time?
On one Australian Reddit post, people lament starker recession indicators.
Empty caravan parks over Easter, more “for lease” signs on shops — all undeniable feelings of uncertainty across Australia.
It wasn’t too long ago, the world faced a similar sense of uncertainty amid the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In Spain, researchers found that memes shared through WhatsApp during the pandemic helped “make a difficult and stressful experience more bearable”.
An example of memes Spaniards sent each other during the pandemic, laughing at toilet paper shortages. (Supplied )
“They’re not looking forward to it,” Dr Scully adds, of the recession indicator meme.
“But they’re sort of comforted by the fact that, they can’t control the moron who’s in the White House, but there are things on the human level that they can control.
“They can get in touch with each other and share a sense of togetherness in another way.”