Culture Round-Up: From boycott Bollywood to CWG– the digital trends of August 2022
The trends are based on Starcom’s monthly report
From Commonwealth Games 2022 to Asia Cup and from Lal Singh Chaddha to House of Dragons, there were more than enough reasons for netizens to keep the internet abuzz with conversations in August. Be it music or memes, the internet trends never died out and kept the digital natives engaged throughout the month. Here’s all what brewed on the internet in August 2022 that shaped pop culture as per Starcom’s monthly culture round-up report.
For the wins and losses
August 2022 was a big month for sports fans with Commonwealth Games in progress, several cricketing series running, and football fever rising. On Google & Twitter, the most trending sports were cricket and football. While the chatter around Football remained mostly around team performances in the English Premier League and latest signings, Indian cricket teams nailbiting matches with arch rival Pakistan kept the interest in the sport on a high.
India’s exemplary performance at the CWG kept the netizens engaged with stars like Mirabai Chanu, Sanket Sargar, PV Sindhu, and Bajrang Punia, among others winning coveted medals for the country. From July 28 to August 8, nearly 200 Indian athletes competed for medals across 16 different sports in Birmingham to finish 4th with a tally of 61 medals - 22 golds, 16 silvers, and 23 bronze, making it one of the best performances for India in history.
While he had to opt out of CWG because of an injury, Neeraj Chopra made history by becoming the first Indian athlete to win a podium in diamond league for India by securing a silver medal and drove conversations on social media.
All about entertainment
The Indian audience also experienced a fair share of entertainment with lots of exciting doses. BTS ignited spark once again in August by winning the ‘Group of the Year’ award in Mexico and winning every VMA award for which they were nominated in the MTV event. The hashtags and mentions; “BTS paved the way” and “Army smashed the VMA” were on fire after the event. K-Pop girls, BLACKPINK, were not left behind the scenes with their new song ‘Pink Venom’ (#PINKVENOM) pre-released from the album Born Pink (set to release in Sep '22).
Coming to Bollywood and OTT shows; Alia Bhatt starrer ‘Darlings’ released on 18th Aug was also a hot topic for the month, getting the highest global opening for a non-English original Indian film and clocking over a whopping 24 million viewing hours. Aamir Khan’s Laal Singh Chaddha fell victim to the boycott practise by the Indian audience with hashtag #BoycottLalSinghChaddha is popular on Twitter. Amid the boycott trend, people were excited about the Shah Rukh Khan’s new movie Pathan with hashtag #PathaanFirstDayFirstShow trending on Twitter.
Tollywood also made into the buzz by releasing 3 solid hits last month namely, Bimbisara, Karthikeya 2, and Cobra which were all well received by the audience.
Talking about international shows, the release of ‘House of Dragons’ on Disney+Hotstar and ‘She Hulk’s’ post credit scene in the latest episode created a series of threads on social media online.
Beyond the boxes
The ‘other’ category in the report also saw a lot of buzz with events like Noida twin tower demolition, attempted murder on author Salman Rushdie, sudden demise of actress, political Sonali Phogat, and stock market expert Rakesh Jhunjhunwala keeping the netizens engaged.
India’s 75th Independence Day celebration with #HarGharTiranga campaign also drove a lot of excitement and chatter.
Rising fear of the Tomato Flu was also evident as netizens searched more about it on Google.
The melodies and the ‘gram
On Spotify and YouTube- Kesariya still remains at the top with maximum plays followed by Pasoori and Excuses. Blackpink’s new release Pink Venom entered into the top 10 for August. Summer High by AP Dhillon instantly coming into top 5 showed Indian taste for low-fi rhythmic Punjabi raps. Overall, the mood of the Indian audience has been quite romantic in the month of August.
Popular in reels were the “Bahara Bahara'' dances making everyone have their lovely khwaabs. Moving on, please don’t miss out the twerk trend on ‘Kaala chashma’ tune which even made our boys in blue go bonkers!
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The classic ‘Let me tell you something! Let me TELL YOU SOMETHING!” was also interacted a lot along with a new creative entry into the reel list, “Mera Pet Nikal Raha Hai, Aage Barr Raha Hai” reels. Everyone’s favorite ‘back slam’ meme template is back with a lot of sadly relatable memes. IShowSpeed has again given a meme worthy clip of himself of ‘one kiss is all it takes’ to the internet which is being hilariously used to show positive to negative situations all over Instagram.
For a more detailed document, please write to rathi.gangappa@starcomww.com
