In a shocking development today it was revealed that all trends have come to a complete and utter standstill.

J. Walterhousen Stellated made the announcement at a specially called press conference.

All trends stopped today.

This news came as a total shock to everyone who makes a living tracking trends or talking about trends or writing about trends.

Unfortunately, it seems nobody was tracking the trend of trends. Consequently analysts from every walk of life is being impacted.

Entire departments of the financial institutions are being shuttered because there are no more trends to analyze or write reports about.

Corporate marketing departments are decimated as trend watchers find themselves without anything to do.

The world will no longer have access to statements like:

Michael Tchong’s father was born in Canton, China. His family name means “bell” in Chinese. No wonder Michael’s entire career has been focused on making things “clear as a bell.”

Two fights does not necessarily equal a trend, but it does mean coaches and administrators should be turning their awareness levels up a notch or two.

“People used to send anthrax in the mail,” my mom added, as if it were once a widespread trend.

The GPS will follow the IDX if the VIX falls. LSMFT will certainly be XXL but only for VW, GE, ATT. Conversely KEDS are reaching ID, if not before the HDTV.

Chart and graph makers are finding pink slips as common as herpes on a whore. If there are no more trends, who needs them? Anybody can draw a straight line on a computer.

Shares of Microsoft plummeted as the news leaked out. No more Excel Charts, no more Powerpoint, even Indexed was effected.

“A trend is a trend is a trend, But the question is, will it bend? Will it alter its course through some unforeseen force And come to a premature end…?” — Sir Alec Cairncross

Those prophetic words where treated with a giggle when Sir Cairncross said them. Now people who make their livelihoods from trend watching are suffering immensely.

Amazon.com saw sales drop precipitously as book publishers stopped buying books by the truckload to move their author’s trend upward.

Hundreds of trendwatching sites adapted to the news quickly. Since these sites get most of their revenue from Google Adsense, it didn’t bother them that there were no trends to follow.

In the public sector, this news was met with calm and introspection.

Johnny Bookmark offered this assessment:

My uncle Franklin has always found a place for me so I can stay at the public trough. I’m counting on Uncle Frank as usual. The trend is looking favorable.

Gurus like Godin, Popcorn, Peters, Penn, et al are furiously remolding their works so that they can all claim:

“I saw it coming. In my new book, The End of Trend, I will explain how you can benefit from this flatline.”

There is a silver lining to this darkest of dark clouds. The internet actually sped up considerably. Those who track this data in real time attribute it to a number of phenomena

• Google Analytics didn’t have to make charts nine times a day for every blogger in the industrialized world.
• Alexa was no longer required to build complex charts comparing trends of the major websites and blogs.
• Hundreds of thousands of marketing blogs went dark as owners found nothing to write about and nobody to whom they could link.
• Press releases online were cut in half as companies didn’t have to discuss how business was trending.

Violent assault, spousal abuse, child abuse, smoking deaths, and restless legs syndrome, have all seen an unprecedented decline:

Dude! If I ain’t helping keep the numbers up, I’m gonna quit.

That comment seemed to reflect common sentiment, but it’s not a trend.