Kiss goodbye to the ‘belfie’ brigade, this month social media is going mad over #Mirin
There’s been so many social media trends of late, it’s safe to say we’re struggling to keep up. After ‘selfie’ was replaced by its slightly cheekier (sorry) younger brother the ‘ belfie ’, word on the Twittersphere is now that they’ve both been ditched for #Mirin, which stands for, well, ‘are you admiring?’
The new trend is followed by a speedily expanding group of young men, sharing photos of themselves in a muscle pose or with a post-workout physique with anyone who’s willing to look.
Short for ‘are you admiring?’, the trend is designed to evoke jealousy among the young studmuffins’ fellow followers, presumably aiming to inspire them into upping their game and hitting back with a honed physique of their own.
And research has found that, far from being a niche trend, #Mirin is in fact on the rise. In a survey by sports nutrition distributors Bodybuilding Warehouse , it was revealed that the number of people taking part in the trend has more than doubled in the past year, with the biggest rise in use coming from young men aged 17 to 30.
Male celebrities such as Chris Brown, Ryan Gosling and Craig David are believed to be leading the way by posting their pecs on social media, as research also shows there has been a 47 per cent rise in men flaunting themselves in this way over the past 12 months.
We can’t help but feel that this new self-celebratory trend (which also uses hashtags such as ‘#beastmode’ and ‘#shredded’ - need we say more) may be taking the whole ‘social sharing’ thing a little too far. Then again we’ve all been guilty of the occasional Starbucks selfie, and if #Mirin makes them happy, maybe we should just sit back and #’mire...