# Social Trends Radar

> Research and report what's trending on social media this week (TikTok, Instagram, X, Reddit, YouTube) with a focus on viral culture — memes, sounds, formats, challenges, and breakout creators. Use this skill whenever the user asks what's trending, what's viral, what's blowing up online, for a social media trend report or digest, or for content ideas tied to current internet culture — even if they don't say the word "trend."

- Skill: `vyquemendoza/social-trends-radar` (Agent Skill)
- Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add vyquemendoza/social-trends-radar`
- Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/vyquemendoza/social-trends-radar/raw
- Safety review: pending
- Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex
- Category: Docs & Writing
- Author: vyquemendoza (https://skillmd.com/u/vyquemendoza)
- Updated: 2026-09-22
- Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/vyquemendoza/social-trends-radar

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# Social Trends Radar

Produce a weekly digest of what's trending across social media, focused on general viral culture: memes, audio/sounds, video formats, challenges, slang, breakout creators, and platform moments.

## Why this approach

You cannot browse TikTok or Instagram feeds directly, so triangulate from secondary sources. A trend that appears in 2+ independent sources is real; a trend mentioned once may be a single writer's guess. Prioritize recency hard — anything older than ~10 days is usually already peaking or dead in viral-culture terms.

## Research process

Run web searches covering, at minimum:

1. **Platform roundups** — "TikTok trends this week", "trending sounds TikTok [current month year]", "Instagram Reels trends this week"
2. **X/Twitter and Reddit moments** — "viral on X this week", "Reddit viral [current month year]"
3. **Meme tracking** — search Know Your Meme's recent entries, "new meme [current month year]"
4. **Marketing/creator press** — sites like Later, Hootsuite, Tubefilter, and Digiday publish weekly trend roundups; these are high-signal
5. **Breakout people/moments** — "viral video this week", "internet drama this week"

Use 6–10 searches total. Fetch the 3–5 most promising pages for detail. Note the publish date of every source; discard anything stale.

If a previous report exists in the working folder (look for `social-trends-*.md`), read the most recent one first so you can flag what's new vs. continuing vs. fading.

## Report structure

Save as `social-trends-YYYY-MM-DD.md`. Use this template:

# Social Trends Radar — Week of [date]

## TL;DR
3–5 sentences: the week's biggest story in internet culture and the trends most worth acting on.

## Top trends
For each of the top 5–8 trends:
- **Name** — what it is, in one or two plain sentences
- **Where**: platform(s) it lives on
- **Trajectory**: rising / peaking / fading (and "new this week" or "carryover from last week" when a previous report exists)
- **Why it's spreading**: the mechanic — sound, duet format, news hook, etc.
- **How to use it**: one concrete content idea

## Trending sounds & formats
Short list of specific audio tracks, templates, or video formats gaining traction.

## Fading
2–3 trends from recent weeks that are past peak — useful for knowing what NOT to post.

## Sources
Linked list of every source used, with publish dates.

## Quality bar

State trajectory as your judgment, not false precision — no invented view counts or percentages. If sources conflict or coverage is thin for a platform, say so in the report rather than papering over it. Plain language throughout; explain platform jargon the first time it appears.