How an old idea becomes a new one: A cynic's view

Here's how an old idea becomes a new one:

1. Someone takes an old idea (or a subset of an idea) and dresses it up with a fancy new phrase. Often by combining something old with something new.  So a spontaneous Friday lunchtime visit to a wine bar with your trendy mates becomes flash-drinking or crowd-boozing. 

2.  Everyone else is bowled over - except for a few jaded old cynics who say this just something we were doing many moons ago ie drinking in their local pub. 

3.  Inventor of fancy new phrase huffs and puffs a bit. Decides to write a book or do a VIP (Very Important Project). The phrase evolves a number of derivatives e.g. crowd-mash-up (the name given to a busy Shoreditch pub where crowd-boozing takes place), flash-glassing (what happens when trendy folk talk too loudly in a local pub) etc. 

4. A few, perhaps even quite a lot, are taken in. Inventor goes on speaker tour around crowd-mash-ups or has a column in a national media outlet. 

5. Eventually, the new idea becomes old, loses its shine and everyone carries on doing what they were doing before i.e. drinking in their local pub. 

6. Inventor still has to pay the mortgage so goes to step 1.