Students are protecting their backpacks at all costs against thieving classmates taking part in the latest illegal trend from TikTok: stealing the little tags on Nike elite bag zippers to collect and display on their own bags. It’s a frustration to many, to others, a game, but in the eyes of the school, it’s a blatant invasion of students’ property and a series of wrongdoings that needs to be stopped.
According to a Vice article, the trend originated from a TikTok post on September 13, 2024, captioned “I’m from NYC. Do not leave your Nike Elite lackin’ around me.” A Yahoo Finance article reports that the trend has since amassed over 26 million related posts as of September 24. The trend’s far reach has extended to Poly, where it has gained a large following in the middle and upper school divisions.
While it may seem like all fun and games to students, faculty views it as a serious issue. “It’s a gross violation of students’ personal property,” said middle school dean Nkenge Walcott. Director of Student Life Jared Winston shared a similar sentiment, expressing disdain for the discomfort the seemingly harmless trend can cause for students. “Psychologically, what this trend does is it creates a sense of personal insecurity on campus where students are having to worry about something that they ought not to be worrying about. And there’s also this idea that was expressed to me that if somebody was over by my backpack, taking my zipper tag, what else did they do to my backpack that I might not be aware of,” Winston said. He sums it up by tying it to a simple philosophy of “keep your hands to yourself and keep your hands on your own property,” which he believes are important and self-explanatory parts of the code of conduct.
Winston explains that the school plans to punish students for engaging in the thievery, with middle school students receiving a dean’s reflection period and upper school students likely receiving a mandatory afternoon study hall. Along with punishments, to stop the trend, he intends to have communication between the administration and both divisions to let students know what the school expects of them.
The students’ outlook on the trend is much lighter, with students finding the trend a combination of entertaining and annoying. “I see videos about it all the time, and I think it’s kind of funny, but at the same time, it’s a little bit cruel,” says freshman Tess Meli. While she describes it as “a little harmless joke,” she emphasized the fact that at the end of the day, it is a frustration, saying “every day in the morning, when I arrive to school, in my Nike backpack that I use for my sport, which I am required to use, I have to hide the zippers, which is an inconvenience to me, because I’m scared of people taking my zipper.”An anonymous source, who has engaged in the stealing of the zipper tags at Poly themself and has been stolen from, also describes it as “an inconvenience” to zip up their bag. The source stole zipper tags in an act of retaliation for their own being stolen, which Winston has noticed to be a common trend among students, saying “there is an instinct that one might have to exact revenge on that person, and therefore creates this cycle.” While the lack of zipper tags may be an annoyance, the anonymous source still doesn’t view the trend as a serious issue, saying it’s “just a playful trend,” and that kids aren’t doing it “because they actually want to steal and be bad people,” but because they want to be the “trendiest.” In regards to punishments, the anonymous source believes there should be some in place, but that the school should give warnings before taking action, due to kids not understanding the seriousness of their casual theft.
The root of the trend is social media, specifically TikTok, raising the question of whether or not social media like this is at fault for these illegal actions. An article on the Official Website of the City of New York states that as of June, approximately 93 percent of teenagers in New York City are on social media to some extent. With such a large audience, things like the zipper trend are bound to catch on. Winston believes that “social media trends can be a really positive force culturally,” and he has an appreciation for their “cultural connections.” At the same time, he says they tend to become dangerous as they progress, and they can negatively impact the school culture at Poly. The duality of social media is, in his eyes, that “what gets views ends up finding its way onto people’s screens,” whether it’s good or bad. In regards to the zipper trend specifically, he doesn’t pin it all on social media, saying, “The zipper tag trend started somewhere without social media, right? Human nature started the trend; social media furthered it.”
Whether it’s seen as playful, harmful, or somewhere in between, the zipper tag trend has taken hold of Poly Prep and is a new part of daily life for many members of the community. As most trends do, however, it may be forgotten, and as Winston puts it, “the less we engage with breathing air into this trend, the sooner it will die out.”
