Social Media takes over
We used to watch ads on billboards and television. Or listen to annoying jingles on the radio. We drive past posters, banners and signs, pick up leaflets for the latest show on broadway or an exhibition or rock concert.
These signs whetted our appetite for fascination, they were like a small sample of what was to come. A slither of experience or the promise of new experiences. Or signs to follow to be part of a community, for example the fans of a band, like Swifties who take over city streets to find the hallowed land, the place where they can be a part of something bigger.
We would buy tickets because the zoo has to feed its animals, it needs money to operate. Or a theatrical experience, the actors have to be paid. The economy relied on these tempting images for all kinds of products and ideas to remind us that life can be a colourful experience with moments of discovery and action that tweaked our brain chemistry with promise and temptation.
The advertising worked fairly well, it would not cost much to print a thousand flyers for your event and during a festival or in towns that understood the value of tourism, support for the arts meant that cafes and any venue where people gather to eat or get their hair done and have to wait, would be able to carouse “what’s on” and enjoy their stay.
This world worked until we all carried around a little computer and took photos and shared our experiences on social forums. Not at first, the idea of social media was not that linked to economic success but gradually and increasingly it took over the entire advertising industry and replaced it with advertising with extraordinarily massive companies like Facebook or Twitter, Google or Amazon with brightly coloured ideas becoming the new eye candy and source of social coherence.
Those Swifties did not gather due to posters or physical signs, they carried tickets in their mobile phones and filmed their experience in their handheld cameras, Even decorating the slow songs with the phone’s torch. Their entire experience was lensed through this medium. No longer a personal experience but a shared community experience.
Being part of this army of common purpose provides a sense of belonging. Ironically we call this “identity” when in fact it is almost the oppposite: it is becoming like others. Individuality is shunned in such a world and now with AI it is not only difference that is no longer celebrated or even recognised but the most popular experiences that are cut up and regurgitated, recycled in a magical opera of dullness and sameness. We call this “belonging”.
This is why social media works. Become part of my club and be the same as everyone else here, do not escape the boundaries of expectation. Wear the correct colours, the right shoes or you will be outcast from Barbiland, ejected from the safety of not having to understand that which may be challenging or could ever engage your brain in anything but first gear.
The reason that social media works is social coherence. We are the same as our friends and we can prove it with our camouflage, our signs of being accepted with K-Pop insignia.
It is not dissimilar to the Mad Men reality of advertising. Become a socially acceptable suburban clone housewifey consumer who will feed the children with the most popular breakfast cereals. The very idea of individuality or difference is shunned. And in the social media world of cliques, shunned. Anyone who does not wear our badge will be banned.
Not that there is anything we need to do to outdo social media with this task of selling to the masses. It is just a phase. It used to be newspaper advertising, then magazines and then cinema and then television. Social media is a viable replacement that performs better for some, and badly for most. It is a very exacting formula of acceptance and rejection. To be part of our club you have to speak our language.
In the age of AI social media is starting to look like it may change again. The onslaught of recycling inherent in how LLMs work guarantees that new ideas will become more rare and maybe as a result far more valued.
Evolution is not always great fun. Revolutions are more often background noise that slowly develops into a the main theme over time. Understanding what is next is the key to harnessing the attention of the majority.