Cooler Online?
Cooler Online?
Are online trends really representative of offline consumption?
This past weekend, my home province in Canada held municipal elections. Having lived in multiple cities and towns there, I was paying attention to several mayoral races. I assumed I knew who would win based on online chatter everywhere from Facebook to Twitter to Reddit, but once the votes were counted, not a single ‘most popular online’ candidate won their election. Add to this what is happening in British Columbia’s provincial election, which was held on the same day. At the time of writing this post, two days later, that election is still not called. What’s more is that it’s deadlocked and divided between the right wing and left wing parties. So, depending on what circles you run in, I suspect both sides assumed their party would win. The whole thing got me thinking about how this translates to the creative world, particularly the commercial creative landscape of the moment. Is online chatter really indicative of what people want in real life?
I’d say it’s not. Streaming services are struggling while trying to offload as many creatives as possible in exchange for tech. Juvenile book sales are way down despite more trending celebrity-written kids books coming out than ever before. And when’s the last time we had a major music star or band break out? It seems every pop star uses the same small pool of song writers and same small circles of producers to creative a very small offering of music styles. Could it be that online culture has got us trying to sell a brand instead of a product? Or maybe nowadays the brand is the product. I know artists have always had ‘a brand’ so to speak, but it was used to sell their music, art, book, whatever. Now it’s like the brand comes first, and the art is just something that comes after.
Influencer culture is partly to blame, and if the backlash against the recent Hollywood Reporter article about the supposed new A-list is any indication, we’re beginning to see a shift away from it. Basically, the article features 50 new so-called celebrity A-listers, except every single one is an online influencer. Many people hadn’t even heard of most of them, which caused half of the backlash. The other half seemed from actual trained actors, artists, and creatives who have worked their whole lives only to now feel replaced by a bunch of pretty faces with arguably no real honed talent or training. (Some of whom are just straight up nepo-babies). In other words, the online followings and fame wasn’t translating to the real world.
To hit the point home, a long-running late night show recently hired a ‘famous online’ comedian for their show. (They’re also a double nepo-baby, but we’ll put that aside for now). Despite their following online, their comedy is not translating to the show, which, somewhat ironically, is causing some fairly negative viral online criticism. Not everyone runs in the same circles. One person’s online following is unknown to another. And then we take things offline, and, well, suddenly those millions of followers just don’t matter anymore, regardless of whose circle you’re in. This isn’t the first influencer or former tiktoker or YouTuber to not translate to television and film. Sure, there are exceptions, but in those cases I found the performer was able to learn and adapt to the new medium, as opposed to rehashing their old online routine.
So is it just a case of finding — and sticking with — your audience? Maybe. This makes sense when when we look at the trend of celebrity kids books right now. Sure, they get a lot of attention, but apparently kids just aren’t reading them. The same goes for non-writer influencers receiving book deals based on follower numbers alone. Over time, people won’t read as much if they’re not interested in the quality of what’s getting published. Like influencers, we’re giving attention to fame and trends and celebrity, and not at the final product, or who is meant to be consuming it.
On top of that, a lot of people are leaving social media these days. Frustration with changes in algorithms, online bullying and hate speech, or ethical conflicts with company owners have people in my circles deleting their socials like never before. Without the ability or desire to pay attention to online trends, what is being marketed to these people? And more importantly, now that this group no longer mindlessly scrolls, these consumers have a lot more time to read, watch movies, and listen to music — so how will this growing market find that in todays world?
I recently had a conversation with someone about how much harder it is to find good new music now that no one listens to the radio or shares albums. It’s like a closed loop. We either listen to the same old stuff we always did, or we check out whatever pop star everyone’s talking about online for five seconds — except people are hungry for more. I’m not the only one to notice, but there seems to be a shift in the air. I don’t know what it’s going to be or how it’s going to happen, but people are tired of being force-fed what to consume. We want authenticity. We want upbeat. And we want quality. Fame alone is not enough. Once upon a time, when creativity was nurtured, new art was allowed to develop organically. Trying to force and mould to trends isn’t working as well as it once did. Maybe it made some quick cash, but without longevity, it’s like constantly trying to chase that next high — except eventually, that high isn’t as great as it once was and we want to come back down to earth.
So give me that next great band that practiced for ten years in someone’s uncle’s garage and is now ready to launch. Give me that original book written by and for someone over forty who never had tiktok and never will. And give me that movie by the new film school grad who spend their youth shooting and cutting movies on their iPhone as opposed to live streaming their lunch for likes. Let’s go back to making and supporting real creativity first, not brands or likes or followers. Sure we’ll still need marketing, but that comes second. Maybe then we’ll really find our next generation of great, long-lasting, artists and art.
