८ ऑगस्ट, २०१९

"For as long as the internet has been around, the story of media has been one of fragmentation and atomization."

"Thanks to all these new formats, new business models, and new distribution technologies, we’ve been drowning in an unprecedented level of choice in movies, music, TV shows, books and, especially, sources of news. As a result, everything is personalized and polarized — we’re all split into social-media-selected tribes, where our consumption of news and culture feels constantly shaped by a privacy-invading algorithmic determination of one’s innermost sense and sensibility. And yet, in the last few years, something counterintuitive has been happening with mass media: It’s been getting more mass.... Across the cultural industries, blockbusters are getting blockbustier: Despite the barrage of choice, more of us are enjoying more of the same songs, movies and TV shows. We are not nearly as siloed as we tend to think we are.... While the internet has made a mess of our politics, it’s starting to do something remarkable for our culture businesses...."

Writes Farhad Manjoo in "This Summer Stinks. But at Least We’ve Got 'Old Town Road'/Lil Nas X’s smash single shows how digital media is creating a shared global culture in an otherwise atomized age" (NYT).

Do you agree with that — the internet has made a mess of our politics, but it's doing something remarkable for our culture businesses? I'd say, first of all, the "more" in "more of us are enjoying more of the same" is less when you're looking at songs, movies, and TV shows than it is when you're talking about politics. The same song has been #1 since last March, but what percentage of Americans love it enough to enjoy seeing it maintain this conspicuousness? Probably less than the number that loves having Donald Trump as President.

Politics involves much more consensus, fine-tuning the same issues. Substantively, it's boring. And yet it's required. Whether you participate or not, the power that will be exercised will be over you too. Music and movies and TV can be completely fragmented, and you can pay attention to anything you want and ignore whatever you want, and the effect, if any, is diffuse and mostly indirect. When we come together at all over a song/movie/TV show it feels special. It feels like unity. But it was entirely voluntary and we're free to disperse at will. And that seeming unity wasn't even a majority. Politics demands that we come together, en masse, over and over, about dealing with problems that — unlike songs — don't have an off switch.

३६ टिप्पण्या:

readering म्हणाले...

I don't know this song (although I recall seeing the country controversy), have not seen the Last Avengers movie and don't watch the Office. But that jus makes me an old guy.

tim maguire म्हणाले...

With politics, the stakes are much higher and there is a gatekeeper problem you don’t see in culture—who cares if you hate the top ten singles? The atomization of politics would not be such a big deal if not for the disrespect shown to opposing viewpoints. That’s where outrage culture (and the gatekeepers’ embrace of outrage culture) has taken us. In this respect, Trump is right when he calls much of the news media enemies of the people. They are actively undermining civil society.

The fix requires 2 things—a school system that honestly teaches civics, and the same patience to let Enlightenment values filter up through the system as the left-wing activists have shown in their determination to destroy our Enlightenment values. I don’t see either happening any time soon.

Activists ruin everything.

Owen म्हणाले...

Disagree with Manjoo, I suspect he was just striking a pose to help his column seem interesting and important. He gets a little sympathy from me; it is wearisome to write slop day after day.

Agree with your argument. We ignore political debate at our peril. And paying attention to it has gotten harder. Politics is now woven into “cultural” activities, with every actress holding forth on foreign policy and the cast of Broadway shows calling out audience members over political matters. Politics itself is endless, the “permanent campaign,” dialing for dollars, co-opting the public office and public events to drive voter awareness and trigger donations. The media feed on the ad revenue and reward clients with more play. Congresscreatures morph seamlessly into network hosts and commentators and back again.

It is useful to the system that we not take politics too seriously, become too informed and make up our own minds. And it is lucrative to the system when we take our culture seriously, become enthused and distracted over gossip and ephemera.

Clyde म्हणाले...

Never heard the song. Amazon Music hasn’t recommended it to me, so it’s probably not in my comfort zone. Maybe I’ll look it up. Maybe I won’t.

Paco Wové म्हणाले...

"Never heard the song"

Me neither. I guess it's a big hit in N.Y.

Clyde म्हणाले...

Okay, listened to it, kinda meh. Not one of those that I turn off in the first ten seconds, but not my thing, either. If that’s what the peeps are digging now, I’m fine with a different part of the variety spectrum.

Jaq म्हणाले...

I guess this first paragraph was to keep half of America from reading further:

There hasn’t been much to love about the summer of 2019. It has been a season of record heat and spiraling hate, mass shootings and border detentions, of Jeffrey Epstein, Moscow Mitch, Boris Johnson and go back to where you came from.

Did he miss any Democrat talking points? America would be unified if only the Democrats could steamroller the Republicans into powerless oblivion! And those “border detentions”! Who can believe that borders have re-appeared in this atavistic age of Trump!

Ralph L म्हणाले...

He's obviously never heard of Ed Sullivan, and I'll wait for Big Nas X.

95% of Americans ignore national politics 95% of the time, and state/local even more.

Jaq म्हणाले...

Dammit, he got me to click on the WaPo! That’s not a news source, I should block the URL in my browser except that they have run some interesting articles in the past before they completely devolved into a “shiny sheet” for the Democrat Party.

rehajm म्हणाले...

The only thing that feels different is leftie politics has consumed nearly everything across all forms of media. Everything exists to try and produce policy goals rather than inform, entertain, intrigue. Even the article has to start with a message on climate change. Ya Europe’s been really hot but the western us was cooler and rainy. Not a big fire year at all. That was last year’s poster child.

stevew म्हणाले...

We mak our pop culture choices for ourselves, politics is negotiated and imposed by some of us on all of us.

Otherwise, I align exactly with readering's description.

stevew म्हणाले...

@AAT: he left out the Mueller betrayal.

I've liked this summer, so far. Then again, my life doesn't depend on political and social stories and actions.

Jaq म्हणाले...

"he left out the Mueller betrayal.”

Ha! He undoubtedly repressed the memory of that horrible miscarriage of justice when Mueller couldn’t find a crime when he had. been given the man and all of that power and money!

“All the news we see fit to print."

rhhardin म्हणाले...

What you vote on is how much effect the government is allowed to have.

Quayle म्हणाले...
ही टिप्पणी लेखकाना हलविली आहे.
Rick म्हणाले...

Naturally left wingers bemoan the dissolution of their monopoly but notice how they instinctively try to position it as a loss for others. When they criticize divisiveness they are complaining people have their own opinions instead of supporting theirs.

Ann Althouse म्हणाले...

Here's this song that's the biggest hit single of all time, but the only way I've heard it is that I've read about it and chosen to play it on YouTube (a couple times).

In the old days, a gigantic hit would be imposed on you. It would feel inescapable. These days, you don't have to feel like escaping. You get to choose to hear.

alanc709 म्हणाले...

I tried listening to Old Town Road, and it was, to me, boring beyond belief. Is this what music is now?

Birches म्हणाले...

What Althouse said. I looked up Old Town Road about two months ago because I kept hearing about it. Now that I've heard it, I hear it everywhere.

However, I don't think siloing is especially new. When I was in 6th grade, we were making graphs, so our teacher went around the room and asked everyone what their favorite song was. More than half the class said, "I saw the sign" by Ace of Base. I'd never heard the song before. I wasn't a sheltered child, I just didn't listen to the Top 40 radio station.

Lurker21 म्हणाले...

Do you agree with that — the internet has made a mess of our politics, but it's doing something remarkable for our culture businesses?

The last twenty years have been great for television. Not so good for film or music or literature. And the present moment isn't that great for television, either.

Despite the barrage of choice, more of us are enjoying more of the same songs, movies and TV shows. We are not nearly as siloed as we tend to think we are....

It's a curve. There are the people who haven't gone to a movie or watched television in half a century (yet they post online to tell us this), and there are the people who watch everything produced by Netflix or Amazon, and then there are the rest of us in the middle, and we fall into different bulges - no cable, basic cable, premium cable, and post-cable streaming services.

When some people have no television at all and others are only watching what's on broadcast television, I don't think you can seriously say that we are all watching the same thing. But HBO shows do reach an incredibly large population, including people who don't subscribe to the channel. It's similar with music. Most of the country probably hasn't heard of Lil Nas X, but everybody knows the panelists on The Voice, even if they haven't seen the show.

The public is definitely segmented, but the segments overlap, because there are still some hit shows or songs that have wide appeal and draw people out of their niches or cocoons.

Fernandinande म्हणाले...

"For as long as the internet has been around, the story of media has been one of fragmentation and atomization."

That's a very poor way to describe people having more media choices. Why, it's almost as if Mr. FakeNews Scribbler doesn't like those choices.

...where our consumption of news and culture feels constantly shaped by a privacy-invading algorithmic determination of one’s innermost sense and sensibility.

No, it doesn't "feel" like that at all.

joshbraid म्हणाले...

The author doesn't seem to have much knowledge of political history. Try newspapers from the 1800 election or from the 1850s or the 1860's election. Really. Invincible ignorance.

As to "Enlightenment" values, we have them--the elevation of utilitarianism and the demotion of love. Remember, the opposite of love is not hatred but usefulness.

Leland म्हणाले...

Being number 1 in media these days is more and more a game of being the best of the worst. Unlike others above, I have heard of "Old Town Road", but I haven't heard of "Bad Guy" the number 2 song in the nation according to Billboard which says that particular song has been charting for 18 weeks. I recognized the singer from an episode of "Hot Ones" by "First We Feast" on YouTube.

In another medium, "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" talked about here has been out for two weeks and has yet to gross what was spent on production.

holdfast म्हणाले...

Farhad Manjoo: The story of a boring, cookie-cutter liberal’s ongoing desperate attempt to seem relevant and hip in a world that has moved on.

Kind of like Joe Biden, in that way. Joe Biden attempting to appeal to The Squad and their Democratic Socialist base.

Seriously, what a sad sack of shit. This is the “guy” who wasted a whole column lamenting the fact that is sad little offspring is forced to grow up in a world where there are distinct “men” and “women”.

Narr म्हणाले...

No, Lurker21, everyone does NOT know the panelists on The Voice.

I haven't heard the song, or seen any of the shows or movies mentioned.

Narr
And I intend to keep it that way!

Yancey Ward म्हणाले...

I had never heard the song, so I went to YouTube listened/watched- I did, though, immediately recognize that he was sampling Nine Inch Nails' "Ghosts 34". I vaguely remember hearing something about the song as being a Rap/Country mix sometime back in the Spring.

Yancey Ward म्हणाले...

My gym plays the hits of today, but they haven't played this song once while I have been there, and I would have noticed it because of the connection to Nine Inch Nails.

Jaq म्हणाले...

Just listened to the song in my car. I like it. It is a story about blacks, whites, rich, and poor enjoying life together, and it’s catchy!

Jaq म्हणाले...

The song is about a shared culture. I think it’s a rejection of the polarization.

rcocean म्हणाले...

Oh for the days when we had a common pop culture.

What bullshit! That CONFORMITY was imposed on us by the few people who owned the TV stations and networks, owned the big record companies, and owned the few big movie studios and publishing houses.

They decided what we could see on our 6-8 TV channels. Our small number of radio stations, our local movie theaters and our local bookstore. MASH got huge numbers of viewers partly because people liked it, but mostly because there was nothing better on TV!

Things are a Million times better with the "Fragmented" entertainment and pop culture world.

rcocean म्हणाले...
ही टिप्पणी लेखकाना हलविली आहे.
rcocean म्हणाले...

And the power elite HATES the true diversity of the internet. So, they're trying to censor, gatekeep, and push everyone to go to the same website, the same video channels, and same music sites. IOW, recreate the old media monopoly of a small number of people in NYC and LA.

JamesB.BKK म्हणाले...

Manufactured consent with curated Cronkite-standard narrative on a few government licensed channels? Good riddance. Dinosaurs fall hard when they fall though, after thrashing about.

JamesB.BKK म्हणाले...

Who knew "edgy" rock produced mostly in California was in reality an utterly predictable conformity that would produce the most hectoring, lecturing, harping generation in the history of the United States? Thanks older Boomers.

Freeman Hunt म्हणाले...
ही टिप्पणी लेखकाना हलविली आहे.
Freeman Hunt म्हणाले...

Now I've heard it. That's bringing us together? Okay.