I was born in 1988 and grew up mostly in the 90s and 00s. When I was a kid, if anything became popular for a while and then faded away into obscurity it was called a Fad. Fads typically lasted a few weeks, some lasted months, and a rare few lasted years. Sometimes you'd have experiences and behaviours become fads or token objects like Pogs or YoYos in which case you'd sometimes refer to it as a novelty, these usually didn't last as long as a fad and typically weren't widespread - more often being people simply trying to do something differently and realising the reason it hadn't been done before with success was simply because it didn't work.
Today the concept still exists but the terminology has somewhat evolved; becoming a more globalised society the word of preference now is "trending" and it applies to everything now that comes and goes. The major difference however is that most trends today don't last nearly as long as fads did. In fact most trends now exist on social media and can last only a matter of hours, and in some extremes minutes, before the world moves on to something else.
We're reaching a point where it doesn't just feel like life is moving faster because of age - that feeling of time accelerating as you grow older which I have mentioned before - but more than this the increased pace of life can be measured and shown empirically to be accelerating not simply as a matter of opinion.
I grew up in the UK where most of our television shows throughout the previous century were in their entirety produced in the UK. During that century as adoption of TV as an entertainment medium became widespread the thirst for content grew. The number of channels grew, and eventually content started being imported from other nations.
One of the longest running TV shows in the world started in the UK called Coronation Street - a soap which has run for 58 years and has over 9,000 episodes to its name. That long life is something of an anomaly now, not just in the UK but around the world. There's a Wikipedia article that lists the longest running shows in the world and the surprising thing about it is that it's a lot shorter than you would probably expect. That reinforces the rarity of a show that manages to last so long.
I rarely watch TV now, choosing like many, to stream instead. The problem with that for broadcasters is that it can be very difficult to actually get people to watch your content. To reach me personally you would have to rely on word of mouth. I don't watch enough TV to see adverts, I don't follow accounts on social media that promote TV shows, I don't see ads on websites as I use AdBlock Plus and AdGuard DNS. I don't tend to use Netflix to discover new content, I tend to go to it looking for something in particular.
There aren't many shows made today which manage to reach me, whose story lines or reputations become so prolific at pleasing their audiences that other people actually utter those words "You have to see this" - ironically this goes against the advertising mantra of on-demand services "making the unmissable, unmissable" - those services have actually increased the likelihood I will never see your content. This isn't just true of TV though, it extends to Music with Spotify, and even videos uploaded to Youtube. The amount of content that is created and never consumed, or at least only consumed by a very small number of people, is forever growing.
If each "age" of the Human race is defined by one thing more than anything else, then we've reached the Age of Production - having passed through the Age of Consumption and the Information Age. We've arrived at the point where production has outpaced the rate of consumption to such an extreme that the glut will never be consumed. Technology has made it possible for us to drowned in content if we even try, so instead we float on the surface, only consuming what comes to the top, with the sea of content below us swelling with each passing day becoming deeper and deeper.
Matching a Voice to a Face
For a number of years I have been learning how to speak Spanish. During the course of my journey through the endless resources available online that help you to learn another language, there's one little gem I stumbled across. A podcast that teaches casual or slang Spanish so that you can learn how people actually speak rather than the academic rigid grammatically correct version most language learning sites teach. For anyone that knows me you will know that I have been rather fascinated with podcasts recently and that I have listened to many. Despite this new-found obsession, I have actually been listening to podcasts a lot longer than I realised.
One thing I like about podcasts is that you listen rather than watch or read the content. There's a different part of your brain involved in this act. I think this helps with retention, but that is a discussion for another post. Instead I'd like to focus on something quirky about how we internalise the world based on our perceptions. Most of the podcasts I listen to are created by people I have prior knowledge of and therefore know quite a bit about them, primarily what they look like. The Spanish podcasts on the other hand were created by people who initially did it as a hobby. They had no social media presence at all to begin with, apart from a blog that accompanied the podcast which is where I first discovered them.
It's been several years now that I have followed this podcast and throughout that time it never occurred to me to seek out the creators to see what they looked like. Recently whilst using a site called Duolingo I found myself watching Duolingo's own Spanish podcast and whilst looking at videos on youtube I stumbled across one by the creators I had been listening to for years. The first thing I noticed when they spoke was how they looked and the realisation in my head of "oh that's what you look like" and then "You don't look anything like how I imagined you" - that last point was what has been dwelling on my mind.
There is no relation of appearance to the sound of your voice. There's no way to tell from a photograph of someone, what they would actually sound like. Despite this, we still create voices for people we have never heard speak and we still create images in our minds to go with the voices we hear of people we have never seen. There exists a desire to "fit" certain intonations and accents with given appearances. The question is, why? If there's no relation that can reliably determine one from the other, why do we still pursue the idea that there is? Why do we form expectations of our senses based on the others? It's not just limited to sight and sound either, our other senses develop expectations of their own. When we see something that appears sharp, we anticipate sharpness when we touch it, and any sensation to the contrary still surprises us. While this can be useful in terms of caution and pre-empting harm, where does the perception of a face from a voice come from? What exactly do we achieve from doing so?
One thing I like about podcasts is that you listen rather than watch or read the content. There's a different part of your brain involved in this act. I think this helps with retention, but that is a discussion for another post. Instead I'd like to focus on something quirky about how we internalise the world based on our perceptions. Most of the podcasts I listen to are created by people I have prior knowledge of and therefore know quite a bit about them, primarily what they look like. The Spanish podcasts on the other hand were created by people who initially did it as a hobby. They had no social media presence at all to begin with, apart from a blog that accompanied the podcast which is where I first discovered them.
It's been several years now that I have followed this podcast and throughout that time it never occurred to me to seek out the creators to see what they looked like. Recently whilst using a site called Duolingo I found myself watching Duolingo's own Spanish podcast and whilst looking at videos on youtube I stumbled across one by the creators I had been listening to for years. The first thing I noticed when they spoke was how they looked and the realisation in my head of "oh that's what you look like" and then "You don't look anything like how I imagined you" - that last point was what has been dwelling on my mind.
There is no relation of appearance to the sound of your voice. There's no way to tell from a photograph of someone, what they would actually sound like. Despite this, we still create voices for people we have never heard speak and we still create images in our minds to go with the voices we hear of people we have never seen. There exists a desire to "fit" certain intonations and accents with given appearances. The question is, why? If there's no relation that can reliably determine one from the other, why do we still pursue the idea that there is? Why do we form expectations of our senses based on the others? It's not just limited to sight and sound either, our other senses develop expectations of their own. When we see something that appears sharp, we anticipate sharpness when we touch it, and any sensation to the contrary still surprises us. While this can be useful in terms of caution and pre-empting harm, where does the perception of a face from a voice come from? What exactly do we achieve from doing so?
Virality
Time was, if you were a celebrity or a public figure, you were known for something. All anybody knew of you and your life was related to whatever you were known for. Now this post isn't about being famous for nothing in particular, although that in itself is a topic of discussion to be had, we'll save it for another day. Instead I'd like to focus on the extent to which we the general public get to know you.
In decades past, before the Internet, although I think even in the early days of the Internet, when you were famous the only point of "access" to you as a person that we the general public got to use was your work. If you were a singer we got to hear you sing, we bought your albums, we went to your concerts, occasionally we saw an interview you gave in mainstream media outlets which were limited in number. If you were really massive then there would have been a following that created a fan club dedicated to you with a handful of stalkers that found out everything they could and disseminated that information. Point being what little we knew about you was rationed and tightly controlled.
Fast forward to the modern day and we live in a different world. The world has become a smaller place. It's a lot easier to access you as a person than it once was. You can be anywhere in the world, as can we, and we can find out where you are, what you are doing, and depending on how vocal you are online, what you are thinking.
You may have noticed throughout this post I've been using the pronoun "you" - that's no accident. Andy Warhol once said that everyone would have their fifteen minutes of fame in the future. I think that moment has come and gone and we have been left with a society where everyone isn't content with the fifteen minutes they've already had, instead they want more. There's the perception that the fame they had wasn't big enough - if it ever can be.
The reality we now live in is one where "fame" has been devalued to the point where everyone is famous because as long as someone knows your name then you're famous, even if there are literally only a handful of people who know who you are, you are famous. The question has evolved from one of how do I become famous to one of how do I become more famous than I already am? Personally fame isn't something I want, I'd rather have the fortune without the fame. That's not going to happen any time soon in my view for the simple reason it takes a lot of work, none of which I have put any effort into.
Regardless, the point remains that the Internet has been instrumental in providing everyone who has access to it, with a platform on which they can stand and voice their opinions or share their talents with the world - or lack thereof. Judgement aside, there are many people with incredible talent that showcase it online, but the sad reality is that for the vast majority of them, no matter how much effort they put into promoting themselves, they are destined to remain in obscurity. There is no secret formula that you can follow to become famous, there's no one-stop-shop, or hard and fast rule that you can turn to in order to reach those heights. Movie studios spend millions on their franchises, yet the run away success of a franchise isn't something that can be easily repeated. If it was then every movie they released would be a hit. The reality is that there is an unknown element to everything in life that determines virality - the factor that determines whether you go viral and become known by everyone and his dog, or whether you fizzle out into the darkness like a firework, a flash of brightness filled with colour for a moment before it is gone, giving way to perpetual darkness.
In decades past, before the Internet, although I think even in the early days of the Internet, when you were famous the only point of "access" to you as a person that we the general public got to use was your work. If you were a singer we got to hear you sing, we bought your albums, we went to your concerts, occasionally we saw an interview you gave in mainstream media outlets which were limited in number. If you were really massive then there would have been a following that created a fan club dedicated to you with a handful of stalkers that found out everything they could and disseminated that information. Point being what little we knew about you was rationed and tightly controlled.
Fast forward to the modern day and we live in a different world. The world has become a smaller place. It's a lot easier to access you as a person than it once was. You can be anywhere in the world, as can we, and we can find out where you are, what you are doing, and depending on how vocal you are online, what you are thinking.
You may have noticed throughout this post I've been using the pronoun "you" - that's no accident. Andy Warhol once said that everyone would have their fifteen minutes of fame in the future. I think that moment has come and gone and we have been left with a society where everyone isn't content with the fifteen minutes they've already had, instead they want more. There's the perception that the fame they had wasn't big enough - if it ever can be.
The reality we now live in is one where "fame" has been devalued to the point where everyone is famous because as long as someone knows your name then you're famous, even if there are literally only a handful of people who know who you are, you are famous. The question has evolved from one of how do I become famous to one of how do I become more famous than I already am? Personally fame isn't something I want, I'd rather have the fortune without the fame. That's not going to happen any time soon in my view for the simple reason it takes a lot of work, none of which I have put any effort into.
Regardless, the point remains that the Internet has been instrumental in providing everyone who has access to it, with a platform on which they can stand and voice their opinions or share their talents with the world - or lack thereof. Judgement aside, there are many people with incredible talent that showcase it online, but the sad reality is that for the vast majority of them, no matter how much effort they put into promoting themselves, they are destined to remain in obscurity. There is no secret formula that you can follow to become famous, there's no one-stop-shop, or hard and fast rule that you can turn to in order to reach those heights. Movie studios spend millions on their franchises, yet the run away success of a franchise isn't something that can be easily repeated. If it was then every movie they released would be a hit. The reality is that there is an unknown element to everything in life that determines virality - the factor that determines whether you go viral and become known by everyone and his dog, or whether you fizzle out into the darkness like a firework, a flash of brightness filled with colour for a moment before it is gone, giving way to perpetual darkness.
Time is a Funny Thing
Hot, Cold, Bitter, Sweet, Bright, Dark, Funny - not the names of dwarves from some weird version of Snow White, but examples of concepts that we all agree exist, and loosely agree on their meaning, yet vary wildly in how we define them and examples of each that we can give. What is Hot and what is Cold is not something that has any standardized definition. 10 degrees Celsius for example will feel cold to anyone who ordinarily lives in a temperate climate, whilst those who are used to living in sub-zero temperatures will view that as very warm. Where I grew up in the UK for example, the low 20s in Celsius is considered a typical hot summer's day, yet there will be people from countries that experience tropical heat who consider that to be a cold winter's day.
Bitter and Sweet are more apparent as examples of concepts that are open to interpretation, and are perhaps examples of concepts where we recognise conditioning as influential in determination of the experience. Most people have a basic understanding of a palate and the expression "acquired taste" with some level of understanding that certain things will vary in extremity based on what you would normally eat.
Bright and Dark are perhaps the simplest examples of experiences that fluctuate over short periods of time. When we go to bed at night our rooms are dark, our eyes adjust to the low light levels and we eventually adapt to the ambience, to the point where switching on a light can be blinding to us. The very same light at other times of the day doesn't cause the same reaction, because it is not the extremity of the light but the shift that determines our reaction.
However the concept of humour is perhaps the most notable of the seven listed above. The most notable in that there's very little you can do to predict whether someone will find something funny or not. There are stereotypes you can try and fall back upon, that certain economic classes, or races, or genders, or sexualities et al, would find certain types of humour funny. The reality however is that in every example given there is always deviation and there is very little you can do in advance to prepare. Comedians who are versed in their craft often talk about "reading" a room, where they choose not to judge in advance what an audience will find funny but instead react to the audience on their night, finding their "level" and knowing where they can and cannot go in terms of whether a joke will land like a lead balloon or go down a hit.
The thing I find interesting about the fluidity of humour is not just the fact that the exact same conditions can produce two people with wildly different sense of humour, but the fact that those two people will not likely conform to the same "triggers" for lack of a better word, throughout their whole lives. What they find funny at 10, 20, 40, or 80 years of age, is also fluid. That makes me wonder what in our lives today will we look back on in the future and laugh at? How extreme will that juxtaposition become? Are we destined to find the most extreme flips from something you should never joke about becoming something hilarious, or vice versa, with things being hilarious today that we will look back on with horror? I'm reminded of some of the TV shows from the 20th Century that would never get commissioned today out of the cultural disparity of our past and present.
Bitter and Sweet are more apparent as examples of concepts that are open to interpretation, and are perhaps examples of concepts where we recognise conditioning as influential in determination of the experience. Most people have a basic understanding of a palate and the expression "acquired taste" with some level of understanding that certain things will vary in extremity based on what you would normally eat.
Bright and Dark are perhaps the simplest examples of experiences that fluctuate over short periods of time. When we go to bed at night our rooms are dark, our eyes adjust to the low light levels and we eventually adapt to the ambience, to the point where switching on a light can be blinding to us. The very same light at other times of the day doesn't cause the same reaction, because it is not the extremity of the light but the shift that determines our reaction.
However the concept of humour is perhaps the most notable of the seven listed above. The most notable in that there's very little you can do to predict whether someone will find something funny or not. There are stereotypes you can try and fall back upon, that certain economic classes, or races, or genders, or sexualities et al, would find certain types of humour funny. The reality however is that in every example given there is always deviation and there is very little you can do in advance to prepare. Comedians who are versed in their craft often talk about "reading" a room, where they choose not to judge in advance what an audience will find funny but instead react to the audience on their night, finding their "level" and knowing where they can and cannot go in terms of whether a joke will land like a lead balloon or go down a hit.
The thing I find interesting about the fluidity of humour is not just the fact that the exact same conditions can produce two people with wildly different sense of humour, but the fact that those two people will not likely conform to the same "triggers" for lack of a better word, throughout their whole lives. What they find funny at 10, 20, 40, or 80 years of age, is also fluid. That makes me wonder what in our lives today will we look back on in the future and laugh at? How extreme will that juxtaposition become? Are we destined to find the most extreme flips from something you should never joke about becoming something hilarious, or vice versa, with things being hilarious today that we will look back on with horror? I'm reminded of some of the TV shows from the 20th Century that would never get commissioned today out of the cultural disparity of our past and present.
Originality
Your work is contrived, and your insights are derivative, you are devoid of original thought, rehashing existing ideas. This is a criticism that is often directed at writers when starting out, either as a hobby or as a desire to break into the industry. The thing you have to remember about this criticism is that it is an opinion, and it is often held by people who, to put it politely, have "been around the block a few times" - by that I mean their view point is a consequence of the fact they really have seen it all before.
If you're a critic and you have uttered these words, then I have some advice - retire. That may sound arrogant, and yes, it is, but, there is a retort to be considered here. In all of history, mankind has lived in a world that is comprised of 118 elements on the periodic table [only 94 of which naturally occur]. Every single thing that ever was, is, and ever shall be, is comprised of those elements. They are small in number, infinitesimal in comparison to the enormity of the Universe and all of space and time. What you can create from those elements is limited, it is how you use them, reuse them, and extend upon existing ideas that we are able to progress as a society. The moment you stop trying to do that, and begin searching for an unknown element, is the moment when you stop creating. When you are a critic, your job is to take what you see in the moment and judge it. You are not expected to judge it against all of space and time. If you reach a point where all you see is what you have already seen before, then it's time to retire, you're job is done.
Every single day people are born. They grow up. It is 2018 and this year is the first that there are adults, 18 years old, who were not alive in the last Millennium, they hadn't been born. The longer you live, the more you see, and inevitably you realise that history repeats itself. Fashions return, sometimes with alterations, sometimes they return intact. So too do the ideas that gripped the Zeitgeist. The reason certain TV shows and Music, and artistic styles find resurgence despite being "done before" is simply because there's an entire generation that never witnessed it before. There is the temptation to say that they should look back, and learn about the past, and history, and know what has come before, but if you force ingenuity and creativity to contrast itself against what has come before, you prevent reimagination. You prevent reinterpretation. You prevent the exploration of ideas with mindsets that diverge significantly from those that came before.
In the Movies, Games, and Entertainment industries as a whole, there is often an opposition to "remakes" and the new yet not so new concept of "reboots" where the history and cannon of franchises from the past are completely ignored and works are created from scratch with new visions. These creations are opposed in their inception, and compared at length to "the originals" and judged based on their divergence from, or their adherence to what came before.
The problem with this mentality is that it projects the present onto the past, and expects the two to match up. The reality is they will never align because the world that existed is gone, and the world we live in now is a whole new world. More over, what succeeded before and what failed before, does not dictate what will succeed or what will fail today. There was a time people were perfectly content with dial-up internet, with MSN Search, and with a handful of TV channels. Those would never satisfy modern audiences and would be doomed to failure if they were to try. At the same time, if you were to give Google to someone long before it came to prominence it likely would have failed. To say that what came before are templates for success is to say to become the next Google one need only do everything they did - that clearly doesn't work.
The World Wide Web was created in the early 90s, but the Internet itself has been around for decades more, and the capability to build computers has existed longer still. The fact is we never used the technology in the capacity we do today as there was no desire, no drive, and no vision to do so. They succeeded when they did, because the conditions were right at the time. This is the reason more than any other that we must be able to try out existing ideas whether they succeeded or failed in the past, once again, but in a modern setting. We must be able to see if the changing environment and the new conditions that have arisen, would influence these ideas and see the impact that has.
There is a reluctance to accept this argument, the adamance in the belief "that which failed before will fail again and will always fail" - those who hold this belief and stand in the way of progress should stand aside. You have lost the vision, the optimism, the drive, and the courage to try.
If you're a critic and you have uttered these words, then I have some advice - retire. That may sound arrogant, and yes, it is, but, there is a retort to be considered here. In all of history, mankind has lived in a world that is comprised of 118 elements on the periodic table [only 94 of which naturally occur]. Every single thing that ever was, is, and ever shall be, is comprised of those elements. They are small in number, infinitesimal in comparison to the enormity of the Universe and all of space and time. What you can create from those elements is limited, it is how you use them, reuse them, and extend upon existing ideas that we are able to progress as a society. The moment you stop trying to do that, and begin searching for an unknown element, is the moment when you stop creating. When you are a critic, your job is to take what you see in the moment and judge it. You are not expected to judge it against all of space and time. If you reach a point where all you see is what you have already seen before, then it's time to retire, you're job is done.
Every single day people are born. They grow up. It is 2018 and this year is the first that there are adults, 18 years old, who were not alive in the last Millennium, they hadn't been born. The longer you live, the more you see, and inevitably you realise that history repeats itself. Fashions return, sometimes with alterations, sometimes they return intact. So too do the ideas that gripped the Zeitgeist. The reason certain TV shows and Music, and artistic styles find resurgence despite being "done before" is simply because there's an entire generation that never witnessed it before. There is the temptation to say that they should look back, and learn about the past, and history, and know what has come before, but if you force ingenuity and creativity to contrast itself against what has come before, you prevent reimagination. You prevent reinterpretation. You prevent the exploration of ideas with mindsets that diverge significantly from those that came before.
In the Movies, Games, and Entertainment industries as a whole, there is often an opposition to "remakes" and the new yet not so new concept of "reboots" where the history and cannon of franchises from the past are completely ignored and works are created from scratch with new visions. These creations are opposed in their inception, and compared at length to "the originals" and judged based on their divergence from, or their adherence to what came before.
The problem with this mentality is that it projects the present onto the past, and expects the two to match up. The reality is they will never align because the world that existed is gone, and the world we live in now is a whole new world. More over, what succeeded before and what failed before, does not dictate what will succeed or what will fail today. There was a time people were perfectly content with dial-up internet, with MSN Search, and with a handful of TV channels. Those would never satisfy modern audiences and would be doomed to failure if they were to try. At the same time, if you were to give Google to someone long before it came to prominence it likely would have failed. To say that what came before are templates for success is to say to become the next Google one need only do everything they did - that clearly doesn't work.
The World Wide Web was created in the early 90s, but the Internet itself has been around for decades more, and the capability to build computers has existed longer still. The fact is we never used the technology in the capacity we do today as there was no desire, no drive, and no vision to do so. They succeeded when they did, because the conditions were right at the time. This is the reason more than any other that we must be able to try out existing ideas whether they succeeded or failed in the past, once again, but in a modern setting. We must be able to see if the changing environment and the new conditions that have arisen, would influence these ideas and see the impact that has.
There is a reluctance to accept this argument, the adamance in the belief "that which failed before will fail again and will always fail" - those who hold this belief and stand in the way of progress should stand aside. You have lost the vision, the optimism, the drive, and the courage to try.
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