Branding, Culture, Politics, and Everything in Between

Earlier today, a 40-story hotel caught fire in Beijing. Within an hour of the fire starting, it was already big news on Twitter. Some people were naturally very concerned and shocked (especially Asian tweeters) of what was happening, but some were more interested about the novelty of the news itself, being the first ones on earth to know about it. People were spreading the story like crazy and I saw many tweets almost giddy about the fact that none of the major networks in the US had anything on the subject. Or to quote somebody from Twitter:

Now, I’m not saying that I have never acted in this manner myself or that I’m some how above this kind of behavior (hey, I pasted a link to some photos from the fire to my Facebook status), nor am I really condemning it (though some comments were a bit on the tasteless side considering there was a real chance of lives being at danger in the incident), but I’m starting to believe more and more that this kind of hypernovelty is not exclusively a positive phenomenon of social media.

There’s a certain allure in being “in the know”. One of the most common stereotypes in cultural products is the brave journalist with the scoop story exposing the truth. Our culture reveres the pioneer and the trend setter: it’s a staple of our culture and it’s often seen as a trait of individuality. You can hear it in the way we talk about our holiday experiences, how we like “discovering” (though that’s rarely the case) new things and recommending them to friends, the we shop for clothes, and the way we value expertise, just to name a few. Having your finger on the pulse is also a sign of passion and a keenness for a given subject, which is hardly a bad thing.

However, having your ear constantly on the ground puts a certain strain on you, especially in this day and age of ubiquity of information. Whenever a new story or something interesting thing pops up, some people have an urge to “break” the story and sort of put up a flag on the story that says that “if this story becomes big, remember my name!”.

Being “first” (a rather relative term, to say the least) to blog/tweet about something has become more important than actually writing something meaningful about the subject. The urgency to act (because somebody might write about first!) does not really allow for deep thought or fact-checking. It also feeds a certain anti-intellectualism, making debate or analysis less and less of a merit of expertise.

For example, online newspapers have had to sacrifice (grudgingly, at times) some of their quality control in favor of promptness, because blogs and social networks were beating them to the story so often (as said, the hotel incident was “old news” within two hours of it happening). Smart newspapers have moved on to offer more in-depth or second opinion pieces, but that’s a whole other post.

Relating to my own field, I don’t like it how so many marketing blogs, for example, have become more or less obsessed about spreading viral videos or “cool campaigns” instead of actually discussing them. And if there is any type of analysis being done, the tone is hyped and one-sided. Ideas are reduced to bullet points or statements that look great in keynote presentations, but might not have any theoretical substance to them.

Services like Twitter have their merits – especially in acting as an information filter and connecting like-minded people – but people tend to overvalue it and forget what the trade offs of a constant information flow are. It takes deep thought, taking your time and actually detaching yourself from the information overload to create original thought.

Speed isn’t everything.