Branding, Culture, Politics, and Everything in Between

Found this among my drafts. Apparently, I had forgotten to publish it. I had intended to publish this on April Fools.

Scott Brown on Wired: “Humor is the Lingua Franca of the Internet”.

Because “funny” is becoming a language unto itself, the lingua franca of the wired world. You can’t update your Facebook status without a self-deprecating quip. You can’t respond to a Gawker post unless you’ve got something equally snarky to add. Snark, of course, is Web comedy’s most renewable resource. [...] And if you’re still worried about bombing in what is, basically, the world’s biggest, cruelest comedy club, don’t be. I assure you, you’re getting funnier all the time, simply by dint of being plugged into the collective e-conscious and keeping up with the high-bandwidth badinage.

Marshall McLuhan’s first and second laws of media ask what does the new medium enhance or make obsolete in a culture. An instant and participatory medium like the Internet has replaced jokes of the traditional variety (“a Finn, a Norwegian and a Swede walk into a bar…”) by something more instant, more contemporary. Today’s jokes are YouTube clips, PhotoShop manipulations, Facebook comments and the like. In the old days, jokes could be retold over and over, some jokes were deemed “classic” because they were more general and based on timeless notions. But now, jokes have a shelf-life that is measured in weeks, even days.

Granted, “reactionary” jokes are not a new phenomenon (just think of political cartoons and talk show monologues), but the Internet has made them common currency among us regular folk. A good “snark”, as Brown calls it, will not be limited to the cocktail party it was uttered, it can catch on and become sort of the joke of the week. Internet memes are a great example of this. But as said, these kinds of jokes don’t last long, and because of their contextual and contemporary nature, they rarely if ever become classic jokes that stand the test of time.

Other than “the medium is the message”, I think Marshall McLuhan’s most important idea was how a new medium reveals more of the old ones it seeks to replace. McLuhan also taught us that new media channels almost never wipe out the previous ones, they just reorganize our media priorities and assign new roles to old media.

Marshall McLuhan

For example, cinema didn’t kill theater, it changed our perception of it and it became a more high class medium. We didn’t appreciate the richness in storytelling books provided until TV came along. Back in the day, TV pushed cinema into more of a spectacle medium (colors, 4:3 to widescreen, high quality sound effects etc.), and this progress is still continuing with 3D movies making a comeback. To put things in perspective, even the telegram (you know “I love you. stop. send food. stop”, THAT telegram) wasn’t discontinued until 2007, and even then over 20 000 telegrams were sent annually in the US. So the so-called “wipe-out scenarios” of new media just pummeling over old ones never really work.

This is something to keep in mind the next time you read a piece on how TV is “dead”. I think we’re in the process of seeing broadcast TV being redefined, as people start to realize what TV has to offer in contrast to downloading TV shows and watching them on your computer. For all the convenience that watching TV shows on demand has to offer, I think a lot of people are failing to see what they are giving up when they switch away from scheduled programming. I got a firsthand reminder of this last spring when I was watching the Eurovision song contest (yes, I know) with a bunch of friends. The atmosphere in the room was great and vibrant, people were engaging with the show and commenting every act with vigor. You can’t get that kind of atmosphere while watching it the next day on your laptop.

Somebody might argue that this is only true for live broadcasts or major TV events, like the season finale of a popular show or the Superbowl. I agree with this, but I also think that inevitably this might mean that all TV programming is either live or original programming (meaning very few reruns). One of the main arguments for the popularity of reality TV has been that it’s cheap to produce. This is certainly true, but I think it also comes back to the disposable nature of television programming nowadays where reruns aren’t profitable anymore and more current (preferably live) TV is favored. Also, as Grant notes, reality TV is often more on the pulse of culture, and this is its main appeal:

Reality programming is not just cheap TV, it is responsive TV. Surely, one of the most sensible way for the programming executive to get back in touch with contemporary culture is to turn the show offer to untrained actors who have no choice but to live on screen, in the process importing aspects of contemporary culture that would otherwise have to be bagged and tagged and brought kicking and screaming into the studio and prime time. Reality programming is contemporary culture on tap. It is by no means a “raw feed.” That is YouTube’s job. But it is fresher than anything many executives could hope to manage by their own efforts. In effect, reality programming is “stealing signals” from an ambient culture, helping TV remain in orbit.

The social aspects of TV aren’t limited to people watching in the same room. Even if a show isn’t important enough to “warrant” inviting your friends over, broadcasters are trying to make TV more social. NPR: Marketers Vie For TV Viewers Who Web Surf

Studies now show a significant number of TV viewers have computers perched on their laps while watching TV. They’re googling, searching and chatting online while watching football games and reality shows. Producers of TV shows and commercials are trying to capitalize on the trend.

We’re definitely in a transition period, it’ll be interesting to see to what TV will “regress into”, to quote McLuhan.