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it · 06-16-2015, 10:01 PM

I was late to the party and wasn't' able to generate the youtube discussion I hoped for in one of the very few youtube channels that actually have compelling discussions more often then troll wars, so... I might as well put this here and see what happens:

Perhaps We both advertise our connection to the childhood and doing so out of nostalgia, not directly as a desire to relive the object from our childhood but as a desire to relive the means for social esteem from our childhood, thus the need to socially advertise, simply because the means of esteem in our childhood are a lot more easily accessible to us then the means for esteem as adults, with every piece of media we ever seen accessible at any moment as the carrot, but economically depressive times with huge unemployment as the stick.

Or maybe it is nothing but accessibility? My inner cynic would offer a much simpler explanation, pointing at data mining, pirating and streaming as more obvious sources: In the past the only real way for producers to know what is popular was sales of mostly recently released media, and most of the accessible media was the most recently released media.
In a world where you are able to access nearly every piece of media ever created, there is a good chance what you'll access might not be the most recent one, and there's a good chance that someone is selling a publisher a file in which you are a line on a spread sheet where you together with other people can let some analyst in a company meeting say "Hey, look how many people are still into ninja turtles", and the reason we are watching those is simply because in a few clicks away, we can, and we are more likely to look for something we know of because.. We know of it.

Would we still do it without the stick? Would we still be spending that time bindging on old media if more of us got to do more fulfilling jobs were more likely to start families at younger ages and so on? Maybe not, maybe in gaining more esteem in the present our ideas of our positive experiences would be more grounded in the present. But I would speculate that the answer is... Yes, yes we would. Because even with less free time you'd still be able to choose among a much larger spectrum of media from different times and the most recent would still not necessarily be the best choice available.

And maybe that's alright - What if instead of thinking of it as recycled material from the past, think of it as people going to a museum to re-experience art pieces of the past, a very advanced museum that is able to get a [Statistically significant] reading of us as an audience and retouch the old pieces with changing preferences and sensibilities... Because it knows it can make a lot of money. Production motives aside, this suggests to me a more long term memory of cultural icons, which is significantly richer better then the world where we all simply followed the latest releases of whatever was thrown at us.

06-16-2015, 10:01 PM	#242
it Banned Join Date: Dec 2011 Posts: 772	I was late to the party and wasn't' able to generate the youtube discussion I hoped for in one of the very few youtube channels that actually have compelling discussions more often then troll wars, so... I might as well put this here and see what happens: Perhaps We both advertise our connection to the childhood and doing so out of nostalgia, not directly as a desire to relive the object from our childhood but as a desire to relive the means for social esteem from our childhood, thus the need to socially advertise, simply because the means of esteem in our childhood are a lot more easily accessible to us then the means for esteem as adults, with every piece of media we ever seen accessible at any moment as the carrot, but economically depressive times with huge unemployment as the stick. Or maybe it is nothing but accessibility? My inner cynic would offer a much simpler explanation, pointing at data mining, pirating and streaming as more obvious sources: In the past the only real way for producers to know what is popular was sales of mostly recently released media, and most of the accessible media was the most recently released media. In a world where you are able to access nearly every piece of media ever created, there is a good chance what you'll access might not be the most recent one, and there's a good chance that someone is selling a publisher a file in which you are a line on a spread sheet where you together with other people can let some analyst in a company meeting say "Hey, look how many people are still into ninja turtles", and the reason we are watching those is simply because in a few clicks away, we can, and we are more likely to look for something we know of because.. We know of it. Would we still do it without the stick? Would we still be spending that time bindging on old media if more of us got to do more fulfilling jobs were more likely to start families at younger ages and so on? Maybe not, maybe in gaining more esteem in the present our ideas of our positive experiences would be more grounded in the present. But I would speculate that the answer is... Yes, yes we would. Because even with less free time you'd still be able to choose among a much larger spectrum of media from different times and the most recent would still not necessarily be the best choice available. And maybe that's alright - What if instead of thinking of it as recycled material from the past, think of it as people going to a museum to re-experience art pieces of the past, a very advanced museum that is able to get a [Statistically significant] reading of us as an audience and retouch the old pieces with changing preferences and sensibilities... Because it knows it can make a lot of money. Production motives aside, this suggests to me a more long term memory of cultural icons, which is significantly richer better then the world where we all simply followed the latest releases of whatever was thrown at us.