Pop Culture In The Age Of Social Media

Social media killed the video star

We are a product of our times, and as artists the products we produce reflect those times. There will always be those artists who are on the cutting edge, or outside of today’s conventions, and are pushing the edges of what we commonly define as culture.

It is at that margin between our existing culture, and the avant-garde, where in the past we have found our pop culture trends.

However, through our 500+ channel universe, and the unlimited options available online, that margin no longer clearly exists. Now artists—and I use that term extremely loosely—have turned to all kinds of extreme means in an effort to make their mark in/on pop culture.

The result? An endless crapfest to navigate in order to find a single nugget worthy of my 3 minutes of time. Sadly, now I spend 2 or 3 times the amount of time looking for something, as I do actually reading or listening to it.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Post modernity has run amok.

If you by chance do publish stuff online, please, please, please, be aware of the old adage: The Internet is forever. If you care at all about how you are perceived, make sure that when you publish images or videos of yourself, you are not going to look back at them in 20 or 30 years from now and say to yourself: What was I thinking?

Obviously you have no control over what others upload of you, but unless you a particularly famous, you will be the one who posts more stuff about yourself than others do. If you’re a musician, make sure that what you upload of yourself is you at your best, and not just some random crap recorded in your basement with crappy equipment. 

Why? Because that’s how others will perceive you. They will judge you against everyone else who plays better; used better equipment; and/or was recorded in a much better setting. 

Anyone reading this not come across some videos on YouTube or Facebook and thought: WTF is that person doing?

Just something to consider the next time, before you contribute to the over 2.5 quintillion bytes of data that are created every single day! And you know that search engines like Google are getting better and better at indexing stuff all the time as the Net gets bigger and bigger.