we feel different
December 14th, 2009 • posts i've written
Recently, Jonathan Harris, of We Feel Fine, released a series of vignettes from his talk at the Mobile Media Lecture Series at UCLA, entitled World Building in a Crazy World. It’s a fantastic series. Jonathan, as usual, doesn’t disappoint.
But I did take issue with one of Jonathan’s statements:
The Internet is causing mass homogenization of human identity, making us all look the same. We use the same tools and social networks, fitting into the same templates, designed by companies to maximize page views and profits (with some notable exceptions like Craigslist).
Though I can’t say for sure, I believe Jonathan is speaking in hyperbole, setting up a conceit he can tackle with his usual brilliant storyteller ability. But I’ve seen this statement re-published, re-tweeted, and generally accepted as gospel truth, and I find it very difficult to swallow.
In his vignettes, Jonathan goes on to question the chatter of our social web, the design of our digital systems, simplicity, and many more elements of the world today that Jonathan, through his artistic process, rejects. Jonathan is taking the oft-assumed role of the artist as Cassandra; warning us of an impending fate. And I find much of what he rails against to be personally true, but I do take issue with us all being one lump sum.
In my slideshare, The Fan Economy, I said:
Once upon a time, the internet was supposed to be the great homogenizer. With common information, in common places, we were all supposed to become one mass audience – ripe for the picking. This was not an original idea. Fortunately, the world is far too complex for homogeneity. The web has made constructing our identity through niche communities more visible, accessible, and rewarding.
His statement reminds me of the plenitude of voices telling us that mass culture is making us stupid – for which the work of academics like Henry Jenkins has done much to rebuff those critics. Mass culture has made us more sophisticated; you need only to look at fans of soap operas or professional wrestling in the 1980′s to witness the rise of the producer/consumer fan.
Jonathan seems bothered by the fact our social networks ask the same registration questions, organize connections under the same paradigm, and generally feel homogenized; but it’s that very uniformity that has led to such creativity among users of those sites. I have a hard time finding two friends that have used the registration questions alike – each have found their own to share their creativity with their network.
Ultimately, if we were one homogenized mass, we’d be incredibly easy to market to. Brands could easily throw out their advertising agencies and start pumping out model-T products and reap the reward. As someone who sees into the underbelly of the giant global brand and its agencies, I can safely assure you that we are not one homogenized group – and the Fortune 500 are frightened by it. We’re finding better and better ways to locate the like-minded communities, and growing more sophisticated at expressing ourselves to, and moving between, many groups at a time.
And what I’m seeing in culture right now leads me to believe that we are coming to realize that we feel different.
I finally caught Wes Anderson’s The Fantastic Mr. Fox on Sunday and a central theme in the film was a recognition of what makes us inherently unique. “We’re different, we all are … but there’s something kinda fantastic about that, isn’t there?” – from the trailer, about 1:30 in.
And then, flipping channels tonight I ran across an ad from HTC, part of their new You campaign. It’s certainly not perfect, but what I find most interesting is the You here compared to the You from a few years back when You was Time’s person of the year. The Time’s You spoke to the masses as a destabilizing but singular force against the media/corporate establishment; HTC’s You is the unique You and represents our ability to express and understand ourselves as more different from each other than before.
To Jonathan’s vignettes – my feedback as a world builder would be that uniformity, in our networked, recombinant, and shifting now, breeds creativity. As a designer, of pixels or of worlds, the most inspiring moments of creativity cannot be designed beforehand; but we should design to encourage recombinance and creativity in their greatest measure.
And we absolutely feel different.
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