A follow up to the Flash Mob/Wasik post. Sanctioning Agent received a transmission from the fine folks over at Vulture Droppings (the Vulture is associated with Gyro World Wide). Vulture interviewed Wasik, providing more interesting insight.
I see that I’m now a post-modern participant-observer, as I’m reporting on, and participating in, a here and now phenomenon of viral.
The behavior/phenomena was there, but did the term provide a symbolic lens raising self awareness?
2 comments:
That's a flipping excellent interview - the perfect complement to the published article. (Though I still think, "When's he going to reveal that this hoax was a hoax? Saturday is April Fools, you know...") For my money, the best bit of culture analysis was this:
"There's something about the structure of blogs that's parasitic. You get props in the blog world for finding the thing that other people are going look at. The props go to the culture finders, not the creators. To a certain extent, everyone is in the trendwatching business now. Everybody's engaged in what you're engaged in on this site. This is truer on a deeper level than some people are willing to admit."
How are you gonna put this into practice, though, and in what way?
Yes, it’s a good interview and a great compliment to the Harper’s article. While I’m not a fan of saying the new media or old media automates the old, the same only faster – I do think that there’s been an analog to this in the real world for some time. In business it’s often the relationship brokers who do well, among others. The ones who have broad networks (and create value) “I don’t know how to write a new Flash piece or Java application, but I can get you in touch with people who can.”
Regarding how you put it into practice, I believe that you need to still understand the law-like forces behind human action and behavior and understand how those things manifest themselves in the here-and-now phenomena. Humans, as individuals and groups, still derive their identity, meaning, motive and emotion from a symbolically created reality. What symbols or symbol systems are gaining or losing currency?
It’s this type of shuffle, the pace, the obsolescence of media channels, etc., that dominate our post/late modern life. In ways, you can’t be distracted by the fads/trends. Keep your brand identity, but continue to ground it in the here-and-now. But, symbolic visions/identities are organic in that they are born, grow, and die.
In short, cultivate and ground a unique identity.
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