This is the last post for the summer. My vacation starts tomorrow and I know I would be beheaded if I kept hanging in front of the keyboard the next few weeks. So, I’m trying this new thing, I call it “logging off”. I don’t know if you’re familiar with it, at least I wasn’t…
Rather than summing up the blog so far, here’s a little about what’s to come:
-New features on the blog
-Info about upcoming event
-The book
-Some wacky ideas
Looking forward!
Cardo Systems have just had 15 microseconds of fame. The number of views and video responses exposing the (obvious, one would think) hoax the last few days is amazing:
The pleasure paradox, the alluring almost and trailerism. All testaments to the power of keeping the watch behind the glass display (if you don’t remember the survey and the experiments about taking the watch out of the display or not, please go back to the posts a couple of weeks back…)
Where I’m at, it’s been raining everyday lately. That is, where I’m at geographically. Mentally, it’s all sunshine. Timewise, it cannot rain.
How was your midsummer? According to British research, it topped the year so far for you (and unfortunately, you will have to wait a year for the next peak). In his comment yesterday, Erik Nilsson strikes again.
Just like Erik and the Brits provided statistics in favor of this blog’s central theme that expectations about the future rules our behaviors and happiness today, by showing that new Year’s day is the mother of all suicides days, they now suggest that midsummer is the day of the year when we are supposed to be the happiest. This ties in very well with an old post here, remember the fact that, at least in the north, most children are born around March (yes, nine months after June - and midsummer)? Expecting a wonderful summer, time off, dreams to be pursued, makes all the difference.
The Brits discuss socialising and the weather as additional factors making midsummer the happiest day. At least as a Nordic resident, I would have to say that the June weather is not that great (especially not the actual midsummer’s weather), but we expect that it soon will be, and that socialising tends to be an effect rather than cause of expectations (expecting to have a good time, we become more social).
It’s not the actual midsummer, it’s what it promises…
Five minutes seems to be the magic window that attracts people’s attention in the world of any, where anything better and more interesting lies just one click away with your sticky fingertips. Five minutes’ worth of TV or movie is all we need, minisoding our way through the entertainment plethora. And the same goes for dating:
“Meet 5 people in 5 minutes and see who woos you” is the motto of woome.com, the Expectations society’s equivalent of speed dating. Dating transformed into minidating. Similar to minisoding, minidating is more about squeezing the juice out of (time-consuming and, chances are, tedious) full-length dates than about finding an actual partner. In the world of any, where you can meet anyone, anywhere, anytime (and happily-ever-after may last about 55 hours), who wants to (expects to!) find a partner? Bring on the dating, and keep ‘em coming, there are so many people to date!
Woome.com has become a favorite pastime for young (which is becoming harder and harder to define in the Expectations society) people all over the world. Jump in anytime, there is always a few dozen sessions going on, with five people in each available for you to minidate. Choose sessions and people with different looks, interests, themes, from different regions. If, for some reason, something caught your fancy, just favorite it and you can minidate again some time in the future (’cause why would you want to pursue further right then and there, you already minidated the juiciest part?)
Beside the fact that minidating allows you to sample more of the world of any, what makes it appealing is that alluring almost. On full-length (not to mention consecutive) dates with a person, you get to know all the details, the good with the bad. And the magic starts fading. It’s the uncertainty, the mystique in meeting a (more or less) stranger that makes the date tantalizing. Not knowing it all, being tickled by the things you expect to find out. Minidates are all about the tickling and none of the knowing.
The Gossip Girl book franchise, starting with the first novel in 2002, has been hailed as the reason why people in the new millennium (read: teenagers) consume such an old-fashioned invention as the book. And since the spin-off TV series debuted in 2007, more and more people allude to it as the reason why people in the new millennium consume such an old-fashioned inventions as the TV series. Around the world, people direct their attention to the TV sets to follow the popular culture phenomenon. Or, which has been cited a premier reason for its success, they retrieve it from iTunes…
How come Gossip Girl is such a successful new millennium franchise? It combines two popular themes in the Expectations society: pseudonimity and gossip.
Who is Gossip Girl? We don’t know, we can speculate, have hunches, but never be certain! The Gossip Girl pseudonomity is symptomatic of the world of any, where anyone can be anybody they want. We all use pseudonyms, and consume pseudonyms. All over the world, people stay tuned to blogs written by some pseudonymous person whose identity one cannot be certain about. Now more than ever, old-fashioned books are written by pseudonymous authors - a necessity in this day and age.
Pseudonyms promise a next - there is always more to learn and to figure out about the person behind it, the truth identiy will reveal itself in the next! In the world of any, where anyone can get anything they want, anytime, anywhere, what becomes most interesting is the thing they cannot get, the real identity behind the pseudonym. We try to figure it out and think that we will, maybe even that we have, but we cannot be certain, it’s that alluring almost.
And, of course, pseudonyms spawn gossip. The very word gossip signals that one cannot be certain about the truthfulness - it’s alluringly almost true. In the world of any, anyone can spread the word about anything to anyone, anywhere. Which, in many ways, make it easier and easier to gossip and harder and harder to know the truthfulness behind it. And we love it…
In the world of any, where anyone can go online anytime, anywhere, anyone can gamble anytime, anywhere. And anyone and everyone do so. Whether it’s lotteries, slot machines, poker or stock market speculations.
Take New Zealand, for example: While it took more than 20 years for gambling expenditures to amount to over 1 billion dollar from the 80’s to the turn of the millennium, the new millennium has already added a new billion to the expenditures. This does not say much about New Zealand, as most of the world seems to have followed suit. And that’s not counting online gambling, which, according to American figures, is estimated to have doubled every year (already starting at 2 billion dollars one year into the new millennium). No wonder CNN reported , a couple of years into the new millennium, that online gambling is the fastest growing addiction among young people.
Following a similar trend, stock market speculations have exploded in the new millennium, both in the number of transactions, and in the number of people involved. In the world of any, anyone, anywhere, can buy stocks in any company anytime. And we do. Several research studies show that the most familiar and most heavily advertised companies have the most owners - in the new millennium, anyone knows Coca-Cola and likes to have a piece of it. Or - gamble with it.
Whether it’s lotteries, slot machines, poker or stock markets, they share the same gambling theme. They are totally based on expectations. Expectations of when, how, where, how much we can win. And they are always promises of the future, the next (nextopia) lever pull, the next poker hand, the next stock rise. There is always a next, the last doesn’t count. And we can never be certain about the outcome, there is that alluring almost certainty that most people feel. And that make them addicted, to the degree that gambling is turning into the addiction of the new millennium.
In the world of any, anyone, anywhere can get anything, anytime. With one major exception - certainty about the coming weather. In the Expectations society, where we focus more on tomorrow than on today, our globe’s oldest product, the weather, holds a tighter grip on our attention than ever before.
The weather forecast is the most frequently viewed part of the most frequently viewed regular TV programming (newscasts), and the most frequently read part of the most frequently read publications (news papers and sites). There are entire TV channels devoted to it (The Weather Channel is one of America’s most familiar channels), not to mention the tens of millions of websites devoted to upcoming weather. And in many countries, statistics suggest, it is the most frequent conversation topic. Word-of-mouth surveys in, for example, the UK and Sweden from 2005, suggest that more than 85% of the population discuss the coming weather everyday.
As David noted in a comment in the beginning of time (or, at least, the start of this blog), weather forecasts still have an accuracy of about 50% on the weekly average. With the progress we’re making in all sectors, accuracy is bound to increase with time.
But right now, the weather - still ahead of us, and not really certain, an alluring almost - is hotter than ever (no matter what the temperature…)
It’s been a week, but hopefully you remember the pleasure paradox: Although we think we prefer to know, we actually derive more pleasure from not really knowing. Once we know it all, the truth of porn reveals itself mercilessly: revealing everything means seeing nothing.
Popular culture is filled with examples of the impact and joy of uncertainty. Packed enough for an the-alluring-almost-week. And Basic Instinct is a nice start.
If you have seen it, I am sure you remember it. And if you haven’t seen it, you most likely have heard of it; the movie that became Sharon Stone’s claim to fame. And though she has done a lot since then (most notably a critically acclaimed performance in the movie Casino), that movie is still pretty much the reason why she can call herself a movie star. Or actually, it’s one particular scene that resounded her name throughout the world. One tiny little scene made a movie star. What’s so great to see in that scene that it attracted the world’s attention? It’s rather what there was not to see. True to the truth of porn, not revealing everything kept people wondering, speculating, for years.
Sharon Stone’s interrogation scene is definitely an oldie, not a product of the Expectations society, but the fact that it lives on in the world of any, where there are better movies anywhere, and raunchier scenes in any movie, pretty much says it all. If people had known what actually happened in that scene, it would have been forgotten as soon as those better movies and raunchier scenes saw daylight. But we did not, do not, know. And so it lives on. In hundreds of copies just on youtube.
Here’s the perfect intersection between, minisoding, Generation In-Charge and trailerism:
In his comment on yesterday’s post, Martin put me on the track of finding a host of 5-second movie clips edited by loving (or hating) fans. The above Shrek 3 edit is a great illustration of the three consumption behaviors discussed here previously: 1) why see the whole movie, when seconds can tell the whole story? 2) I can edit the story anyway I want, and 3) now you don’t have to go to the theater later.
Though I am not sure this will be the winner in the long run, it’s fascinating to see how the recent phenomenon of minisoding into 5 minutes has already spawned its very own minisodes (microsodes?) into 5 seconds. A great testimony to our warp consumption - the accelerating way in which we consume everything. More on warp consumption, and trailerism later.
I’m going to be on tour in Southern Europe the coming week. When I am not talking, I’ve been told there’s not much hope of hanging around an internet connection. So, see you again on June 16th!
If you haven’t read Martin’s comment, here’s his own favorite clip:
Personal correspondence should go to micael dot dahlen at hhs dot se. Media requests should go to info at volante dot se. Do you want to hire me as a speaker? Email speakers at volante dot se.
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