This Show the Next Stranger Things? Wikipedia Changing Definition of Words, Facebook Copying TikTok=End of Social Networking? Legacy Magazine BEGGING YouTubers for Attention? (The Five for 07/30/22)
Hey, welcome to The Five.
Couple of notes before we dive in.
A. As a reminder, The Five will only publish one issue per week in August, and will return two two issues per week (one news, one culture focused) in September.
B. My first fiction project, a novel releasing for free on Substack…chapter by chapter…has a title. The Deere Pipeline: A Midwestern Prairie Tale of Opiods, Murder…and Farm Equipment.
Probably looking at a 2023 release date at this point.
Let’s dive into Culture & Commentary.
[one]
This isn’t a hyperbolic statement…the era of using social networks primarily to connect with friends and family may be over.
Fast Company reports:
Social networking, as we’ve come to know it, is probably on the way out. It was once a big draw for all kinds of people, and at the same time an amazing way to harvest personal data that could be used to target ads.
But everything is temporary on the internet. TikTok created an app that’s more addictive than anything else before it. For many people, it’s the funnest thing you can do on a smartphone. And Meta, whose apps have topped the app store charts for years, knows it. So Meta built a TikTok video knockoff called Reels. And it announced last week that it’s changing its flagship Facebook app into something of a video app.
The Facebook app now opens to a Home tab that contains the Reels videos (the changes will come to the desktop app later, Facebook says). If you want to catch the latest post from your old high school friend or lurk on your ex’s pages, you’ll have to open a different tab now, the “Feeds” tab. That’s where the social networking functions are—a sort of side attraction. (Users can like or comment on short-form videos, but they’re more about entertainment than socializing.)
Axios managing editor of technology Scott Rosenberg put it like this in a Monday post: “Mark last week as the end of the social networking era, which began with the rise of Friendster in 2003, shaped two decades of internet growth, and now closes with Facebook’s rollout of a sweeping TikTok-like redesign.”
I’m torn on this one. There’s certainly a positive to the technological decline the rage-fueled debates Facebook started that destroyed real friendships and split families.
But with that comes the futher decline of true relationships…you may have spent too much time fighting on Facebook, but that iconic blue app also connected you to real people who know who you are and care about you.
And the people on Reels videos showing you how to calk a shower or doing a comedic dance…do not know who you are or care about you.
Facebook’s redesign may help make an already isolated nation even more lonely.
[two]
Old songs now represent 70 percent of the U.S. music market, according to the latest numbers from MRC Data, a music-analytics firm. Those who make a living from new music—especially that endangered species known as the working musician—should look at these figures with fear and trembling. But the news gets worse: The new-music market is actually shrinking. All the growth in the market is coming from old songs.
The 200 most popular new tracks now regularly account for less than 5 percent of total streams. That rate was twice as high just three years ago. The mix of songs actually purchased by consumers is even more tilted toward older music. The current list of most-downloaded tracks on iTunes is filled with the names of bands from the previous century, such as Creedence Clearwater Revival and The Police.
I’m not surprised by the purchase data, as people who aren’t subscribed to streaming networks tend to be older, and are more likely to buy older music.
As a fan who loves new music (and highlights it weekly), this bums me out…but there’s something deeper going on here at a societal level. The constant rotation of old sitcoms like Friends and The Office and the preference for old music over new music (across all age groups) signals a culture that’s more interested in nostalgia than new ideas.
And cultures that look back more than they look forward…are dying.
New music, movies, books and TV are vehicles for new ideas. There’s nothing wrong with old favorites on standby, but if you don’t consume ANY contemporary media, it’s a sign you may be living in a fantasy world in the past rather than the present reality.
[three]
Why would a seven year old song suddenly become a hit on country radio?
You may or may not have heard of Cody Jinks, but the independent outlaw country artist from Texas filled Buckeye Stadium with 65,000 fans as part of a country music festival that included Zach Bryan and Luke Combs this week.
Despite his massive success, Jinks has been completely ignored by the “Nashville Machine” that runs country radio and cranks out sound-alike “stars.”
But now, a seven old single from Jinks is headed to country radio.
Indeed, “Loud and Heavy” has aged quite well. Included on the 2015 album ‘The Adobe Sessions,’ the track has amassed 436.5 million on-demand streams, according to Luminate, under a long-tail growth pattern. After generating 570,000 streams in its first year, its consumption climbed annually for the next five years, peaking at 105.2 million streams in 2020. “Loud and Heavy” tallied at least 90 million streams annually in 2019-2021, and with 52.5 million streams through July 22, the song is on pace to net another 94.4 million this year.
This raises the question…why now? And does it even matter?
On one hand, as a Cody Jinks fan, I’m happy for more people to hear one of his best songs. On the other…it shows just how irrelevant the country radio format is that it took seven years for the industry to consider the song. If Jinks has built a football-stadium sized following, that makes him one of the biggest artists in the world right now…an achievement he has proven via album sales and live gigs, but without the benefit of becoming a household name or “celebrity.”
It’s further proof that Content Creators are driving the cultural bus now, and legacy brands are desperately trying to prove they’re still relevant.
I witnessed another piece of evidence for this phenomenon when one of my favorite YouTubers, Finn McKenty, announced his new channel sponsor…Spin Magazine.
For years, I worked in traditional media outlets (including magazines, radio and TV) and saw the “old guard” of media look down their noses at independent content creators, quite a new phenomenon in the early 00’s.
Twenty years later, the legacy brands are begging the internet kids for a seat at the table.
[four]
The U.S. officially entered a recession on Thursday, which the Biden Administration has been dealing with by simply saying “nuh uh.””
A recession is two quarters of negative economic growth…which just happened. Rather than argue with the numbers, the Administration is simply trying to wish the
“Let me just give you what the facts are in terms of the state of the economy,” Biden said in a speech that was billed as remarks on the latest budget bill in Congress. “Number one, we have a record job market, and record unemployment of 3.6%, and businesses are investing in America at record rates.” He then listed several companies planning to build factories in the U.S. before concluding, “that doesn’t sound like a recession to me.”
Outside the White House bubble, however, the latest GDP data sounded a lot like a recession.
The editors of Wikipedia were making changes to the Recession page that the site’s editors actually froze thee page to keep Biden apologists from changing a word in order to fit the President’s agenda.
[five]
As always, let’s head into the weekend with a pop culture roundup:
Paper Girls is being hailed as the next Stranger Things, as the series also starts with tweens in the 1980’s who find themselves sucked into a sci-fi adventuure. But don’t call it a rip off—as the story is from a comic book series written before the release of the Netflix hit.
The next high-concept Christopher Nolan (The Dark Knight, Inception) movie, Oppenheimer, stars Cillian Murphy (Peaky Blinders) and is about…something, I guess. From the ominous countdown clock clip, I’m not sure what.
99% of the time, I won’t check out a trailer for an anime show, but Pantheon appears to be a conceptionally and emotionally complex sci-fi story about AI and grief. A young girl is taken aback when a cloud based computing system claims to be the uploaded consciousness of her deceased father.
On AMC+ now.
The remake of A League of Their Own looks like a decent remake of the 1992 original film, assuming the show focuses on the actual story and not becoming an after school special for Wokeness.
There’s a big difference in showing historical injustices and treating the audience as morons by using an entire season to yell at them what to think rather than believing the viewer is smart enough to get there without handholding.
On Amazon Prime August 12th.
OK, live action Pinochio looks pretty cool. And Tom Hanks (Saving Private Ryan, Forrest Gump), Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Inception, Looper) and Lorraine Bracco (Goodfellas, The Sopranos) is a heck of a lineup.
On Disney+ Sept 8.
While the “cool factor” faded from The Walking Dead back in mid 2010’s, that world continues to both appeal to a legion of fans and expand outward. Tales of the Walking Dead will run as a limited anthology series, telling one-off stories in the Zombie hellscape.
On AMC/AMC+ August 14th.
There’s a Bollywood remake of Forrest Gump. Looks cool, but I’m probably never gonna get around to it.
Ben Foster (Hell or High Water, Hustle) and Michael Cain (The Dark Knight Trilogy, The Cider House Rules) lead the cast for MIDIEVAL, an Oscar-bait epic about the waning days of the Holy Roman Empire.
NEW MUSIC:
I’m not a Beyonce fan but the follow up to her blockbuster album Lemonade, after a seven year hiatus, is worth noting.
Maggie Rogers carved a new path by combining traditional folk music with EDM beats…returns with more of her unique style on her sophomore album Surrender.
Until the next one,
-sth