Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Detrendification

So today the redhead sent me a link to this story about "trendfear" which seemed to be played out almost instantly in this piece about Franzen's Horror of The New.

The web and social networking have facilitated the production of massive amounts of data about personal, emotional, me-me-me stuff. And to those with a mind to analyse—which, let's face it, is most web developers* and marketers—it's a treasure trove of so called "market insight".

But I wonder about trends. Once upon a time we were encouraged to ignore the trend, to carve our own paths.

Sure, if you're a technopreneur, a digipreneur, an iBoss—aged 55 or 15—you probably need to consider trends. But on an ongoing basis? Through an app on your phone? Constantly? Check those freaking memes? Basing your thoughts or activities on what others think is good and ignoring what they don't?

People whine about The Youth of Today spending endless hours tweeting and texting, but really we should probably be thankful they/we're not frantically refreshing their/our feeds to see what's trending.

I'm no entrepreneur. But I'd like to counter the web's burgeoning Slavery to the Trend with an ages-old philosophy (call it a meme if you will): don't concern yourself at all with what others like or think is good. Choose your own adventures.

*Which reignites the burning question about how long the developer-driven nature of the web will continue to shape the web itself and the media around it in such lopsided ways. But that's a bigger question for a chattier time.

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