10 Thought Experiments...

Try these out. More: Memorial Day vs. civil religion. Content Collapse #135

So. If you’re reading this in the United States, there’s a very good chance you’re reading this on your first day back at work after the three day Memorial Day weekend.

The USA is weird with Memorial Day. The holiday’s origins as a day of memorial for deceased soldiers are unclear (in fact, historian David W. Blight has a compelling argument that Memorial Day originated with memorial services by newly freed slaves at Union gravesites). By the 21st century, outside of the very large exception of military families, Memorial Day became a combination of kickoff-of-summer-barbecues-and-beach-visits and retail store sales.

Very, very American but a far cry from the way, say, Remembrance Day is observed in the Commonwealth or Yom HaZikaron in Israel. In Canada, one of the easiest ways for foreign companies to generate some negative PR is to offer Remembrance Day sales.

While the United States has a robust, ever-changing civil religion based around patriotic symbols that’s played a crucial role in assimilating generations of immigrants and creating a shared bond among people of very disparate worldviews and backgrounds… that civil religion tends to defer to big business, rather than the other way around.

Hence, Memorial Day sales.

Arlington National Cemetery @ArlingtonNatl

As a part of a decades-long tradition, soldiers from the @USArmyOldGuard place a U.S. flag at every gravesite, columbarium and niche wall ahead of Memorial Day at ANC. This tradition has taken place annually for decades and every available soldier in the Old Guard participates.

Now… On to the thought experiments.

I wanted to share these thought experiments because:

1. Mass communications in 2022 are really weird.

2. The more you think about these things, the weirder the damned things get.

So here we go:

1. What happens when local Facebook groups and Nextdoor become the go-to places for local news instead of the local newspaper or TV news?

2. Is there a convergence point where streaming services become cable TV and cable TV becomes streaming services?

3. What happens when Twitter bcomes bots arguing with other bots?

4. If print magazines split into either nearly-free subscription issues so publishers can charge advertisers high fees to get ads in front of lots of eyeballs + expensive prestige publications designed as class signifiers, what happens to content and advertising?

5. When will the generational shift where video games become more culturally influential than movies occur?

6. What happens to the creator economy when Patreon, Substack, Onlyfans and the like reach a point where the potential subscriber pool taps out?

7. Are US newspapers reaching a big-3 network parallel for national audiences where it’s just the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal and everyone else?

8. Will YouTube eventually revert to an unofficial minor league for conventional television or movies or will the current state of affairs where it makes more financial sense to be YouTube-first keep staying on?

9. Is there going to be a real OMFG use case for virtual reality in gaming or at-home use in general or will VR continue to be more of a convention/amusement park/arcade/experiential thing?

10. How will television commercials change as they are increasingly made for streaming instead of broadcast or cable? And political ads?

These are a few things I’m thinking about these days.

Let me know what you think—or add questions of your own—in the comments.