What is The Market Age?

"The Market Age" is us. Think of it as if The Gilded Age decided to cash in on some ironically self-aware nostalgia at just the right time because the data said they should. (Opportunism, Ho!)

And -- thanks to Inception, I can now cite a famous person saying something I was going to say anyway, (which means it's not plagiarism) -- just like a dream, we can't really remember how we became The Market Age, or where it's going, or the big one, what it all means.

Unless of course, you talk to me, a skilled analyst, objective provocateur, and master of synthesizing disparate sources into something of a massively mosaic Chuck Close-like Self-portrait. Notice the capital S. That means it's not reflexive, it's adflexive. As in, it doesn't refer to Chuck, it refers to the ideal. Also "ads." I know I shouldn't have to spell that out, but it's necessary if I'm to make sure everybody's on the same page.

Anyway, back to the subject at hand: The Market Age is something of the next phase in the evolution of conspicuous consumption and gilded exteriors. Except, whereas the Gilded Ones displayed it through ostentatious cars and houses, the Marketed Ones display it through an understanding of the human psyche and a highly cultivated public image.

So, first: How does this behavior equate to conspicuous consumption?

Well, technically it doesn't. Unless you consider things like getting one or multiple degrees that allow you to study things like computer science & behavioral economics while developing a vast network of highly influential people, as well as having the technical training that allows you to put everything into action, to be forms of consumption. Which they are. Because there is a product, and it is being consumed. It's just, instead of houses and cars, the product is education, the service-based economy, digital marketplaces, social influence. Those lucky few who happen to wield such things can be said to possess a certain hegemony - although I hesitate to call it that because we're not quite far enough along to be able to see the landscape with sufficiently historical lenses.

We can see, however, that The Market Age is yet another age of explosive success. It's basically a digital gold rush. There's even a boom valley. The good news is it's apparently learned from the Dot Com bubble and has implemented something of an artificial system of Darwinian selection and autonomous development to make sure things don't run dry quite so quickly. I'm still learning about this myself, but it seems to me that the software developers have caught up to the hardware manufacturers in terms of incorporating obsolescence into their products, primarily out of a basic need to just keep making stuff. There's also a desperate need for regulation which so far has been resolved by the amoebic mass of the Internet just... gloobing around and continuing to do what it's always done: whatever it wanted.

But again, the conspicuous consumption indictment dictates that I provide examples, so let me ask you this: How many iPhones have you owned? MacBooks? iPods? iPads? And then how many times have the apps and operating systems "rebranded" or updated to take advantage of the new advances in hardware? How many times have you downloaded something that everybody was doing (Words With Friends anyone?) only to completely forget about it by the next press cycle? "Oh, but how does updating software contribute to consumption?" Because with each marginal upgrade in computing power, the software engineers match it with an equally marginal upgrade in... glitz and skeuomorphism and "functionality" and "trend-i-ness," meaning of course that the hardware upgrade has effectively been negated. My fully up-to-date MacBook Pro, mid-2010, now runs about as fast as a long-since-updated Black MacBook, mid-2007. Care to explain people?

Basically it boils down to this: Designers and Developers - congratulations. For as long as there's Internet, you've entered the realm of bankers, doctors, and lawyers as indispensable private sector job functions. Good thing you're also EXTREMELY inexpensive as far as labor goes. And you're really open source with what your trends are, which makes it easy for someone just entering the field to catch up and sound fluent. Part of the tradeoff of being the most visually-based of the essential job functions I'd think. I'm not saying it's a bad thing, all I'm saying is that supply and demand are pretty equilibrial at the moment, and I suspect it has something to do with your naturally extroverted selves suddenly taking center-stage and loving the spotlight. 

Which leads me to my next point: Gilded Exteriors.

To begin, The Market Age is also the age of acquisitions, of shifting from consultant to in-house, in-house to consultant. The turnover rate for successful tech-based companies is just insane. I don't have any numbers for this yet, so you -- yeah. You. Intern. Go find me numbers on how many tech startups have been built and sold from the year 2001 to today. I'm expecting trillions of dollars, thousands of startups. I don't need it now, I'm just going to make my point anyway, but I want to make sure I've got my numbers right in case somebody jumps my case about a minor detail -- might have to take this with a grain of salt, but I'd be willing to bet that just about all of the startups built and bought over the past thirteen years are no longer run by the people who built them, and are owned by maybe one of six major conglomerates (Apple, Google, Oracle, Samsung, Amazon, and Microsoft would be my guess. Oh, also Facebook and all its ilk.)

In other words, there are a ton of adopted children out there, and the conglomerates are the orphanage. The personal brand lasts only insofar as it remains a valuable marketing tool for gaining the attention of a bigger brand that wants either to buy you or catapult you into national attention, at which point you're still you, yeah, but you're You+, as in You+Yahoo (did "Marissa Mayer" ring any bells before she took Yahoo and CEO to her name?).

As for how this pertains to me: After my first post, "Brunching in The Market Age," and the extent to which it dealt with personal branding, I can confidently set your fears at ease by saying: Yes. I am preparing myself for acquisition. I'm buttoning my collar, whipping my skinny into a Double Windsor (silver clip above the third button), ripping off the sleeves, and flexing my guns. You like that? Yeah. Oh yeah. I do bodyweight you know. Also a distance runner. Lets me keep lean. But I can still do this...

Except that's not me, that's a hologram. People are so fascinated with 3D technology and holograms. Just: Okay look - every social media celebrity you know of is, truly, little more than a projection. These holograms, these images with personalities: They. Are. Sculpted. They're like Chia Pets before we realized we could eat the seeds. They grow and they wilt, they're adorable, they're ludicrous, they become passé. Their operators identified the aspects within themselves that were most pleasing to a public audience, and then just became those things. It's like Tony Stark stepping into the Iron Man suit except, for us commoners, once we're in the suit, we can't step out of it. That's just our "brand."

It's at this point that The Market Age faces, at last, the exact same dilemma that has plagued humankind for millennia: Does it continue along the path it envisioned (in this case, cultivated self-awareness), or does it recognize that it will, some day, have to step aside for whatever comes next? Because if there's one thing marketing has always told us, it's that everything has an expiration date. (Did marketing say that, or did something else?) These words aren't the words of a Luddite, someone who wants to dismantle this enormous machine; these are the words of someone who has spent his life studying the patterns of Time, and sees that certain things are bound to happen, in more or less variable degrees. (You see, I say Time, others say History. Same thing in this case.)

What came before must, at some point, yield to what comes after, otherwise it becomes a monarchy. And if it becomes a monarchy, it becomes based on lineage. And if the lineage is threatened or disputed: Tyranny and Violent Revolution. (Come on people, this is the kind of stuff our Founding Fathers understood).

If The Market Age continues as it has been? Well, privacy would be my first, biggest concern. And I don't just mean "keeping things private." I mean very much what Virginia Woolf meant in A Room of One's Own. If our creative minds are to remain creative, they will require privacy. They will require freedom from the necessities of "image" or "public opinion." They will require the ability to disappear.

They will also require the ability to change. Public Opinion is notoriously belligerent toward mutability. Remember Quickster? Take away their candy and they pitch a fit. Offer them new candy because you're trying to move on? NO.

NO. NO. NO. I like the OLD candy. I don't WANT new candy. I like the OLD candy. Why can't you just give me what I WANT?

Frankly, if Netflix had continued on with Quickster, it probably would've tanked. But, more likely, it would've held on at a much diminished, but eventually stable size as people realized that "Hey... You know, we really do stream waaayy more stuff than we watch on disk. What if Quickster is just a way to compartmentalize resources so that Netflix-proper can focus on getting more content online sooner after it's released?" And I say that after just yesterday canceling my disk subscription. Because you know why? Because: Megashare.info. That's why.

The point is this:

The Market Age is the age in which "branding" has superseded "the Self" but with only mild or opportunistic attention to the necessity for change or movement. It has built its foundation on a whirlpool of shifting sands because it hopes there's a giant library buried deep in the dune which can then prop it up before the storm gets to be too much worse.

There's an even simpler explanation: When your industry is based on the study and utility of self-awareness, it stimulates an inherent desire within the observed to subvert the attention it receives. In mythological terms: You have invoked Chaos, The Usurer, as your muse, and with every gift bestowed, a double-price is paid.

Maybe all the marketers should just get together with all the quantum physicists: see who can sell their ideas first...

Brunching in The Market Age

Do you like brunch? Me too. I think that makes us part of something. I saw this episode of How I Met Your Mother that talked about it back in 2006, and it was pretty spot on. I mean, probably the most important thing on my mind when I'm in Manhattan these days is, "Where are we going for brunch on Sunday?" Well... One of the most important things anyway. The others would be:

2.) I hope somebody asks me where something is.
3.) Hide from the Brooklyn parking authority.

But, really, brunch is number one. My favorite spot is actually down in Lower Chelsea, and although Absolute Bagels on the Upper West Side is great, it's more of a stop-in-and-step-out, so it's not quite as accommodating.

You know, in some ways it seems like "brunch" has taken the role of church for the secular set. It's a gathering together of people at around 11 or 11:30 on Sunday morning; a communing of experiences and stories conducted over food; a healing process for the heavy drinkers of the group; your identity is typically defined by a particular location or chain; people notice when you're not there for several weeks in a row; and when rival groups get together? Crusades...

Of course, I could be totally wrong on this. I'm from Florida, I've lived in Virginia for the past seven years, and I'm moving to Utah at the end of the month. I've been to NYC maybe... a dozen times? And never for more than a long weekend. And yet, for some reason I feel like I can speak rather coherently, though obviously not fluently, in the language of the Manhattanite Bruncheons. It's a little like the Boston Brahmins except less Dickens.

The reason for this is clear: Specialized Marketing. Or, rather, The Market Age (look, look! the title of the blog!).

It seems to me that "marketing" as a profession, that is: the verbing (gerund-ing) of markets; has come into its own, really, in the past 20 to 30 years. And I say that because I'm trusting that Mad Men did its homework. Pete Campbell sure did. Anyway, insofar as it appears to me, there's a significant difference between marketing and its sibling, advertising, and it's this:

1.) Advertising shouts in your face.
2.) Marketing whispers in your ear.

It wants to get to know you. Learn your habits, your thinking. And then take those things and use them to direct you to your "most desired outcome." (I enquote that for my own reasons, not because it's a coined phrase). In other words, marketing is the recon scout, and advertising is the infantry invasion. Because, as you get to know marketing more and more, you realize it's actually got a lot of you figured out. It's done research. Field research. It asks you questions about things that have nothing to do with anything, because it's more concerned about your unconscious response to the French Press than it is with your opinion on the NCAA. It's just tricky like that.

But of course there are several species of marketing. The biggest one, or at least the one that buzzes loudest these days, is branding. Specifically personal branding. Vanity Fair's James Wolcott just wrote at-less-length about this in a delightful piece called "From Ink to Inc." As far as journalistic exposure goes, it just kind of shrugs its shoulders at something that's pretty obvious and makes an interesting claim that the Tom Wolfe is simply an urbanized version of the Mark Twain. I'll admit that's not the first thing that came to mind when I had lunch with Tom the other year, but it's clever enough. Anyway, credit where it's due, Mr. Wolcott at least got me thinking about the intended target.

Myself.

Obviously: it's an article about personal branding. And it made me realize I have to have one (a brand). And I don't mean that in the sense that "OMG you HAVE to try their Lavender Gin Fizz!" I mean it in the sense that: Oh, I have to eat when I'm hungry. If I wanted to, I could not eat, but after a while I'd just whither away and die. And without the proper coverage I'm pretty sure my hunger strike would make.... maybe local news? But even then probably just the obituaries.

Basically: I need a brand. I've made a couple stabs at it so far: pseudonymic Twitter accounts, complete life-cycle Tumblrs... other blogs... and the overwhelming feeling I've gotten is "Wow... I am seriously good at being unknown." Just take a look at those personas and tell me there isn't some intense depth behind every single post. And then look at the outside activity. Is there a correlation between the longevity of my projects and the amount of attention they get? Sure. But I'm inclined to believe that most people just want to be entertained on the web so... here's a classic video of Kate Upton.

... ... ...

...are you still here?

You are? Wow... And you've seen that video before?... And you didn't look up the Sobe Staring Contest right after?? Huh... Maybe you were meant to be reading this... Because, well... I looked it up, sure, but I only did it to make a link. Call it a "weeding-out," but if you're still with me after that rabbit hole, then you pass. Already. If this were an "Intro to Criticism" course that you opted to take Pass/Fail because you wanted to challenge yourself at least a little bit during your Maymester, then you've already got a Pass in my book. Only thing left to do now is just not fail. Quickest way to not do that is by doing what I'm on the verge of doing right now: losing the point.

So. The point is that THIS -- all of this: This being Me; or, for the Heidegger fans: This BEING: Me -- is my brand. I've arrived at it after voluminous market research, and even though I don't know anything about SEO, or APIs, or jQuery, I'm pretty confident at least somebody out there will be able to identify with me.

Think about it... Me. The Baffled Generalist. The Errant Philosopher. The Literaphysical Man. It's enough to make me feel like the last dodo bird. Some eccentric magnate is out there hunting me with an arquebus because I have a quirky personality and I look funny... Only I'm not a dodo bird, I'm a motherfucking tiger.

Anyway, for those who haven't been keeping score this is what's going on (because yes, I am speaking to you):

Marketing breaks when you only read the theory (and social media). And theory breaks when it thinks it's socially marketable. That is, able to be marketed; i.e. that it contains enough sustainable appeal that you don't need an invitation to participate, you just can. And because theory thrives on exclusion, most people don't actually... like it. They think they do, I've seen it. They've seen that it's something smart people do in order to self-identify with other smart people so they can have super abstruse discussions that may or may not one day let them bluff their way into a professorship. But I wouldn't say that most people prefer to be misunderstood, despite the avant-appeal of being a knife-edge bloodletter whose toils on the margins could one day initiate the macroculture into the next phase of dialogic evolution. For those of you who've tried it, you've learned one thing: If you don't love, or even really like what you're doing, your margin reveals nothing but walls.

So what does Marketing reveal that people like?

Brunch. Camaraderie with Fame. Pseudo-Psychology. Sports. Making fun of hipsters. Boobs. Being "meant to be." Words like Maymester. Pretending to have read Being and Time (I'm soooo good at that). Self-aware shifts in tone which contribute to the ongoing structural metacommentary. And summaries. Also, surprise endings.

My surprise ending?.... This. It's not the ending. It's the in media res. It's both a beginning and an ending in the sense that I've committed nearly ZERO attention to the visual aspects of my brand, and ALL of my attention to the voice, tone, content, narrative structure, and rigor of the read. The visual identity comes later (I'm thinking something like PowerShell or Terminal... Oh, it's that already? Great. Back to the topic at hand). Maybe you find this post one day and suddenly everything makes sense because, like me, you're invested in finding the origins of things. That's what marketing does. It finds the origins of desire. But, when there's limitless exposure to the self-aware inner workings of the cosmology of marketing... Hang on, sorry, let me rephrase that:

When marketing and advertising huddle up and the playlead says, "Hey, everybody knows what we're trying to do, so let's set the tone like we're in on the fact that they're in on it and maybe we'll get the _____ audience this quarter," it looks a little like Virgin Mobile's recent "More Obvious" ad:

But the question is: Who exactly is the "_____ audience"? Is it the... untethered, or wandering smartphones? Is it people who spend too much on staple carriers like Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile? Is it the supervisors of the indentured interns who were just so excited to be able contribute something to the Virgin brand? For that matter, is it Richard Branson? (Just in case he's watching...).

Anyway, I say this recognizing of course that everybody in the business already knows these things; they already know that everything's been done before and they're only rehashing old tricks (thank you Captain Obvious); that word-of-mouth around a quality product is still the best and only form of truly merged advertising and marketing; that because everybody's got the potential for limitless online exposure they have to be even more: alluring, big, bright, cheap, clever, different, good; and the only way to do that is by having a genuinely exceptional product and honing in on the thoughts of one person who's not afraid to say how they really use it. One creative director. One account executive. One copywriter. One intern. Ask them what they think, because they're in the business and because you want to believe in the inherent uniqueness of everyone alive and, if that uniqueness doesn't mesh with your line of thinking, then you either accept or reject it as viable or vacuous.

The crazy part? Viable and Vacuous could lead to equally successful campaigns. Because oh snap! This kid is quirky, and this kid knows about social media, which means they probably know how to make something go viral!

Go viral? Is that how we want to sell things now? Do we really think that if we infect populations with self-perpetuating ideas, those ideas will just subliminally (liminal spaces are great) plant a desire for the product somewhere deep within the id, creating this voracious animalistic desire for possession or understanding?... Think about it. What was the first viral video you remember? Did it have anything to do with sales?

The first viral video I can remember?

It's just a kid sitting on his bed shredding a guitar. Did it sell Stratocasters? Did Pachelbel records get a boost on iTunes? Did the iTunes Store even exist when this came out in 2006? Yeah, it had for three years, but do we remember how terrible it was when it first came out? Sure, it was better than anything that came before it, but that's because the only things that came before it that really mattered were Napster, Kazaa(lite), Limewire(lite), and if you were really feeling like a rebel, Azureus. I'd be willing to bet that those sources, not iTunes, saw the boost in Pachelbel downloads.

Because yeah, this kid rocks. He's a punk who did something musically precocious with an old tune. Did he want seventeen million YouTube views? Honestly, he probably did, because he knew how much he rocked, and all he wanted was to be recognized for it. So he synced his guitar to his computer, opened up his mom's old Sony handheld, and jammed the song he'd been practicing for weeks. People saw it, got inspired, shared it with their friends who played guitar who then felt threatened and started talking about things like "soul" and "technique" and "hair," which allowed for a contest between appreciation and deprecation to take place. And then suddenly: factions. People who loved the video watched it all the time. I'd bet some apprentice guitarists contributed hundreds of views just because they wanted to learn how to play it too. Then the deprecators would share it because they wanted to rally support behind their deprecation, and with every additional deprecator, another dozen appreciators jumped in too. At least until this kid came along a month later and fizzled everything out (proves my point too).

And the point is - the kid had talent. He had a good product. A product with a niche-universal appeal (hint: it has to do with entertainment). And he put it out there. It's simple enough that people don't have to wonder whether the kid was a Fender plant. Whether some marketer with a professional degree and a portfolio concocted the idea based on a priori assumptions about reverse engineered epidemiology in order to jazz up interest in something people should spend money on. No - the kid spoke his mind, got noticed, and people have been responding ever since.

So, metacommentarial summation:

LOOK AT ME LOOK AT ME LOOK AT ME.

There. That's it. That's the point. You want coherence? You want structure? Build it yourself. Because the structure I here present is based on one thing:

I.... Use | Play With | Love.... Language.

I know its rules and I break them because it's fun. Because I think there's room for growth. Because I think we've gotten complacent with our "experimental" precursors. Because you want neoPlatonic idealism? You've got it. You want structuralist constituency? You've got it. You want post-modern fragmentation? You've got it. You want beatnik improvisation? Oh boy, you've got it in droves. You want readability? Well, you got here didn't you?

You want understanding? Of course you do. So do this instead: examine the evidence, both in isolation and in context. Form a thesis. Fit the thesis to the evidence, not the other way around. Think about it. Write about it. If you get to a point where there's argumentative collapse, then start over - you're not being graded and there's no deadline. Don't be reductionist. "It just is" is not an acceptable answer. Neither is "it just isn't." And, if after all of that you're still lost, just keep waiting.

This is only the first post after all....

So, to bring this all back. What does this have to do with my feelings about brunch? Well. "Brunch" has always been a big deal, to me at least. It's a long wait and a big payoff. There's salt, there's sugar, there's umami. It's got everything. It's also got people. You do brunch with someone, not alone. With all of this going through my mind, I feel like I'm at brunch alone. And we know how that goes:

So. All that said.

I'm here. I'm waiting. Let's talk.