Loop Me In and Blame Me Again

I'm not sure if anyone has recently seen "The Merchants of Cool". It was made in 2000, a documentary of a media expert "observing" the constants, or rather, the "un-constants" of media today. "The Merchants of Cool" are those who investigate into what cool is.

I'm not surprised really. The huge conglomerates of media today (some may be aware of Viacom, Disney, AOL/Time Warner) have literally taken over any and all news media and made it their own. Sad, right? I know. Obviously, if a company owns a form of news media, like CBS for example, that news media is going to be delivering only the news that is purely putting that conglomerate in a positive light.

I think I'm getting a little off topic though.
My topic is about media looping. Has anyone heard of this? If you haven't heard the term, I'm sure you've heard the theory. The theory that media is taking what "we" (the teens, though I'm no longer a teen but I still sit in that category) do, and feeding it back to us. But, are they really feeding back to us what we've shown them? Or are we feeding back to them what they've shown us? The idea it's trying to grasp essentially, is that no one knows who's influencing who anymore. It seems that the media claims they are just feeding back to kids what they're already talking about and doing. Many people, however, claim that they get their ideas from the media.

Oh, the humanity.

What's kind of sad though, is that the media resorts to making sub-cultures into mainstream cultures, which, in the end, kills them. Effectively speaking. They want to find what's "cool", right? So they actually hire people to go out and find the "trendsetters"- the 20% of the population who influence what the other 80% do, wear, listen to, and watch, among other things.  Then those big conglomerates, owning smaller companies (example: Viacom owns MTV) buy that information for 20 grand or so, which, considering that they make billions a year is really pocket change for them, and then they burst the seams of that sub-culture until it becomes mainstream, then because it's mainstream, no one likes it anymore. It becomes obsolete.  Teens crave indivuality; they crave unique style and unique personality.  The only problem is, apparently those indivual and unique qualities only belong to that 20% elite trendsetting population.  So screw the other 80%, you're not good enough. Right? Apparently. 

 Remember ICP? Yea, we all remember the Juggalos and Juggalettes.  I was never into it, personally.  But I had friends who were, claiming they were the forerunners of a new culture, a new family, a new place for the outsiders to fit in.  ICP told their fans they were never selling out.

Ha, 2001 came around, and guess what they did.  Sold out to an enormous record company, made music videos, sold records like never before, and even starred on WWE. Or whatever it's called now. Everything's politically corrected at this point, and I can't keep up.

Their fan base dwindled, and think about it now.  How often do you hear about ICP anymore, except for that occasional fan who's stuck through everything to hold on to their "family"?  In some aspects, I give that fan credit. They've stuck with an idea, a culture they associated with through thick and thin, like an evangelist would stick with christ whether he gave them the plague or not. (Well, they would think he had set it on them).  Once in awhile you'll hear about some younger teens who have found ICP in a record store on the "used" rack while flipping through, and being the post-modern nu-metal rage-rock kids they are, saw the black and white frightening clown faces as intrigueing and maybe even intimidating, and  picked them up.  This is turning judgemental in voice, and I don't like to think of myself as judgemental, so I'll move on.

Another aspect of media looping, in my opinion, is the return of trends.  Like bellbottoms in the 70s and tapered leg pants in the 80s, they've both returned.  Bell bottoms first, then tapered legs just recently.  But what about music? It seems like bands make a come-around again twenty years after they've outlived their glory.  Like Pink Floyd, and The Who, it seems generations associate with older music after it went out of its prime.  I'm not complaining; I think music is a whole different catagory of media that requires extreme intelligence and a higher morality and concienciousness to create.  Maybe I'm only saying that because I'm a musician.  Maybe I'm saying it because I have family and friends who are musicians.  That's not the point though.  Media looping.  Everything makes a comback, and everything we feed to the media comes back to us and we think it's fed to us so we do it and feed it to the media because we think that's what we want.

 Personally, keep feeding me.  I'm a communications major; I'm more media literate than I was 2 years ago, and I've always considered myself pretty slick on that scale, even two years ago.  I consider myself a trendsetter in the sense that 1) I don't pass judgement.  Because passing judgement means you're not ready to be judged, and you're associating whatever you're judging with something you've seen and assume that's the new trend. Right? Right. and 2) I can see where something's going before it happens, based on how the media is flowing with whatever trend at the time.  I think that's how the 20% work.

Now, keep in mind that media does not just mean television, which is what most people think of when someone tells them to analyze the media.  Media is books, magazines, radio, podcasts, internet, television, computer games, billboards, etc.  Everything has some sort of media aspect to it.  I'm sure you can find something that influences you every day, and guess what?! It's media. 

Now I want everyone to think about what kinds of things they've been influenced by and how it influenced them.  Do you see evidence of media looping in your life?

I'll admit I do.  Or I can look at things that happened 10 years ago and see media looping.  But I was 10 then.  I guess things are a little different now and I'm better at making my own choices.

Oh, hur-rah.