Pluralists, pioneers and poseurs

It’s pretty obvious at this point that my original vector into the world of blogging — the role of online and offline social networks in technology and our society as a whole — has actually become important, projecting itself to some degree out of the hype surrounding any new technology. Social distribution is something that has been the tried-and-true marketing mantra of many for decades as “word of mouth”; with the increase in awareness of the actual networks at hand (partly responsible due to the popularity of online social networking services and their surrounding buzz,) we have entered a new era where every marketer is thinking “viral” and how social media is the newest way to peddle their wares.

Through the writings of technology journalists, word-of-mouth marketing proponents and authors such as Malcolm Gladwell, the traditional adoption curve now rests in the minds of many more than those in the advertising industry. We are told that trends start with one or two innovators, which then spread to early adopters, which then force the “tipping point” into the mainstream, where the trend distributes itself through a network of people in an exponential fashion, effectively saturating the majority of the market. Some sign on as late adopters, almost as the trend wanes; of course, some simply abandon the idea of trend-following at all, entirely apathetic to popular crazes for infinitely discrete reasons.

One book I’ve certainly been a late adopter to is Virginia Postrel’s The Substance of Style, a book on the commoditisation and value behind the aesthetics of an object. Postrel argues throughout the book that design does have economic value in itself, such values not being relegated only to the realm of function, which I’d certainly have to agree with as a working designer; thousands of us would be jobless if there was no monetary value involved in making things functional and beautiful. However interesting the point is, Postrel underscores a situation that many of us take as given yet rarely examine in detail: the true adoption curve behind aesthetic trends. Postrel’s example is dreadlocks:

“First adopted as an outré religious symbol… dreadlocks became over time an emblem of reggae music, Afrocentrism, or nonsectarian (as opposed to Rastafarian) spirituality. Over the past decade, the increasing popularity of dreadlocks has eroded even this symbolism.” (p. 97)

From an economic point of view, her point makes even more sense:

Consider the costs and benefits of adopting an unusual style. At first, someone who has no reason beyond taste to embrace a hitherto unpopular look won’t be likely to accept the risk of social ostracism (or the added expense.) Only those with a strong ideological or religious commitment — those who want to make a statement — will incur the cost.

Postrel continues, explaining that as the adoption curve of a specific style continues into the masses, it loses its original ideological meaning for the sake of an aesthetic that, in the end, is barely attached to the meaning it once had. As Postrel stated, in the case of dreadlocks, it went from the symbol of a fringe religion to eventually becoming a mainstream style; I’d agree that now, decades later, dreadlocks have become little more than a slightly nonconformist hairstyle for those who have hair that is easily moldable into true dreadlocks (as opposed to dreadlocks held together with hair adhesives or chemical processes.) For those who have hair naturally tending to dreadlocks, the hairstyle — cropped, long, and everywhere in between — is a full-blown trend, if not entirely on the downward slope of the late adoption curve.

Postrel’s argument, then, is split into two competing sections which revolve around the transfer of aesthetics and their attachment to the original symbolism involved with said aesthetic. At the transfer point, today’s critics go in two directions: that of the aesthetic theft and destruction of symbolism through trend adoption, and, on a different yet intersecting plane, the adoption of an aesthetic for the sake of pluralism and individual identity.

There is weight on both sides of the argument. It seems instinctive that, throughout the evolution of human societies, we have predominantly used aesthetic differentiation as a way of associating with certain social segments. When the aesthetics of social or cultural identity catch on in the mainstream, meaning is lost that ruins the original reason for that aesthetic development, an unintended cost on the true creators of the trend. In the case of dreadlocks, this was originally the Rastafari movement that lost the cultural symbol as it became further diluted.

From authenticity to artificiality

This social syncretism is evident in a case that is much less niche than dreadlocks, yet evolves in roughly the same geographic region as the hairstyle. Heavily influenced, once again, by the past aesthetic of African music as well as the Caribbean way of life, the world of Jamaican dancehall maintained a tradition of toasting, a rhythmic spoken word over an Afrocentric beat by a “Master of Ceremonies”. As these dancehall MCs, perhaps themselves influenced by African griots, interacted with African-American culture in New York City in the late seventies and early eighties; urban culture developed with the introduction of musical experimentation with sampling old records mixed with the novelty of electronic drum machines. Dancehall rhyming found its way over the broken beats of the greats of Motown and Southern jazz; coupled with the interest of others in the predominantly African-American community and the introduction and assimilation of African American Vernacular English into the rhyming patterns of dancehall MCs, hip-hop was born. Hip-hop formed the musical basis of a greater, expansive urban culture, with breakdancing and fashion following and evolving alongside the new musical experimentation. Hip-hop culture and its surrounding aesthetic became the voice of the people, its aesthetic confirming their group identity and acting as a method of solidarity for those sympathetic to the causes voiced by those in poverty-stricken urban areas.

It didn’t take long, however, for hip-hop to break into the mainstream. As advertisers began to recognise the buying power of those in urban culture, obsessed with the apparel that became a cultural identity, sportswear companies such as Nike and Reebok began to send their branding vanguard into the barred-window world of Harlem and Brooklyn, speaking with the youth involved at the forefront of hip-hop culture. Once big corporations were involved, with the distribution strength and advertising budgets of big record labels and apparel companies, corporations pitched the urban aesthetic to the mainstream. By that point, it was over; early hip-hop artists with their clean rhymes found a niche in the pop music sphere, with clean acts such as Christian minister (and Bay Area resident) MC Hammer writing raps that today sound like bubblegum pop. Inside, hip-hop culture revolted and emcees shifted toward the hardcore, gritty images of living on the urban streets; as West Coast artists such as NWA evolved with their kill-or-be-killed gangsta rap style, the image of hip-hop culture changed, but once again quickly bubbled to the mainstream. Hip-hop was cool and had hit popular culture with the force of a forty-five. Everyone, from the true inner-city youth to suburban gangsta wannabes was blasting Dr. Dre’s The Chronic.

By the 2000s, rap — mainstream, commercialised hip-hop — became the basis for nearly all pop music; charts were — and still are — dominated by the works of Timothy “Timbaland” Mosley, Shawn “Jay-Z” Carter and Sean Combs, the rapper with the amorphous pseudonym currently known now as “Diddy”. Driving through any affluent suburb, the antithesis of the drug-addled and poverty-stricken ghettos that hip-hop came from, Caucasian teenagers in BMWs listen to the latest songs released by Akon’s Konvict Muzic label, wearing their New Era 50Fifty caps and clothes from urban-culture clothiers such as Akademiks and Ecko. 17-year-old, semi-rural high school football players, perhaps in emulation of their favourite athletes, drive around in their pickup trucks while rapping along with Flo Rida, talking about their “niggaz” and how they handle their Glock semi-automatic pistols, entirely ignoring the connotations of the word nigger and the dark history behind the slur. The dilution to the aesthetic has blatantly occurred at this point, and, to most of rap’s consumers, the original meaning of hip-hop culture is long-gone in the decadent, blingin’ world of rap.

Pluralism vs. pollution

Is this mainstream of the original meaning behind urban culture really dilution? Postrel’s primary argument does not seem to side with those arguing for the dilution of the aesthetic; instead, this mainstream dilution is in part praised for demonstrating modern society’s propensity toward aesthetic pluralism. While suburbanites have roughly accepted hip-hop clothing as merely a superficial style moreso than a group affiliation at this point, some of the affiliation still exists for many naïve to the mainstream: those dressed in urban clothing are still given a more suspicious eye by many in affluent suburban communities, the same eye a white-collar worker would be given in the urban community. There is no doubting that class division, regardless of the degree of aesthetic dilution, still exists. While many in the underground hip-hop culture revile rap music and the kids pretending to be “ghetto,” there are still many of those involved in today’s hip-hop culture that find the distribution of their music as a force uniting those outside of the urban plight to its condition, and with politically-charged messengers hitting the airwaves with their raps of the problems of America’s urban youth, there is an unmistakable advantage to having what little bit of authenticity is left in the mainstream. I have, in multiple occasions, found myself listening to local hip-hop mixtapes procured from the “hyphy” movement in San Jose and Oakland, either through friend with industry connections to big names such as E-40 and Mistah FAB to the purchases from aspiring rappers on street corners in the Bay Area. While mainstream rap may lose much of the authenticity, what little personal experience I have had with true urban culture, through MySpace, the tuner subculture, and the hyphy movement has been overwhelmingly positive. While the wealth of rappers seems absurd, many of the benefits given to those now long able to escape the urban life have, in many cases, caused greater sympathy for the urban cause and added to what little philanthropy the region receives. My research into urban culture is still fairly limited, so while I’m sure many disagree with me, I have found the urban world largely accepting of those sympathetic.

As for those that simply want the aesthetic, such as the semi-rural high schoolers, far detached from any true urban environment, it could be argued that this design pluralism is mutually beneficial. While in many cases the meaning has been lost at this point, the end economic point is feeding the machine that has made rap music popular. In this case, the pluralism attached with people taking the urban cultural aesthetic as part of their own identity — what Postrel refers to as the process I like that, an initial observation of an aesthetic by a so-called early adopter, and the transformation and personalisation of the aesthetic into I’m like that — is not the pollution of the existing urban culture. In this case, it is a personal growth and in some cases a sympathy with the group identity. As people drive themselves to aesthetic syncretism, in the beginning through the sympathy of early adopters tuned into the movement at a close level, there seems to be no intrinsic harm done to the “meaning” of the original aesthetic; while some dilution has evidently occurred as the early adopter is not in full urban uniform, there is still a reflection upon the initial meaning, whether or not the early adopter merely wants the aesthetic or a piece of the social identity.

Instead, there may be a crossover point at which the cost of the dilution outweighs the benefit, and this case is largely outside the realm of the early adopters. In many cases, the viral distribution curve we look at day to day has been simplified to a point where the discrete effects are no longer observational, although they are part of the greater model: the real argument of pluralism vs. pollution occurs at the network level, not the mass-market level. By the time the mass-market curve is applied to the adoption of an aesthetic, the pollution is most likely far too late, given Postrel’s cost/benefit analysis.

A basic model of adoption

To simplify the adoption of an aesthetic, let’s postulate that a man has inked his hand in a vivid fuchsia; it is sufficiently radical enough that most people would see these pink-handed citizens as a bit off if they were to visit other people outside of their social segments. This man has inked his hand pink because he is a citizen of Rhodamine, a mythical land where everything is pink. The original value of the meaning behind this aesthetic change is v = 100, since it has 100 percent of its original meaning, and this man, who we will name Peter, is node zero on a social network graph. As the other ten residents of Rhodamine back this idea to show group affiliation and pride that they live in Rhodamine, they, too, ink their hands. The meaning in this group affiliation is still v = 100, since the primary motive for these residents of Rhodamine is to show solidarity with their fellow residents.

Perhaps Peter has friends in San Francisco; when he visits his friends in the Marina District, he is laughed at by many that don’t know the original reason why Peter has inked his hand, although the cost of this district ostracism is far outweighed by the ideological purpose of the aesthetic. One of Peter’s friends, Sarah, sympathetic to Peter’s cause, also inks her hand in solidarity. At this point, Sarah has become the early adopter and is now the degree of separation between Rhodamine residents and the outer world. Because Sarah does not live in Rhodamine and cannot ever fully grasp the experience of someone that lives there, the value of the aesthetic meaning is decreased by 10 to v = 90.

This pattern increases as time progresses. As Sarah’s friends (as well as the friends of friends of other Rhodamine residents) catch onto the wave, eventually there is a point where, some degrees of separation down the line, the meaning of sympathy has long been eclipsed by those jumping on a bandwagon. While some of these adopters at separation degree n — the crossover point — still really do sympathise with the Rhodamine cause, and some even value the new aesthetic; however, it is those where the value of meaning v means next to nothing and the aesthetic is embraced due to the insecurities of the group that cause any aesthetic pollution whatsoever. It’s the point of mob think — where people aren’t inking their hands for their own sympathetic or even aesthetic pleasure, but rather because the cost of ostracism and not being “cool” far outweighs the aesthetic cost, where the cost of deviation, the original cause of the aesthetic, is too great. It’s this point where the aesthetic is destroyed, and this point is one that varies on the adoption curve depending upon the preferences and security of the aesthetic adoptee. I’d guess that it’s improbable that this is happening anywhere before the inflection point of the standard distribution curve, that is, the point at the standard deviation of the distribution.

A utilitarian counterpoint

Of course, the argument could be made that in the case of mob think even the adoption of the style is beneficial. Those fearing ostracism — the polar opposite of those starting the trends — are still gaining utility by mindlessly adopting the aesthetic trend, since in the state where they don’t adopt the style, their ostracism causes them negative economic utility, or psychological pain from ostracism for being “uncool”.

However, is this design pollution really that worthwhile? From the perspective of an existentialist, or perhaps simply that of a well-meaning guardian of the truth in subcultures from the aesthetic smog of the mainstream produced by the corporate machines in Hollywood and on Madison Avenue, I’d argue that those sitting at point n and beyond would be better off trying to push themselves into a more individual understanding of the world around themselves. Given the absolute apathy that seems inherent in a fair amount of American culture, however, asking people to follow their individual likes and dislikes (and to seek the truth in these underlying aesthetics) is probably too much to ask.

Because of this, the economic rebuttal to this counterpoint would instead be that while yes, perhaps the mob would feel alright by adopting the style in the present, the mob would feel better by shifting into a state of thinking for themselves. Sadly, this is not the way the Nash equilibrium in this case trends. The final solution, instead, is suboptimal unless there is a greater shift in awareness, care, or other such increase in knowledge of the actual subculture behind a mainstream, commercialised aesthetic trend.

Scrubbing the smog

Of course, given the above information, nothing has really been gained aside from an establishment of where this aesthetic pollution may occur and that, most likely, correcting the situation causing said pollution is practically impossible given the current state of broadcast media and the adoption curves inherent in a top-down structure. There are currently many different ideas floating around with which to at least fight back against the problem, none of which I feel holds the answer.

The most hyped possible solution is the one I find myself most deeply involved in: social media. Many of the proponents of “Web 2.0″ and other social trends find that perhaps the democratic nature of the Web will eventually lead to a breaking down of a hierarchal, broadcast structure that currently generates demand for new products and instead places the control back in the hands of the consumer. In this way, it could be the individual that then becomes powerful again instead of the advertisers, as the individual, being unaffected by the same sources as the next given the specialised nature of online social networks, can make up his or her own mind as to what they wish to consume without being heavily influenced by a mass medium. However, the ochlocracy that occurs in the ways that we find social content simply shifts the authority to a different social group at the top of social, instead of broadcast, media’s long tail, which unless solved first seems to nullify the majority of the effects social media would have on breaking the adoption curve into something much less macro-scale.

Maybe the next solution isn’t to change the overall communicative model at all; instead, a small bit of demand from the market could spark greater change in the broadcast industry. This is already evident in ventures such as NBC’s Hulu or consumption-for-charity ventures such as (PRODUCT) RED, although the latter’s actual benefit has been criticised. Of course, all reasons for the broadcast to shift to a socially-responsible model are almost entirely financial, but regardless of the “patina of philanthropy” that appears out of this, even the most superficial of those on the aesthetic adoption curve are forced to think about a greater social cause than their own (relatively petty) social ostracism. Ironically, maybe our best shot at changing the increasingly anarchic, superficially hedonistic ways of American culture is through the very system that is causing the problem to begin with.

The last major solution worth outlining is a shift in American culture altogether. Given the media issues above, this seems absolutely unlikely. Instead of reinforcing the dichotomy between a socioeconomic elite and “everyone else”, a flattening of our perceptions of social structure would achieve the same goal: without people looking to those that may ostracise them from a popular social segment, instead they are free to draw their own conclusions. Unfortunately for the latter, the line between the elite and the masses is simply growing in the United States. The elite socialites of American culture want nothing more than to fortify their statuses although they would seem to suffer less at the hands of paparazzi if they did the opposite; meanwhile, those looking at the elite find themselves caring less about themselves and instead aspiring to unattainable images they see on television or Page Six. Considering social hierarchy has always existed, to magically hope it will go away is sadly worth less thinking about than which pair of shoes to wear out on the town on Friday night.

An inconclusive position

As for now, there appears little we can do other than attempt to stay objective. American culture appears to increasingly find masochistic solace in populism veiled as true pluralism, even in the wake of social media advances that allow for more diverse information consumption. We are sadly locked into an economic model that we as consumers have built for ourselves and will require true popular change to unravel, something which we have seen social media do to an extent. There does not seem to be an indicator that there will be a downfall of popular entertainment anytime soon, given that popular entertainment continues to find ways to either lobby itself into survival or adapt its traditional marketing business models to a world of social networking services and aggregated media consumption. Hopefully, as the innovators and early adopters that currently drive and feed a media revolution, we can maintain a truly pluralist perspective — if so, we may be of more benefit to society than the direct effects of our blogs, software and social actions. If we wish to succumb wholly to style, however, let the bacchanalia begin. Perhaps for our lifetimes America will be a riotous, hedonistic place, but for our children we will most likely leave a greater disaster than our worries over the latest crises in our favourite primetime shows.

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