LogFAQs > #906676342

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Every child I've known of for years almost always has their own TV. Most of them are fully allowed to use On Demand or Netflix-type services in a family room (so their parents CAN occasionally check in and see what they're watching), and most of them have access to either tablets or phones that allow them to watch whatever online content they want (even if they're limited to YouTube Kids or some other kid-friendly monitoring software).

Suffice to say, the parents you know are *vastly* different than the ones I know.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Arguable. Yes, small scale peer groups will certainly exist (and always have - when I was a kid, I talked my friends into watching Doctor Who, at a time when the average American kid didn't give a shit about Doctor Who), but that doesn't necessarily extend to the population as a whole. What a group of kids in one school clique up and watch as a peer group that can discuss and share content won't necessarily be what kids in another school, another state, or on a different coast are latching on to.

Knowing people who work with young kids, the range of influence certainly seems larger than you suggest. And, I should note, you seem to be talking about late teens.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Yes, there's always been choice.

But there's never been as MUCH choice as is available today. And odds are, there'll be even more in the future.

A lot of that is supplemental, not a replacement. The big stuff is still big while people are also doing other things. Keep in mind that overall media consumption has *also* steadily grown.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/05/when-did-tv-watching-peak/561464/

Tv viewership, for instance, the number of hours of tv that the average household watched DOUBLED between 1950 and 2010. It's not like people are just replacing one thing with another. There's more material, but there's a far higher consumption.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Ehh. Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter are all major communities. Sites like Tumblr serve as lesser communities, and there are people who spend almost all of their online interaction time in places like YouTube comments or Twitch chat. So you're already fracturing the online social network to some degree. People who aren't online (at least in the social sense) or who gravitate to smaller sites (like GameFAQs) only split it even more.

And like I said, even if everyone in the world was on Twitter, it wouldn't mean much, because the nature of Twitter means that people split off into smaller subgroups and communities without any specific connection to the overarching whole. Things like Gangnam Style going massively viral are the exception, not the norm.

You're confusing shared viewpoints and ideologies with shared experiences. When things trend, both people for and against the thing -- to whatever degree -- often see them. I don't even use Twitter yet I still get content recommendations that have allowed me to see things trending.

Otherwise, YT functions as both social and as media. There's a very specific -- but sizable -- niche of dedicated social, but the platform on the whole shares content.

As for exceptions vs norms, it seems like a *lot* of exceptions gain major coverage. Even the Tide Pod challenge -- a strictly social thing -- found its way to Gamefaqs and everywhere else in a big way.
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