The Oroborus & Losing the Plot: A Chat on Day One FM

I joined the Day One FM pod where we had a (very wide ranging) convo covering flaws in cultural analysis, semiotic pollution, Audience Capture, online education and ZINE’s partnership with The McLuhan Institute, Ozempic and more.

A snippet of our conversation:

TT: Having worked previously in media and magazines, a lot of times we would create an article about something we saw, and then — and I do see this happening — these articles are used as the fuel for these trend reports. It’s like this weird loop. Are we just saying the article is the truth? And that is the thing backing up our forecast?

MK: Exactly right. What we’re talking about is the ouroboros, the snake eating its own tail. It is very easy to seed something and then that just becomes the thing.

We’ve seen in the last couple of years. I mean it’s a Rorschach test. Pick your hyped technology. You seed the thing and then all of the sudden there’s is your proof of that’s a “very real thing” in culture. What’s most concerning for me is that I’m studying these trend reports to create the meta-analysis, “What are the trending trends?”, and as I read them, I’m quoted as support for that trend for something else that I’ve spoken about.

That’s truly the snake eating it own tail.

And I think there’s a really interesting implication here, which is: If we acknowledge the flaws in trend reports and cultural forecasting, and their lack of methodology, bias, agendas, whatever it may be, there really is an opportunity for preferred futures.

You can hack trend reports — for better or worse — to claim that XYZ is now a thing, and now you’re upstream of so much innovation and change and creativity and campaigns, etc.

Now you’re just making the thing happen.

I think it’s really easy to dunk on an advertising, marketing, branding, PR — “You know, it’s not rocket science” or “No one’s saving lives,” but in all fairness, it sets an agenda and a tone for what is upstream of a lot of culture, especially from such important brands. With that comes this responsibility.

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Listen to our full conversation below.

Apple:

Spotify: