j.w.vLately, I've been feeling that Instagram has been unnecessarily flooding the amount of content which is received. For example, there has been such a large influx of videos and photos from Hood this summer that it eventually has all begun to repeat or change with only minimal differences from poster to poster. Everything is just a boiling cauldron of assorted clips, and nothing is really concise except for the full session edits.
Have you felt the same as of recent? Or am I the only one with this opinion? I usually tend to watch most of what's happening at the current time, but that will likely change moving forward. I honestly hope this oversaturation is only a trend, but I highly doubt it. Let's hear your thoughts!
I think there's going to be a couple of phases for this.
This question is extremely central to my professional life, and its one that is extremely important to the future of media in all landscapes.
Personally, I see the biggest correlation to what happened in Music.
Young folk won't remember the days before MP3's, where you spent literally 90% of your money to buy CD's or Tapes (depending on how old you are). If you wanted that hot track you had heard on the radio, your only way to get it was to drop into the local music store and buy the whole album for like $20.
However, on the music industry side the insane amounts of money which you got from selling albums on super cheap media for crazy inflated prices led to tonnes of artists who were really only good for one track. You'd get 12-18 songs out of this artist on a $20 CD and literally only cycle that thing into rotation when you wanted to listen to one track. Maybe 2-3 more were decent enough on the album to tolerate because switching was annoying... but for the most part that album sat in your collection only brought out for special one-song occasions.
Along came the CD burner, and you were making mixes of the favorite tracks.
When MP3 compression came around, broadband got popular and Napster started.... EVERYTHING changed.
All of a sudden you could hear one track and have it in under 20 minutes. It was like magic. Then internet got faster. Soon, you could have a song in a few minutes, and you could have the entire discography in a few hours. Internet got faster, napster went down, torrents flourished.... Discographies from artists you liked one track of were available in a few minutes.
Libraries of almost everyone grew to 10,000 - 20,000 songs.
You could literally listen to ANYTHING. The entire music industry collapsed. Music channels stopped playing music in favor of shows. Radio fell apart. Everything fell apart. Very little was left.
Biggest problem? I had no fucking idea how to find good music anymore. My entire library had everything, but I would trade anything for someone to just suggest to me some actually good music vs. this unending flood of mediocrity I was assaulted with every day.
That leads us to today - where music curation is a massive thing. All of the new streaming services offer curation so you can actually find good music. You've got everything if you want it - but you can easily simply listen to something you like.
I have a feeling Social Media is going to do the same thing to video content. As soon as that firehose goes on, it puts way too much noise in the signal-noise ratio. You can watch anything.... but you crave watching something GOOD.
I know we've had our own issues with that here at Newschoolers - but I think we're simply in the curve that is happening everywhere.
The next step in media is that all the people that were just jamming shit down your throat in the past are going to go away. Mags that filled their pages with shit to sell ads will fall apart. Sites that don't offer some level of expert curation on top of the noise of social media will explode. Mass networks will fight constantly to keep your ever fleeting attention.
Eventually the curators will deliver you from the noise and offer some focused signal which is always quality.
