Consumers Consuming Consumable Content

The other day was my daughter’s 13th birthday. (Another “OMG, I have a teenager” post for another day.) In our house, on birthday mornings we play The Beatles’ “Birthday” song, and then a ridiculous YouTube video called “Epic Birthday Song” that is customized to your name. Seriously, go watch it.

Recently, the same daughter has used the Jim Gaffigan skit, “Hot Pockets” as a way to relieve tension prior to a swim meet because it makes her laugh. We queue it up and listen to the 4-plus minutes, even if she — and we — all know it by heart.

In the bit, Gaffigan refers to “By Mennen” which is a well-known tagline in an ad from the 80s and 90s (if you’re of a certain age, it’s already in your head).

My daughter asked what it was, and within 30 seconds I had it playing for her on YouTube.

All of this got me thinking — how did we get here?

These cultural references used to take awhile to evolve. You’d watch enough Saturday morning cartoons (now a thing of the past) and you’d get enough “The More You Know” PSAs, and “this is your brain on drugs” commercials and it stuck in your head. Forever. Similar to “Sit, Ubu, sit. Good dog.” And then Ubu barked. These got played so often during the stretch of time we weren’t out riding our bikes or playing video games, that it became ingrained in our brains.

The best commercials — I’m not even arguing for one here, just pick your favorite — are all from 10 or more years ago.

As we’ve evolved as a society, it’s meant that we’re just consuming more. And more. And more. Can you even remember one Super Bowl ad from last year? Probably not. I can’t. And yet a company spent billions of dollars on that 30-second spot, and then many millions more on the agency that created it, the marketing plan around it, the PR to popularize it, and so on.

And, yet, many of us easily remember “Where’s the beef?” Or “Mikey likes it!”

The other day my wife and I were feeling nostalgic. Via our Nintendo Switch, we downloaded the original Super Mario Bros. game. We started playing and the muscle memory kicked in, and within a few minutes we were in level 4-1. And, by God, the doot doot doot da doot doot was back in our heads. I was whistling it for two days afterwards.

And, now … it’s in your head, too.

As kids, we used to go to our friends’ houses and whatever video games you didn’t have at your house, you’d play for hours. And vice versa. And then we’d come home and be disappointed that all our video games sucked, and Kyle’s were better. (I actually don’t know a Kyle. I don’t even know why I used that name. Anyway …)

So much of our lives have become consumable. Seconds of instant gratification, and then we’re on to the next thing. Nothing sticks anymore. I’ll even blame myself. I see a YouTube video that is 49 seconds and I fast forward to the part I came here for. I can’t wait less than a minute to watch the whole thing.

And I grew up having to be patient!

My original mix tapes were made with me sitting or laying next to my stereo, a blank cassette inside at the ready, waiting for a song on the radio to play so I could hit “record” and capture that song. And, man, was I good at the timing, knowing the radio queues on when they’d cut it off, so I never got any of the DJ banter on my mix tapes. I’d even call in and request songs, just so I could get that song on the tape. That was the original download!

Now, I can bring up The Beatles’ birthday song in a matter of seconds and play it. I can listen to ANYTHING and at ANY TIME I want. We used to buy albums just to get to listen to one hit song. Do you know how many CDs I used to have with one-hit wonders? No wonder Columbia House was thriving. They were relying on all of us to purchase Tonic albums just to listen to If You Could Only See.

I had one video tape that had the movies Grease and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off on it. I can recite every line in both of those movies from watching it enough … because, it’s what we had. Now, we can watch whatever we want — and there are so many crappy movies and TV shows, but they exist because there are so many options.

Friend 1: Have you seen [insert show]?

Friend 2: No.

Friend 1: It’s sooooo good.

Friend 2: I’ll put it on my list.

And then they never watch it because there are so many other things to watch, and why go pay $10 a month to [insert service] when you’re paying for three other streaming services? That so-called “list” is never-ending because so is the content. Friend 2 is just happy with whatever latest non-needle-moving thing they’re watching because it’s consumable and fills time and space.

The original viral videos were clips of idiots on TV. The Bubb Rubbs of the world, the leprechaun in Alabama, the newscaster who excitedly said that a man scaled Everest, but the catch — he’s gay! I mean, he’s blind!

Now, everything goes viral. TikTok videos amass millions of views in minutes, until the next one comes along. People get roasted and skewered on Twitter, or whatever, and within 24 hours it’s on to the next thing. How many people have been humiliated for that short of a time, thinking their life is ruined, only to find out that now it’s some other poor sucker’s turn?

I mean, Dan Quayle was once deemed incompetent to run our country because he misspelled potato. That news cycle lasted — well, forever, I guess, because everyone still remembers it. Nowadays, we’re getting lied to multiple times a day by the President, and it’s just covered in a teflon coat and we all move on.

It’s impossible to try to explain to my kids that the era they are growing up in has become so convenient, so finger-tippy, so geared for instant gratification, that they are in danger of losing the bulk of terrific childhood memories of what we considered pop culture. There’s no memories of being sick and watching The Price is Right (although that show sucks now — I even wrote about this back in 2021); or memorizing a catchy ad jingle; or laying in your room and listening to a whole album because you just spent $13 on it at Target and maybe there’s more to this Harvey Danger band than Flagpole Sitta (hint, there’s not, but still — I remember doing this).

Yes, I bought this album just for one song. I maybe listened to the whole thing twice.

K-Pop Demon Hunters will be something they remember when they read a book about the 2020’s, but it won’t affect them next year.

Shoot, even the pandemic feels ages ago and it’s less than five years old at this point.

I think, as humans, we’re all engineered to hold on to the good stuff, and forget the bad stuff. The brain removes trauma.

But what if the good stuff also gets removed because there’s just too much … stuff?