Requiem for a Meme

Tik­Tok was a balm dur­ing the pan­dem­ic. What began as a sil­ly app for dances became the great­est visu­al sto­ry­telling mech­a­nism since Face­book first tried piv­ot­ing to video. Unlike Snap, Tik­Tok was wild­ly intu­itive, a new video just a quick swipe up and away. The algo­rithm was smarter and the con­tent bet­ter than any­where else online, which of course, is why it had to die.

For any­one old enough to remem­ber the Cold War, we’ve been invent­ing rea­sons to be afraid of things every­where for­ev­er. We’ve had issues with the Chi­nese since they came to Amer­i­ca and built the rail­roads. I wish things had evolved to a place where we could embrace inter­na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tion and coop­er­a­tion, but here we are. I wish we had a keen­er under­stand­ing of how mis­in­for­ma­tion gets dis­trib­uted and how “legit­mate” chan­nels have been used to do this for as long as they exist­ed. I mean, “remem­ber the Maine” was mis­in­for­ma­tion. WMDs were mis­in­for­ma­tion. Those were far more cost­ly in lives than Tik­Tok, yet here we are.

This is a requiem for a meme.

Do you remem­ber the first trend­ing audio that sucked you in? For me, I think it was the bad­die dance trans­for­ma­tion and things spi­raled from there. It’s per­fect that I’m obsessed with the weird Twit­ter ener­gy of Lit­tle Sleepy Demons as the sun sets on TikTok.

But what about the friends we made along the way?

I for­get when exact­ly I joined, but it was late, rel­a­tive­ly speak­ing. That said, I was imme­di­ate­ly hooked. It trans­formed how I con­nect­ed with my social media col­leagues, and the con­tent helped me work through things relat­ed to fam­i­ly and career that I did­n’t real­ize were such wide­ly shared expe­ri­ences. I dare­say that in impor­tant ways, Tik­Tok healed me.

As lay­offs hit me and so many oth­ers start­ing in 2023, Tik­Tok was a place where peo­ple open­ly dis­cussed — if not filmed out­right — their lay­off. It was like watch­ing the entire notion of employ­er brand vapor­ize in real time. There was a real fear­less­ness that came to life there through the mil­len­ni­als and Gen Z users who at times bared their souls to the app, hop­ing to find some­one who could relate. In some impor­tant ways that con­nec­tion, vir­tu­al though it may be, was a salve for the iso­la­tion and lone­li­ness that plagues so many of us.

Bar­ring an unlike­ly reprieve, I ful­ly expect Tik­Tok to dis­ap­pear just like Vine did, or how MySpace and Friend­ster did before that. There will be fee­ble clones. Peers like YouTube and Insta­gram will try to cap­ture that ener­gy, but nei­ther real­ly deliv­ers. It’s the demo­graph­ics that count. It will be sore­ly missed. Noth­ing gold can stay.

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Your Blog Won’t Save the World

Meta’s deci­sion to end their part­ner­ships with fact check­ing orga­ni­za­tions set off a firestorm online this week. Apart from the expect­ed and under­stand­able frus­tra­tion with Mark Zucker­berg and the role mis­in­for­ma­tion on his plat­forms play in shap­ing pub­lic opin­ion, there’s been the usu­al wave of peo­ple look­ing for alter­na­tives to social. This man­i­fests as a famil­iar refrain to revive blogs and the web we lost.

It’s not going to happen.

Set aside the fact that I’ve cho­sen to blog about this: in a world with­out an acces­si­ble RSS read­er, we lack two things: an effec­tive dis­tri­b­u­tion mech­a­nism AND the habit­u­at­ed web brows­ing that was com­mon­place before the social media rev­o­lu­tion. Real­i­ty is that dis­tri­b­u­tion has always been paid, going back to Sears and Roe­buck mail­ing cat­a­logs across the coun­try. It’s what’s sus­tained ad-sup­port­ed media. Paid dis­tri­b­u­tion has been an effec­tive short­cut to growth for­ev­er and it con­tin­ues to win over owned channels.

Think of the pend­ing Tik­Tok ban, or any­time Insta­gram crash­es. Every­one screams, “this is why you need to own your chan­nels so you can own your audi­ence.” It’s exhaust­ing because no one invests in owned chan­nels mean­ing­ful­ly, or has­n’t in some time, and the peo­ple say­ing this know it. And where are they shout­ing this? On the very social media they’re decry­ing! Why? Because it’s where the audi­ence is!

Imag­ine what would hap­pen if the bud­gets that have been ded­i­cat­ed to pro­duc­tion and media for social chan­nels shift­ed to web­sites and newslet­ters! As some­one who came up in the first wave of cor­po­rate blogs, it’s easy to for­get how gen­uine­ly cre­ative those sites and expe­ri­ences were. There’s a rea­son waves of jour­nal­ists were hired by brands to lead edi­to­r­i­al — they need­ed fan­tas­tic con­tent to con­vince peo­ple to vis­it repeat­ed­ly. I still have close friend­ships with folks who ran sites like Coke Jour­ney and oth­ers. They were fas­ci­nat­ing exper­i­ments in what was pos­si­ble with online chan­nels. Unsur­pris­ing­ly, they’re all gone now.

It’s not because I don’t enjoy mem­o­ries of that time, but it’s fool­ish to think it’s any­thing more than nos­tal­gia now. Being added to a blogroll was the orig­i­nal Team Fol­low­back. It was thrilling to join com­mu­ni­ties of like-mind­ed cul­tur­al crit­ics back then, but that quick­ly gave way to exact­ly the kind of paraso­cial rela­tion­ships we expe­ri­ence on social today.

So what can we do about it?

For my part, I strong­ly rec­om­mend invest­ing in owned con­tent and chan­nels to my clients for all the rea­sons enu­mer­at­ed above. Every­thing starts with con­tent. Always has. Where we’ve lost sight of things as com­mu­ni­ca­tors and mar­keters is believ­ing we have a turnkey solu­tion to suc­cess. It’s not as sim­ple as push­ing cam­paigns out their door like they’re on a con­vey­or belt and expect any­one to care.

Take it from me: bad con­tent, even with tremen­dous paid spend against it, does­n’t help you achieve your goals. There’s sim­ply too much of it for any­one to pay atten­tion. Addi­tion­al­ly, you need to have a pro­found under­stand­ing of your audi­ence and what it takes not just to reach them, but engage them in ways that are measurable.

Don’t feel defeat­ed. Take it as a chal­lenge, first to your­self and then to the online com­mu­ni­ty you hope to build. Start small. Do some­thing every day, or as often as you can, whether that’s writ­ing some­thing, or cre­at­ing visu­als that need a home on the inter­net. You can still build audi­ences for con­tent if you have a strong point of view. Most impor­tant­ly, believe it yourself.

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How I’m Managing My 2025 Channel Strategy

So, it’s some­how 2025 and *extreme­ly Jim Anchow­er voice* it’s been a while since I rapped at ya.

How was 2024? Pret­ty great! I fell back­ward into con­sult­ing in late 2023, work­ing with a for­mer col­league in what was prob­a­bly the most reward­ing chap­ter of my career to date. Per­son­al­ly — and I’ll update my media diet in a sep­a­rate post — we trav­eled more than we have in years, with trips that took us back to the Upper Penin­su­la, to Seat­tle and to Point Reyes Sta­tion, Cal­i­for­nia. Mag­i­cal, really.

As I’ve his­tor­i­cal­ly done — you can check the archives — this is the time of year I remem­ber that I’ve had this blog since 2008. It feels insane. Now that I’m an *entre­pre­neur,* I plan to spend more time here, with mix of posts about things that inter­est me, plus pro­fes­sion­al thought lead­er­ship where it makes sense, both for com­mu­ni­ca­tions and mar­ket­ing, plus indus­try obser­va­tions for things that puz­zle me.

For now, I’ll just update on where you can find me online.

  • Bluesky is where you’ll find me in cul­tur­al crit­ic mode. If I haven’t fol­lowed you there, it’s only because I’m being very selec­tive about what dis­course I’m engag­ing. Over­whelm­ing­ly, it’s music crit­ics I’ve been read­ing for twen­ty years.
  • Threads is where I’m choos­ing to rebuild my tech PR acu­men. It is wild how much has changed in tech media, both in terms of out­lets and play­ers. What I’m find­ing are far more enthusiast/influencer voic­es in the space. This isn’t alto­geth­er sur­pris­ing, but Threads will take some tun­ing. I nev­er *real­ly* left tech, but it’s fair to say I built some dis­tance over the last five years. My tol­er­ance for vapor­ware is at an all-time low.
  • LinkedIn is unadul­ter­at­ed con­tent mar­ket­ing and thought lead­er­ship. What I learned in my first con­sult­ing gig is that, true to form, I enjoy high impact trans­for­ma­tion work the most. Com­mu­ni­ca­tions is in dire need of new think­ing, strate­gies, tac­tics, mea­sure­ment and evan­ge­lism of all the above, and I’m shar­ing that on LinkedIn.
  • Insta­gram is where I fol­low the bands and venues I love, and share music and pho­tog­ra­phy infre­quent­ly via Sto­ries and even more rarely on the feed.
  • The Sto­ry­graph is where I’m track­ing what I read.
  • Let­ter­boxd is where I track what I’m watching.

But what about every­thing else?

Well, I only scroll Tik­Tok and rarely share any­thing there. Do I feel like I need to do more direct-to-cam­era post­ing? Sure. Will Tik­Tok be where that hap­pens? Maybe.

How about YouTube? Same as above. It’s an amaz­ing, if over­whelm­ing, enter­tain­ment and edu­ca­tion plat­form. Right now I’m obsessed with Apple pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and Black­stone grid­dle recipes!

Don’t even get me start­ed with Face­book. It’s hard to imag­ine a plat­form that has­n’t been gut­ted like Twit­ter meet­ing the same end. The more plat­forms inject “relat­ed” con­tent into the already over­crowd­ed time­line, the more apt I am to check out. Who thinks we have a con­tent sup­ply short­age? Nobody.

Final­ly, I think the notion that social media is in a death spi­ral is over­rat­ed. Do I think some plat­forms are doubt­less head­ed for the exit? Cer­tain­ly. There are demo­graph­ic fac­tors and gen­er­al malaise at play across this land­scape. But do I think peo­ple don’t enjoy con­nect­ing with one anoth­er in fun, if not mean­ing­ful ways online? Absolute­ly not. 

In fact, in my pro­fes­sion­al opin­ion, I’m see­ing more orga­ni­za­tions, dri­ven entire­ly by cost and the real­i­ty of a rav­aged media land­scape, lean even hard­er into syn­di­cat­ing con­tent on their social chan­nels. Does it work? No. Could it? Maybe! But nobody is ready yet to walk away entirely.

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My Summer Media Diet

I haven’t writ­ten one of these in a while, but now that sum­mer has near­ly wrapped up, it felt like as good a time as any to cov­er the music, TV, movies, games and books that have cap­tured my atten­tion when I’m not ful­ly immersed in Tik­Tok or my job search.

Read­ing

  • We Want Every­thing, by Nan­ni Balestri­ni — The eas­i­est way to mar­ket a book to me is to have even the most ten­u­ous con­nec­tion to Rachel Kush­n­er. She men­tioned this book in her essay col­lec­tion The Hard Crowd and I’m not sur­prised that I found it an engross­ing account of how indus­tri­al­iza­tion affect­ed Italy in the ’60s. As we as a soci­ety come to grips with the impact AI may have on our lives and our liveli­hoods, this was a brac­ing read about work­ers try­ing to main­tain some con­trol over how they work and how that trans­lates to their abil­i­ty to live.
  • Folk Music: A Bob Dylan Biog­ra­phy in Sev­en Songs, by Greil Mar­cus — Some­times I real­ly miss the late glo­ry days of music crit­i­cism as seen in alt week­lies. That kind of writ­ing seems even more gnom­ic now than it did then. The ref­er­ences are often even more obscure now, but in the hands of a mas­ter of the form, all the more won­der­ful. I don’t know if I’ve real­ly got­ten to know Dylan bet­ter as I work through this book, but the kalei­do­scop­ic por­tray­al match­es the sev­er­al Dylans he’s been through­out his long career. Did­n’t hurt that Rachel Kush­n­er had a blurb on the inner jacket.
  • Board­walk of Dreams, by Bryant Simon — This is so good I wrote the author an email. I’ve longed for a great piece of urban polit­i­cal econ­o­my about the arc of Atlantic City, and this is it. Bet­ter still, Simon does a fan­tas­tic job of out­lin­ing how the dynam­ics that shaped Atlantic City are per­ti­nent for any city that’s been trans­formed from an indus­tri­al cen­ter into a tourist play­ground. The com­mon thread of how pub­lic spaces are cre­at­ed and for whom illus­trates not only how the Board­walk scenes can be con­nect­ed to the casi­nos, but by the tran­si­tive prop­er­ty, how vibrant down­towns con­nect to sub­ur­ban malls. If you’ve spent any mean­ing­ful amount of time in Atlantic City as my fam­i­ly has vis­it­ing friends on the sound end of town, this will help you under­stand what real­ly hap­pened there and why. He also just shared a Jason Isbell inter­view con­duct­ed by Cap­i­tal Moves author Jef­fer­son Cowie and I’m just smitten.
  • Red­dit. I’m the last per­son on Earth to get lost here. I final­ly fig­ured out how to make it work for me now that I’m not spend­ing time refresh­ing Twit­ter. I get far more enjoy­ment out of it than I ever did most social media. What if forums were the answer the entire time?

Watch­ing

  • Bar­bie — Felt like we had to see it in the the­ater. Helen wore a pink dress and I wore the “sun­ny side up” Pave­ment t‑shirt. I loved so much about it, but felt like for all the talk about dis­man­tling the patri­archy, we spent a dis­pro­por­tion­ate amount of time reha­bil­i­tat­ing the men. It was a fun movie, but I think I want­ed more Ghost World than it could offer.
  • The Bear — Is this the only pres­tige TV I like? Maybe! “Fish­es” and “Forks” were stand­out episodes, but the whole show evolved this sea­son into some­thing more than anoth­er fre­net­ic, trou­bling restau­rant dram­e­dy. Also, Oliv­er Platt rules.
  • What We Do in the Shad­ows — I did­n’t love S4, with baby Col­in Robin­son danc­ing around, but the show seri­ous­ly bounced back in S5 and com­plete­ly pulled me back in just when I thought I might let go. “The Cam­paign” is to Col­in Robin­son what “Forks” was for Richie.
  • Cut­ter’s Way – 20 years ago I was a video store clerk respon­si­ble for main­tain­ing the Amer­i­can actors por­tion of the store. I can’t tell you how the VHS box for Cut­ter’s Way taunt­ed me all these years, along­side Hack­man’s Night Moves and Keach’s Fat City. I dust­ed all of them, but nev­er watched them. Now all three are stream­ing on Cri­te­ri­on Chan­nel togeth­er and after watch­ing Cut­ter’s Way, it’s time I address this over­sight. If I learned any­thing from my time behind the counter at TLA Video, it was that some movies are, well, just a vibe, and this is no excep­tion. The dis­il­lu­sion­ment, much like in We Want Every­thing, just res­onates so pow­er­ful­ly in the cen­tral con­flict and the char­ac­ters are well-developed.

Lis­ten­ing

  • Yo La Ten­go — This Stu­pid World. There’s lit­er­al­ly noth­ing to say about this band that has­n’t already been said. They’re one of a hand­ful of bands that con­sis­tent­ly pro­duces music that I know I’ll enjoy before I’ve lis­tened and they’ve been doing it for decades. This album is no excep­tion, but you already knew that.
  • Mix­cloud. It’s the best music dis­cov­ery app for me, hands down.
  • This Andy Beta mix that was just shared via his Sub­stack this morning.
  • Indiecast. This is the clos­est I get to music crit­i­cism dra­ma near­ly 13 years since last writ­ing about music for mon­ey. It’s as close as I want to get, I think. Steve and Ian are the Siskel and Ebert of 40-some­thing crit­ics and at a time when so much music crit­i­cism has real­ly focused on fan ser­vice, they offer up indif­fer­ence as a refresh­ing coun­ter­point to all that.
  • Jok­er­men & Nev­er End­ing Sto­ries. More Hyden! I’ve loved Jok­er­men, but NES may be my new favorite. The inter­play between the guys is just fan­tas­tic and height­ens my appre­ci­a­tion for Bob and all the sil­ly things he’s done through­out the years.
  • WRTI. What a gem this radio sta­tion is. It was there the entire time. I should’ve been lis­ten­ing since before I got to col­lege, but glad I start­ed now.
  • WFMU. I’ve long aspired to sup­port the sta­tion and I’m glad I final­ly did. Jesse Jarnow’s The Frow Show was a gate­way to so much great music and the broad­er net­work does not dis­ap­point in that regard either.

Play­ing

  • Assas­s­in’s Creed Val­hal­la. I think I’ve spent the last two years play­ing Assas­s­in’s Creed Val­hal­la. It’s equal parts embar­rass­ing and enthralling. I have lit­er­al­ly no friends play­ing this game, but I fell in love with all the Viking back­sto­ry thanks to liv­ing in Scan­di­navia 30 years ago. The sto­ry was real­ly sat­is­fy­ing, so much so that I actu­al­ly com­plet­ed the game and can’t stop wan­der­ing around the coun­try­side. I can’t wait for Mirage to hit.
  • Starfield. I haven’t start­ed play­ing yet, but I’m hop­ing this game cures me of my Assas­s­in’s Creed Val­hal­la habit!
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Can We Talk About Forks?

As a 45-year-old sud­den­ly adrift on the job mar­ket, the “Forks” episode of The Bear hit dif­fer­ent. Sure, “Fish­es” was an absolute tour-de-force, cap­i­tal “P” per­for­mance, and “Hon­ey­dew” was a pow­er­ful med­i­ta­tion on growth, but “Forks” spoke to me so direct­ly and hope­ful­ly. Watch­ing Richie trans­form from a lov­able, but deeply flawed dirt­bag liv­ing in an eter­nal present into per­haps the most self-actu­al­ized char­ac­ter on the show was com­plete­ly unex­pect­ed and absolute­ly wel­come. The moment Syd says “Dri­ve,” he’s a man pos­sessed and ful­ly in his ele­ment, con­fi­dent and self-assured, will­ing the team forward.

What I think I espe­cial­ly love about this on a per­son­al lev­el is how Richie and oth­ers are giv­en oppor­tu­ni­ties to grow into them­selves. Carmy sees their poten­tial and puts them in spots to real­ize it. If you’ve ever been stuck or lost in your career, it res­onates deeply, espe­cial­ly when you know what you’re capa­ble of doing, but won­der if you’ll ever get the chance. That’s why Richie’s sto­ry has meant so much to me. The pur­pose he seeks is the anti­dote to “qui­et quit­ting,” or if you’ve tak­en an entry lev­el soci­ol­o­gy class, alien­at­ed labor.

Is there a show I’m more con­cerned about falling apart as col­lat­er­al dam­age of the writ­ers’ strike? No, not like­ly. Maybe it’s just me adopt­ing the Indiecast mind­set, but I lost a taste for most pres­tige TV when Mad Men end­ed. Most of it just feels too self-impor­tant to be gen­uine­ly engag­ing. Like, I know I’m sup­posed to like it, but what even is pres­tige TV in 2023? Is Myth­ic Quest pres­tige TV? I liked that. Are FX shows still pres­tige TV? Is pres­tige just swear­ing and sex on basic cable? Or is it just TV from pre­mi­um services?

The Bear was engi­neered in a lab for young Gen X. “Strange Cur­ren­cies” was my nation­al anthem in 1995. Mon­ster, as I’ve writ­ten else­where, is a cul­tur­al touch­stone with­out equal from my teenage years. The yearn­ing expressed in that song con­nects so per­fect­ly with the mood of sea­son two. But nowhere is it more real­ized than in Richie’s tra­jec­to­ry from “Forks” for­ward, cul­mi­nat­ing in his Jesus-take-the-wheel moment in episode ten and his lac­er­at­ing tough love for Carmy, trapped help­less­ly in the walk-in.

Some­thing I thought about, espe­cial­ly dur­ing “Fish­es,” was Bunuel’s Dis­creet Charm of the Bour­geoisie, where the din­ers await a meal that’s nev­er served. In that sense there’s a real poet­ry to The Bear end­ing before open­ing night and I can be hap­py if it does. Mean­while I will be absolute­ly floor­ing it down back alleys to “Love Sto­ry (Tay­lor’s Ver­sion)” from here on out.

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