Where Did You Hide My Internet?
How the collective consciousness is skewing the Internet
Years ago, we used to talk about how the internet reflects the collective consciousness of society. We the people are creating the internet in our own image. But sometimes, don’t you find yourself looking around Our Internet thinking you don’t fully relate to it anymore?
My friend and arctic explorer Inge Solheim likes to say,
“If aliens landed on our planet today and looked at what we are producing on the internet, they would loose all faith in humanity.”
I am a Mom (aged 46), a foodie, a runner, and a former high-flying technology analyst turned enslaved entrepreneur. My Internet is the internet that I relate to — the Internet of parenting, food, health, finance, culture and technology. It is information-based and also where I search for meaning to supplement my day-to-day.
I love thinking about life through the analogy of food. Food says so much about how we live and who we are. You are what you eat. Today, the collective consciousness is more interested in healthy living — gluten free, paleo, farm to table or just plain simple and fresh cooking. Yet this new consciousness is not reflected online. The most popular cooking show on YouTube, Epic Meal Time, has almost three quarters of a billion views in just over 3 years. Here is an opening quote from a recent Epic Meal Time video:
“We are going to take all these McRibs and Double Cheeseburgers and roll them up into a giant sushi roll — basically all you could eat after you smoked a roll that big.”
Such content generates high virality because of its shock factor. A recent UT Austin academic study on viral videos analyzing YouTube data concluded:
“Through examining the most popular videos on YouTube, we are able to categorize them into two distinct groups: the group consists of videos that feature high quality, engaging scenes, articulated story lines (high-quality videos), and the other group of videos often include questionable behaviors that deviate from social norms yet still gain tremendous popularity (attention grabbers). We found that videos with anti-social content initiate higher network effects than quality-oriented productions.”
Ultimately, our collective consciousness needs to be fed with positivity and wonder instead of being bombarded with negativity and shock factor. People are also looking for inspiration. We need Our Internet to deliver on this promise. If content doesn’t deliver along this new utility curve — we are less interested. We simply don’t have the time. We need to create platforms from the ground up that not only enable better discovery but also enable positive network effects around quality content that is lost on other platforms.
Video is and will continue to be an important vehicle for our collective consciousness. Moving pictures and sound have the power to instruct and inspire like no other medium. And video is still in its infancy. According to Cisco, it would take an individual over 5 million years to watch the amount of video that will cross Global IP networks each month in 2017 and in the same year consumer Internet video traffic globally will be 69% of all consumer Internet traffic.
Our Internet feels like it is on the cusp of greatness. I no longer need a reservation to get inside a Michelin star kitchen — I can just watch the chef from the comfort of my iPad. I can be a part of the conversation with Sarah Lacey and great entrepreneurs through her videos. It’s awesome what you learn about success after they’ve had couple glasses of red wine on stage with Sarah Lacey. Turns out, we all drink too much and say things we shouldn’t.
By Sofia Fenichell
Edited by the skillful hand of Lily Greenwell-Farrell
