You’re Thinking About Online Trends All Wrong
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Media researcher Ruby Thelot discusses how the internet's fragmentation into 'digital islands' makes traditional metrics like virality unreliable for predicting cultural trends. He argues that true cultural staying power comes from inherent value rather than engineered engagement.
Why it matters
Understanding the shift from mass-market virality to niche digital subcultures is essential for media strategy and cultural analysis.
While trends like “6-7” and “looksmaxxing” have recently broken containment, not every new term or subcultural phenomenon has real mainstream staying power. Remember, in years past, when tech bros tried to make NFTs a thing? Or that period when audio chat apps like Clubhouse were pitched as the future of social media but quickly flamed out? (A prediction WIRED was not immune to.)
Thelot, a cyber-ethnographer and media theory researcher at NYU, says overestimating trends happens because the internet has become “balkanized,” with each of us on our own “digital island,” where most seemingly viral phenomena are really just the result of force-fed consumption. This is where virality primarily exists today: between provinces, not among the masses.
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