Steven Heller, from 2008, entitled The Underground Mainstream takes how trends can be a rip off from the past and how current trends comes from smaller communities. I believe that the constant thoughts I have as a designer also comes from a ripped off idea off someone else. It’s like the thoughts you have isn’t original as someone would of had it before you.
In terms of marketing, I feel that the whole point of social media originally was to connect with friends. But now it has turned into a place to include advertising, political views and meeting new people from anywhere in the world. One of these social medias I want to touch upon is TikTok. Although TikTok is relative new, the short clips has been a smaller community before TikTok.
This one community was Vine, it took off with a storm with the amount of memes people made. The senstation was all the hyped when I was in school at the time. Even teachers would know what the kids were doing in their classes. The new media that just records for 6 seconds was the hit. Although it was made for video, people found branding and advertisement in the app. SIX SECONDS OR LESS, the article I read, shows clever demostrations of Kenneth Cole’s shoe going around of a box as a marketing stratergy, another with a home improver with the sponorship with Lowes. But this didn’t last long as Vine was shut down in 2017.
This is where TikTok started taking the attention from Vine, as it isn’t restricted to 6 seconds, and users needed a place to be. This was the next big thing for the younger generation, as it seems like social media carries the hype with the younger generation. But as advertisements grew in social media, so did politics. In this article, What are political parties doing on TikTok? The Spanish case, the Spanish politicians made it a goal to open their very own party on TikTok to gain attraction and communcation. As this is new to TikTok, but for years YouTube, Facebook and other websites that supports video has been political.
Lastly the underground mainstream I want to mention is the popularities of video. Over the few years, YouTube, Reddit is adapting to TikTok. The video players on Reddit is very similar to the one on TikTok, even the way you scroll down on the app is much alike. YouTube launched their own version of TikTok called YouTube Shorts, Facebook with their Instagram Reel, etc… An article about these short video mentions that “social media users worldwide spent about 2 hours and 25 minutes on various platforms everyday with more than half this time dedicated to video content.”
Works Cited
“Short-Form Video Platforms Received A Rapid Growth During Pandemic.” Technology Times, 12 Oct. 2021. EBSCOhost, https://search-ebscohost-com.citytech.ezproxy.cuny.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=FCZ5TTN20211012.00002.2&site=ehost-live&scope=site.Tselentis, Jason. “Six Seconds or Less.” Print, vol. 68, no. 4, Aug. 2014, pp. 62–67. EBSCOhost, https://search-ebscohost-com.citytech.ezproxy.cuny.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=97101448&site=ehost-live&scope=site.Tselentis,
Jason. “Six Seconds or Less.” Print, vol. 68, no. 4, Aug. 2014, pp. 62–67. EBSCOhost, https://search-ebscohost-com.citytech.ezproxy.cuny.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=97101448&site=ehost-live&scope=site.Tselentis, Jason. “Six Seconds or Less.” Print, vol. 68, no. 4, Aug. 2014, pp. 62–67. EBSCOhost, https://search-ebscohost-com.citytech.ezproxy.cuny.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=97101448&site=ehost-live&scope=site.
Cervi, Laura, and Carles Marín-Lladó. “What Are Political Parties Doing on TikTok? The Spanish Case.” El Profesional de La Información, vol. 30, no. 4, July 2021, pp. 1–17. EBSCOhost, https://doi-org.citytech.ezproxy.cuny.edu/10.3145/epi.2021.jul.03.
I definitely agree Guen. It’s weird when you put it into perspective that really no one as a designer has an original idea because it’s always being influenced by other peoples ideas.