Culture Share: Where Do We Go To Play?
The internet used to feel like a playground. Tumblr was a place where communities were built around special interests and niches, from fan fics to smorgasbords of the early 2010s streetwear culture. MySpace empowered users to create their own unique pockets of the internet and learn the basics of coding. In school, we used to spend IT lessons trying to play games on Miniclip just to pass the time. Even Twitter and Instagram were places where ideas and tastes were shared before the algorithm started to push what we think we might like.
Nowadays, the internet feels like a sprawling Times Square where people don’t come to play but are fed things we are told we need. There are no longer conspiracies that our phones are listening to us; we know this is happening. Meme culture has ruled the roost for so long that it’s now normal for brands to engage but ultimately, we as consumers are cognisant that they’re still trying to sell us stuff.
For brands, encouraging people to come offline and find ways to play can be counterproductive since so many of them live predominantly online. Experiential events can do this but the recent Sky Broadband pop-up at Kings Cross, where Sugababes performed to commuters, showcased that audiences can experience play without necessarily having to engage directly with the brand.
When the early social media platforms began to emerge, they were destinations where people genuinely connected with friends and like-minded people while still embracing exploration and play. Once many of those one-loved platforms began to scale up and share their IPOs, they relied on paid advertising to increase revenue.
Millennials have seen the internet evolve over the past quarter century and experienced all the stages from the .com boom, the anxiety over the Millennium bug, right through to the late-stage internet phase we’re currently in. Are we beginning to reach a point where the internet is collapsing in on itself and a new model is needed? What does that look like when our primary access to the internet exists in the palm of our hands instead of a desktop computer?
Gen Alpha will come of age in a world where they have known nothing other than the internet; it’s already shaping their lives in ways that will impact how they see themselves in the world. To embrace a world where creativity isn’t stifled and stunted by the sameness of the internet, brands also need to start considering positioning themselves as playful destinations.
Spotify’s Wrapped is a good example of a brand building a product around play and exploration. Since its inception in 2016, Spotify has provided its users with yearly roundups of their listening habits and tastes, creating unique profiles which they can share with others. There’s a playful, inviting element to Wrapped when it tells users that they are in the top 1% of an artist’s listeners but in recent years,
they’ve taken it a step further by creating listener personalities. Of course, this is all data-driven but for users, it’s a light and cheerful way of acknowledging that fans belong to tribes and that there are shared experiences that come from listening to a particular artist.
Brands on social media centred around youth and street culture are becoming harder to distinguish outside of the labels and names, one campaign can look just like another from a rival brand. Should Instagram be the first port of call for audiences looking to engage with their favourite brands? Rather than encouraging the brain rot, how can brands encourage play and exploration? Brands rule the internet but they have the power to build portals that inspire creative expression and imagination that’ll have us relying on AI much less in the future.