the timboucher experience

One of the biggest consumer trends I am watching these days is the modulation of mass culture and lifestyle marketing to accomodate the needs of the counter-culture rebel-hero. In a nutshell, lifestyle marketing seems to function by identifying traits and behavior of a particular demographic group, studying their subculture anthropologically and then coming up with a host of products, services to match their needs as a group. And in order to market to any particular subgroup, you also have to clothe your language and imagery in those which are native to that group. You can’t put together an advertisement which is “off-code” because people in that subcultural niche will just laugh it off. So, tons of money and research are put into market segmenting and adaptation to new trends. The BBC documentary “Century of the Self” is a fantastic exposition of this technique, and how it arose out of a combination of psychology and the counter-culture of the 60’s and 70’s in America. The neologism “metrospirituality” is also another more recent example of that same force in action in today’s world.

In particular, I have been watching the deft takeover by mainstream marketers of memes like “green” and “sustainability” which were once the sole domain of online weirdos and people who were operating under devastatingly different paradigms of thought and action. This cycle happens again and again though, and is fundamental to the way that American culture and business function symbiotically: mainstream culture produces lots of offshoots, some of which take root and develop into their own uniquely identifiable thing. Then those offshoots, if they are deemed to be worthy, socially or politically useful and financially viable are taken and harvested and reintroduced back into mass culture as some “new” thing to all the people who’ve never seen it before. It’s the modern equivalent of colonialism, in a certain sense: unique cultures are pilfered and trampled under the heel of shopping malls and Walmarts and daytime television. And suddenly, everyone is talking about this “hot new thing” which has been around for years amongst “underground” circles - which have since moved on to other things.

One thing I’ve noticed, since I’m firmly part of this demographic of “alternative lifestyle weirdos” or “neo-bohemian” or whatever you want to call it: people who are into some weird subculture are usually oddly protective and territorial about it. I’ve especially noticed this around “circus folk.” I think the reason behind it has something to do with that a certain profile of person is always going to go off into the fringes of what’s unpopular in order to distinguish themselves from everybody else who’s just mindlessly following consumer culture. So, people go out into the edges and stake their claim, “This is my thing, my area, where I’m expert and boss.” And then when someone else comes along who’s also interested in that field, they often treat that person with defensiveness and hostility because they’re encroaching on the little niche they’ve carved out.

I know because I’ve done this in the past to other people, and have had it done to me over and over again. The behavioral arc, at this point, is fairly predictable.

With the rise of mass greening and hockey-mom consumer-level marketing of sustainability, I’m curious to see how the more militant and “out-there” elements of those subcultures which originated such things are either castrated, cast aside or ignored. For example, the whole “anti-civilization” edge that was popular on the internet a few years back seems to have been totally subverted. There was a point when “top-tier” thought leaders in those fields were pretty damned fucking close to openly advocating terrorism in order to facilitate the end of civilization. Personally, I’m happy to see that kind of bullshit go off into the distance quietly. There’s no place in the modern world for people being assholes and making situations worse with violent responses to social problems which can be resolved more fully and methodically with high-level design, coordinated communication, consensus-building and social action.

Obviously, no marketer in their right mind nowadays is going to try and turn that kind of aspect of the counter-culture into an advertising scheme. Simply because doing so would be overturning the entire system. Unless, of course, you could analyze the emotional content behind these kinds of outbursts and online arguments and get at the root of what the types of people who are espousing these philosophies are really feeling. In general, I think it comes from a strong feeling of alienation, of being disenfranchised, of feeling like you’re perpetually on the outside and simply can’t win within the current system. Naturally, somebody who feels like that is going to want to look at alternative paradigms in which their personality type and lifestyle choices are seen as favorable, heroic and important. It’s the same function at work as in the Apocalypse-fantasy: everyone else is going to be ruined except for my subgroup.

So, in order for the beautifully designed system of lifestyle marketing (and it is really goddamned ingenious, if not a little nefarious) to continue functioning, it has to constantly keep looking at outsider trends and people who are threatening to tip the scales outside of the system itself. It identifies the unconscious emotional core which propels people outwards from the center, and then cunningly reinvents itself to shepherd those lost souls back into the flock by suddenly coming up with products which help them EXPRESS THEIR FEELINGS OF REBELLIOUSNESS SAFELY. New clothes, new music, new movies, new words and concepts. New technologies, new cars. Suddenly the people who felt like they were on the outside have had a few years to grow up and have the *Real World* beat some sense and submission into them, and all of a sudden it looks to them like the rest of the world has “finally caught up” and they willingly start acquiescing to the dominant culture, which has proven its worth and effectiveness by feeding back to them products and services which match their lifestyles.

The social mechanism at work is extremely powerful because its function is so seemingly paradoxical, as well as automatic: it fosters diversity and innovation on the one hand, while simultaneously funneling the fruits of those branches and offshoots back towards the center.

What we’re in the early stages of seeing right now, culturally and in the media and in business, is a recognition of the lengths to which counter-culture thought leaders went in the past few years, and a synthesis of it all back towards the mainstream. Obama’s message is unequivocally “HOPE”, that the downtrodden, the ignored, the ‘former slave’ could be promoted all the way to *King* by virtue of character and action rooted in a foundation of belief. The world which he inherits, of course, will need all of that and more. And it will need consumer products and mass marketing which acknowledges people’s feelings of impending economic and environmental doom - as well as outright rebelliousness - and reflects back to them their own feelings, while giving them concrete tools to manage those emotions and transmute them into positive action within the world.

That said, you don’t need to wait for mass marketing to catch up with you if you’re leading what could be considered an “alternative lifestyle.” You simply just have to stick to your guns, stay flexible, “live in the now,” listen to the Tao, love and challenge others and stay true to the Eternal Spirit which vivifies your heart, which makes it pump with blood in the first place. No marketer, however skilled and aware of what’s going on in the world of trends, will ever be able to match that anyway.

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