Me Big Chief, I got 'em tribe

The Hear 2.0 blog has run a fascinating interview with futurist Watts Wacker, CEO of FirstMatter, LLC. He says we're going tribal, which sounds about right to me.

The context here is radio, but the concept holds across the board.

Watts, what trends will matter most in the next few years that would relate to people who work day in, day out in radio?

One of the most significant trends is what I call “self-selecting social organization.” People are looking to find people like themselves and coming together in almost a neo-tribal orientation of living. And there’s a tremendous opportunity for all media, particularly broadcast media, to facilitate these people finding “themselves” in the easiest possible way. And it would also result in a lot of new business models for radio.

Like what new business models?

Well, I like to use the example of video podcasting. I know a couple of women in Nashville who are 23 years old. They video podcast a show weekly. They're suddenly getting people to give them $0.25 an episode. They do it every week. And if you get
50,000 people to send you $0.25 a week for 52 weeks, that adds up in a hurry. And suddenly, these women are their own production studio, and their job is just being themselves, where they podcast what it's like to be 23 and be a mom in the world today. They're putting together a neo-tribe of young women who are moms, and they're facilitating them obtaining information.

That's what I mean by a new kind of business model. That is why you see Time magazine saying the person of the year is "you.”

I UNDERSTAND WHY this is attractive to folks, and why it may be necessary to get by in a world that's more impersonal, alienated and downright hostile. But is it a good thing?

Is it just a new twist on what we've always done? Or could it all go very south on us, like Iraq's splintering into its old model of ethnic and religious hatred, as well as warring clans and tribes, once the Iron Fist That Kept the Lid On was put out of business?

Are we merely building community by other means, or will everybody outside our particular "tribes" suddenly start to look a lot like The Other?

That's certainly the dynamic at play on the Internet -- or at least seemingly so -- where left-wing nutwagons and right-wing nutwagons have been loosed from the oppressive forces of distance, time and money to form virtual communities of True Believers, primed to take demonization, bigotry and bile worldwide at the click of a mouse button.

To take two examples from today's headlines, see Pandagon and Shakespeare's Sister. Not to let the "God is a Republican" crowd off the hook, but the lefty wingnuts have been making the headlines of late . . . .

So, are we really screwed or what? I'm asking, here . . . not necessarily sayin'.

EDITOR'S NOTE: The headline is a lyric from "Big Chief," a popular Carnival song in New Orleans, referring to the tradition of "Mardi Gras Indians." It is what it is, and that's all it is. We now return you to your regularly scheduled political correctness.