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TURN OFF, TUNE OUT, DROP IT

Six years ago the "flash mob" was born. A clever, anonymous e-mail invited dozens and then hundreds of New Yorkers to assemble in odd places (eg, the rug department of Macy's) for a series of transient, meaningless demonstrations. "E-mail Mob Takes Manhattan" read the first headline of many; the concept spread across the country and then around the world. But then, less than a month later, the inevitable backlash: "Guess Some People Don't Have Anything Better to Do", huffed a story in the New York Times. The last official flash mob was in early September 2003. Today, they are forgotten.

Who cares? Bill Wasik, the inventor of the flash mob, does, and perhaps we should too. In documenting the swift rise and fall of his social experiment, Wasik, a senior editor at Harper's Magazine, offers up a perfect example of what's wrong with our increasingly "viral" culture. We have become obsessed with disposable stories ("nanostories", Wasik coins), meaningless fads and perishable celebrities. Our media churn is defined by hyper-quick blow-ups, "miniature crazes whose success is measured in hits and whose life-span is measured in months if not weeks or days." We love to see subjects (authors, bands, politicians) built up, but we then want them dismantled, anecdote by anecdote, one blog post at a time. And we are so easily bored.

"And Then There's This" is a clever book about the way the internet has encouraged a culture of short-lived sensations, which in turn changes how we make culture. In this era of savvy bloggers and suddenly famous YouTube videographers, it is tempting to hail the internet as a democratic, "people-powered paradise". An unprecedented medium for cultural experimentation, the internet lets online memes from both professionals and amateurs compete for attention in a free marketplace of ideas, and then spread easily. What works and what doesn't is trackable and quantifiable, which means success can be chased, analysed, replicated, satirised.

Yet the sense that these are signs of a fresh new meritocracy is deceptive. The problem is the way viral culture hinges on a certain kind of thrilling yet ultimately meaningless success. Speed, shamelessness (attention can be positive or negative), ephemerality and a certain media sophistication are the new tools of the trade. We are constantly distracted by the many demands on our media time, so our pace of consumption is both faster and less satisfying. Daunted by our options, we rely on what's been judged "most popular", generating a feedback-loop that culture providers then cater to. Political analysis online is so balkanised that even voracious readers can avoid opinions that conflict with their own.

Wasik mixes popular sociology with accounts of his own experiments with online meme-making. His writing occasionally tends towards stylish condescension, and he lavishes much detail on somewhat hip, esoteric subjects (eg, the indie-rock music scene) and his own cleverness therein. And he captures the excitement of "unleashing an internet meme" so well that it is nearly a surprise--albeit a welcome one--when he ends his slim book with a call to curb our obsession with nanostories. The solution? Unplug.

"And Then There's This: How Stories Live and Die in Viral Culture", by
Bill Wasik (Penguin Group), out now.

~ EMILY BOBROW