The media business is about the glory of stuff—stuff to buy, stuff to envy, stuff to dream about.
But for the first time in modern media memory, stuff is now the enemy. The consumer is in retreat from consumerism.
Nobody, for instance, wants Crocs, the plastic clogs, anymore. The fact that people don’t want them now prompts the question of why they would have wanted them in the first place.
(AP Image)
Indeed, anti-consumerism will shortly become a holier-than-thou sentiment with the media lavishly extolling thrift and the new culture of holding back.
This puts the media on the wrong side of both predicaments. Where once it encouraged the glorification of consumer need and debt, getting us into this mess, now it will prompt consumer angst and recrimination, hence prolonging the mess.
I am, at this moment, in Monte Carlo, of all places, attending a conference of media bigwigs. Last night, over cocktails, Ben Silverman, the head of NBC, pronounced the economic crisis to be about greed, pure and simple, saying that he, for one, was glad that all the greedy people were getting their comeuppance.
Go figure.
