You’re Thinking About Online Trends All Wrong
From pessimism around dating to AI reshaping culture, cyber-ethnographer Ruby J. Thelot tells WIRED why people are putting too much stock into things that go viral.
For the last decade on social media, Ruby Thelot has asked himself the same questions when he encounters viral content online: Is this an ad? Is this account real? Is this an actual trend or just a fluke?
While trends like “ 6-7 ” and “ looksmaxxing ” have recently broken containment , not every new term or subcultural phenomenon has real mainstream staying power. Remember, in years past, when tech bros tried to make NFTs a thing? Or that period when audio chat apps like Clubhouse were pitched as the future of social media but quickly flamed out? ( A prediction WIRED was not immune to.)
Thelot, a cyber-ethnographer and media theory researcher at NYU, says overestimating trends happens because the internet has become “balkanized,” with each of us on our own “digital island,” where most seemingly viral phenomena are really just the result of force-fed consumption . This is where virality primarily exists today: between provinces, not among the masses.
Thelot’s book In Defense of Being-On-Line comes out this fall. WIRED recently spoke with him about why virality can be an outdated metric for understanding trends, the myth of dating burnout, and what the popularity behind prediction markets actually signals.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
JASON PARHAM: When determining if a trend is real, is the problem now that we mistake short-term engagement for long-term adoption?
