The many speak highly of you, but have you really any grounds for satisfaction with yourself if you are the kind of person the many understand?
Seneca, Letter VII
Seneca’s exhortation of Lucilius to avoid pandering to mass appeal has been eagerly adopted and expertly exploited by thinkers and pundits today. Showman proudly proclaim that they are the under-appreciated and over-looked voice of reason. They are the rebels. The nonconformists. The ones who fight the mainstream view.
To a certain extent, they are what they claim to be. But, what exactly is mainstream?
Averaged over it’s entire run, I Love Lucy had a Nielsen rating of 52.7. That means 52.7% of all households with a TV watched the average episode of I Love Lucy. In 2010, American Idol averaged an 8.8.
In an era of fragmentation, there is no mainstream. Rush Limbaugh claims to fight the dominant liberal “mainstream media”. John Stewart claims to fight the dominant conservative bias in the news. Certainly the “media” can’t be dominated by both conservatives and liberals. But, it’s easy to convince either side that the other is winning when nobody holds a dominate marketshare (or the market itself is hard to quantify). And convincing people that you’re the underdog is extremely powerful.
Especially in America, supporting the underdog makes people feel good. When the underdog is a contrarian, it also makes people feel smart. It’s the same reason hipsters listen to shitty bands no one’s ever heard of, and then stop once they get a following. At that point, they’re not insiders anymore. Once they lose their monopoly on that secret knowledge or understanding that everyone else lacked, they’re no longer interested.
This is something you can use to your advantage. People like being on the underdog’s side; don’t be afraid to use that angle. But, when people keep pushing that angle, even though they’re not really an underdog anymore, be wary. If someone’s trying to convince you that you’re really smart and cool for understanding them, look around and make sure that millions of other people aren’t being fed the same lines.
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