Nick Bogardus

This is part 1 of a series. You can read part 2 here.

Advertising has fundamentally changed the way we communicate information.

The millennial generation has been called “Generation Sell” by the New York Times. This generation has grown up under such an onslaught of individualism and advertising messages that entrepreneurship is second nature.

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But where does the individual end and the brand begin?

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A Fight for Survival

Newspapers, magazines, and television news always ran advertising. One article in The Atlantic explained that a typical newspaper business model includes 80% of revenue coming from ads and the remaining 20% from subscriptions, thereby requiring outlets to become advertising-delivery vehicles. But as people increasingly have started to go online for their news and sites like Craigslist killed the major revenue generator of classified ads, traditional media outlets have been put in a fight for survival. As subscriptions plummet, even more emphasis and dependence are put on advertising.

But the change in advertising is indicative of a deeper change in audience, an increasingly fickle one.

A Profound Shift in Focus

The PEW Project for Excellence in Journalism has documented this decline in revenue and their resulting shifts. These are some of the most significant changes they’ve found:

• Popularity has become more important than consequence. Since outlets are depending on more eyeballs seeing their ads to bring in more revenue, stories are chosen that appeal to more people immediately rather than stories that might have long-term consequence or importance.

• Speed is now more important than accuracy. With the decreasing attention span of people and increasing velocity of news stories, it’s become more important to be first with a story than to be accurate.

• Opinion and argument are more important than information. Because outlets are focused on the rapid delivery of stories for the masses at the expense of hard information, the result is that personalities and outlets are known more for opinion and argument than actual information.

The Ensuing Effects

All of these are typified in the media outlet that is often referred to as a paradigm of this new, frantic model, the behemoth aggregator The Huffington Post, which Esquire’s Stephen Marche recently called, “The single most destructive force for intellectuals since the first Emperor of China because it convinces writers that their writing is really advertising for themselves.” But the effect is hardly limited to HuffPo.

Like it or not, the church is also not exempt from these effects. Much of Christian content today is also affected by the profound shifts above: popularity is more important than consequence, speed is more important than accuracy, opinion and argument are more important than information, and writing gets boiled down to self-promotion.

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How are we going to counter these negative shifts today?

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We must care more about correcting in truth instead of making rash criticisms.

We must write to promote Jesus and his gospel, not ourselves.

We must be known more for who we are for, than who we are against.

We must not sell truth short for the sake of popularity.

This article originally appeared on The Resurgence.

I’m telling you, Stephen Marche is brilliant. In this article over at Esquire, he just summed up the end results of people pleasing, the fear of man, actual creativity vs. mimicking, and what that reveals about a generation in a few devastating key strokes.

Why did we all laugh at Björk when she wore a swan but cheered Gaga when she wore Kermits?

Was it because Björk’s radical openness is terrifying in its boldness and uniqueness whereas Lady Gaga’s subservience — her obvious posiness — is reassuringly slavish?

Don’t we all enjoy, in a sick way, how obviously she would do anything for our attention?

Why do we want that?

What is wrong with us?

Is it that Lady Gaga is representative, outside of whatever private crisis has led to her deep need to please, of a generational shift?

Isn’t it telling of the millennials that even their most radical pop star, their rock ‘n’ roll monster, is fundamentally a pleaser?

So doesn’t Lady Gaga represent, in the end, a profound closing of the collective soul rather than an energetic bursting-forth?

A maze with no exit rather than a path to new worlds?

Or in 2011 has everything worth saying been said and everything worth doing been done and ripping off the recent past will have to do?

That there is no escape from the maze and so all we can do is expand it?

While you’re at it, check out my other posts on Lady Gaga

Breaking Radio Silence

I haven’t posted anything in over a month because, in addition to planting Mars Hill Orange County, I had the opportunity to join a church planting cohort with six other pastors from all corners of the US. It has been brutal in terms of traveling - if anyone has any travel health tips I welcome them! - but it has been a great experience and I’m grateful to be in the company of great men with passions for Jesus, their families, and their cities. Actually, I’m on a plane heading home now and am about to jump out of my seat with excitement to see Kim and Eva.

MTD & Liberal Whateverism

Anyway, I’m happy to break the radio silence for Christian Smith. His book, Souls in Transition, was incredibly helpful for me in understanding the Millennial generation and still serves as a oft-referenced resource. From that research, Smith helpfully diagnosed the spiritual malaise of America as “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism”. Smith is back with another helpful term to describe an aspect of American spirituality, “Liberal Whateverism”.

I have been studying the lives of American teenagers and emerging adults for the past decade. In our recently published book, “Lost in Transition: The Dark Side of Emerging Adulthood,” my co-authors and I describe the larger world in which liberal whateverism makes sense. Many emerging adults have few considered moral bearings, are devoted to mass consumerism, routinely become intoxicated and engage in casual sexual hook-ups, are civically and politically uninformed and alienated. Our story is not a tirade against “kids these days.” It is about wider, deeper problems in American society and culture — concerns that should trouble liberals and conservatives — which show up in disquieting ways in the lives of youth.

Be sure to read the rest of the article here.

[H/T Justin Holcomb]

Eric Mason

Notre Dame sociologist Christian Smith has studied Millenials (18-29) extensively. In his book, Souls in Transition, he found that a few of defining characteristics of this generation are that life is marked by transitions and incessant change, that there is a focus on going from dependance to independence and standing on one’s own feet, and that in the midst of the pace of change in their lives there is ‘so much to figure out’ - skills, tasks, responsibilities - to keep moving forward.

Eric Mason, lead pastor at Epiphany Fellowship in Philadelphia, recently spoke directly and helpfully at how to minister in transient populations in an article at the Resurgence.  Here are his main points:

1. The importance of patience. People are becoming more process-oriented and need a place to work through worldview-transforming information with God’s people. 
2. Commitment to community formation. Being positionally connected to the body through the gospel does not make a person functionally connected to God’s people. It is the beginning and an empowering mechanism of true and practical knitting. People have to want to be with one another (2 Corinthians 6:11-13). 
3. Help people face what they are running from. Stability is scary to many of us, although we know we need it. Slowing down helps us face places in our soul where Jesus’ functional rule has not yet conquered. Running only postpones the inevitable.  
4. Dealing with natural and spiritual maturity equally.Although all things in our life should be viewed through a spiritual lens, it is helpful to work through some distinctions. Emotional, volitional, intellectual, geographical, financial, sexual, and relational health is a must to help people grow in Jesus. While not a comprehensive list, these are the greatest obstacles that impede people from stability. Ephesians 4:15 calls us to grow up in all respects—a phenomenal challenge for transient people. 
5. Recognizing that people ultimately belong to God. Some people will remain for a season. Our goal must be to do as much as we can to love them and engage them in the season when Jesus has allowed them to cross our paths. God ultimately is sovereign over people’s life span and direction. 

Read the entire article at the Resurgence.

Camille Paglia had a potent article in the UK’s Sunday Times last week not only critiquing Lady Gaga, arguably the largest pop star at the moment, but making the connections between the hollow icon and the generation she is reflecting and feeding her product to.

Gaga is in way over her head with her avant-garde pretensions… She wants to have it both ways – to be hip and avant-garde and yet popular and universal, a practitioner of gung-ho “show biz”. Most of her worshippers seem to have had little or no contact with such powerful performers as Tina Turner or Janis Joplin, with their huge personalities and deep wells of passion.

Generation Gaga doesn’t identify with powerful vocal styles because their own voices have atrophied: they communicate mutely via a constant stream of atomised, telegraphic text messages. Gaga’s flat affect doesn’t bother them because they’re not attuned to facial expressions.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t apply just to Gaga and her “little monsters”. It far more prevalent than that.

It’s easy to read this and be cynical. The other way to see this kind of article is as helpful, palpable evidence that while an entire generation of people might be ever-connected but increasingly isolated and focused on the external; they are hungry, if not starving, for substance - for transcendent, ultimate, enduring, heart-changing truth.

In the same way you can learn about what someone values by what they buy, you can learn about a group by looking at what a store sells them.

URBN

Urban Outfitters has 130 stores in the US, Canada, and Europe. On January 31st, Urban Outfitters Inc. reported $1.94 Billion in annual revenue (nearly doubled in the last 4 years). Their website claims that their “established ability to understand our customers and connect with them on an emotional level is the reason for our success.” They also claim to offer a “lifestyle-specific shopping experience for the educated, urban-minded individual in the 18 to 30 year-old range”.

Whenever Kim and I are down in the University District I like to stop by Urban Outfitters and look at their displays. The most basic thing I noticed a few months ago were that their non-clothing items can be broken into a few categories: books, photography, music, toys, household, and drinking.

Toys, Bowel Movements, & Me

Yesterday, after a trip to the dentist we did a quick run-through and here’s the glimpse of what connecting with the educated, urban-minded individual on an emotional level looks like.

Toys

Pee, Poo, & Bongs

Which is probably why I’m curious about what my poo is telling me.

A theologian and media-ecologist I read recently made the point that in a society immersed in the trivial and inconsequential, the only responses most of our culture are left with are irony and cynicism. When nothing matters, when everything feels fleeting and insignificant, how can people not be sarcastic and disenchanted? Similarly, in a recent article, the Atlantic described Omega Males like this: “He can be sweet, bitter, nostalgic, or cynical, but he cannot figure out how to be a man.”

Maybe that’s where this section comes in…

Labeled pint glasses and flasks.

The glasses aren’t just labeled, they’re labeled with titles like slut, pimp, ho, bitch, and hot mess, and slogans like “My Life Sucks”. Someone could say that they’re supposed to be ironic but that’s my point. If nothing matters, if everything is trivial and transitional, why not label oneself a slut, study my poop, and play with nostalgic toys from our childhood. Maybe you don’t own any of the above products but think about how those attitudes might pervade your friends or those around you.

When Urban Outfitters began, they were criticized for selling thrift store clothes back to hipsters for exorbitant prices. Somehow we missed that they’ve morphed into a corporation that sells our own cheap irony, cynicism, self-absorption, triviality, and nostalgia back to us at a far greater cost.