Pining For the Old Days

These days, niche marketing is all the rage. Social media makes all other media -- newspapers, radio, television -- endlessly customizable.

I like having those options. Even though I'm a baby boomer, I tended to like isolated tracks rather than complete albums long before iTunes happened. If iTunes had existed back then, I would have been in heaven and saved a lot of money on music besides. How that impacts artists is another story entirely, but I digress.

The 1980s were about the last time that everyone was on the same page in terms of what we watched, read, and listened to. Platinum albums were more common than they are today, but the far bigger loss is the sense of community. We all have less in common now, because niche marketing encourages us toward individual, rather than collective, expression.

As much as I love being able to buy one song from the CD, one episode from the TV show; as much as I love being able to read the news and editorials I want rather than those that the profit-obsessed editors of my local newspapers want me to read, I miss the communal experience we all had watching videos like this. Somehow, knowing the same songs, the same shows, made us seem more connected, and that's the worst, most dangerous thing about both niche marketing and the Internet -- the utter lack of real human connection. It is almost impossible to genuinely connect with someone these days. That makes me sad.

So, here I am doing something I almost never do -- pining for the old days. Funny, Phil Collins and Marilyn Martin are doing the same, all the while lamenting "Separate Lives".