Generation Like... It's Been Thirteen Years.

So Generation Like is like the updated version of Merchants of Cool.

In Merchants of Cool, marketers chased around looking for what teens thought were cool and tried to "sell the teen culture back to them." In that video alone, marketers had trouble getting the members of the focus groups to interact and just voice what they were being payed to speak about.

In Generation Like, marketers have found out that the method of advertisement has completely changed. It's no longer about who is cool and who is cool. "It's all about the likes." The likes are part of an endless cycle of advertisement that companies love and try to take advantage of. Most of the time, we let them.


Take Facebook for example. As I mentioned in my first blog, I use Facebook more frequently than any other form of social media. So I can say this with certainty: The moment you like something, you are advertising whatever you liked to all of your friends on Facebook. All as in all 100 to 300 friends you have on the website. No matter what type of friend you are labeled under (as acquaintances or close friends), unless an individual goes out of his or her way to mark that they do not want to see any of your posts on their wall, your "liked" post will appear everywhere.

I personally try to not like too many things for this reason. There is no way of not spamming everyone's walls unless you unfriend everyone. But many people don't do this. They like whatever they see, whether it's a friend's picture, status, or even plain advertisement.

I realized after watching Generation Like that I have been purposely avoiding the "like" button on advertising sites because I don't want to spread their product or their name around for free. It makes me feel like a tool and used. With clothing, I have no option if there is a brand name on it, but for social media, it's all within my control.

It's like what the director of The Audience, "one of the world's largest multi-channel publishers of social and digital content," said, "You are your own media company, 100%"

I really like this idea that you can't control a lot of things in life, but you can control your own media profile. There was a focus group in this new video and they talked about how a profile picture is showing who you are and what kind of person you are, while the cover picture is showing what type of personality you have. I didn't really think about this before, but they were absolutely right.

If someone had a cover picture of just themselves, they seemed really self-conceited and full of themselves. But if it was a picture of them laughing with friends or doing what they love, it made you appreciate how down to earth or homey they were.

This might sound bizarre and weird to those who have not had a Facebook as long or as early as I have, since the rage is Snapchat today. But there were some crazy realizations after watching Generation Like.

I think the biggest and kind of upsetting point that was mentioned in the video, was that before, if you didn't have the right connections, all you needed or could have was hard work and skill, and even there there was no guarantee. But now, all you need is the support of major media controlling companies like The Audience and build the right type of profile. In cases like this, having talent comes second.

And just the idea that likes are a currency is also so crazy. I think we just have to take a minute to think how powerful we really are in today's world. Our likes and shares, though it may be a simple click or a few seconds of our time, is hours and thousands saved by major companies because we are "working as hard as the marketers are in getting the message across."