Culture is changing so rapidly that I can't even keep pace with it. I'm not particularly old, but is seems to me that the rate at which things are changing has just exploded during my lifetime.
I saw a video recently where someone was asking people on the street "What is the holocaust?", "who did the Nazi's target?", and "What is Aushwitz?", and these college age people couldn't answer these questions. They did not know. Now, I'm SURE they taught that in school. They HAD to have, right?
Just how is it possible for anyone to not know the answer to these questions?
It makes me think about what has changed in the time since I was a kid. I talk to people who are in their early twenties on a somewhat regular basis and keep getting more and more culture shocked by it. I mean, I've been interested in some things that were considered kind of fringe/weird back when I was in school, but they're extremely popular now. I'm speaking of things like MMO's, Anime, DnD-esque stuff. Those things were barely starting to get popular by the time I was leaving exiting school.
All of those things are pretty mainstream now. I mean, they've been pretty popular for a long time, but they're mainstream now. Comic books are mainstream now! Being "nerdy" is cool now! That, to me, is a welcomed change in culture. It's nice to have more people to talk with about these hobbies (or former hobbies) of mine. It seems like there's a lot more acceptance for people being interested in a wide variety of different things, which is great. I think the more diversity of ideas are allowed to be discussed, the better.
Well, that's kind of getting into the dark side of it because while many things are more acceptable, we can't even seem to have a conversation about some things anymore. If you have the "wrong" opinion you must be shamed into silence, and if you do not quietly step down it becomes acceptable to hit you with actual violence. At least that seems to be the direction in which we are headed.
But I digress
Heading back towards the changes in culture: do you remember hanging out at malls?
Because there are plenty of young people these days who have never experienced that. Malls all over the country have closed down - especially in smaller towns. I remember car pooling over to the mall and just hanging out walking around with massive groups of people. And you'd see people you know in public. Oh, James is usually hanging out with John over at X store, let's head over and see if we can catch them. Let's see what new imports they have over at that foreign store in the corner of the mall. Sure, they still operate pretty successfully in certain cities - I've been to a couple of malls in the past year (Miami comes to mind specifically) that were relatively busy. Obviously the entire retail market is slowly dying, so that's part of it.
This is even in Hong Kong, are their malls in trouble too?
The other part of it seems to be that people don't really want to socialize with other people that they don't already know. Which is interesting to me, because then they also complain about how hard it is to make friends as an adult. Sure is when you don't leave your house or you have any hobbies/interests to speak of other than watching television, etc. (and when so many other people are the same way). You have to be open to uncomfortable interactions with strangers and have something interesting to offer other people.
Even pre-lockdowns people were staying home more than they ever had been before. The lockdowns just hastened the transition. And most of the businesses haven't figured out how to adapt to the changing marketplace. When sales and profits are down, they seem to just shrug their shoulders and pour more money into the things that were working for them in the past (like TV ads).
Which kind of brings me to the literal Circus. The largest circus in the USA shut down back in 2017. Certainly, they had their problems, but the circus definitely brought a lot of joy to people's lives. They were basically "cancelled" the way that a great many other things are being cancelled. Now, that's not really a new phenomenon (Boycotts were a thing since forever). What's interesting is that they took no action to adapt to the changes in the marketplace until they were already past the point of no return -- and even then they didn't carefully consider how they should adapt. It was a panic reaction which only made things worse for them.
They had been protested for decades for the way that they treated their animals. Now, I'm no expert on PR, but it seems to me that some form of action would be prudent. Understand your customers, understand why your ticket sales are going down. Find a way to talk to the people who give you money year after year and find out if they're considering no longer being patrons of your business and why. Make a strategy, make a plan. Self-assess and see how you can better serve your customer base. Those seem like reasonable action steps to take.
But they waited until 2015-2016 to take the elephants out of their acts - to stop bringing them on the road. and they did it as a last ditch reaction to the complaints and protests they'd been receiving for over 3 decades by that point. I'm certain they did make other changes before that, but I'm not exactly keeping a log of their changes. Clearly, though, they weren't able to adapt to the changing marketplace. And once they stopped bringing the Elephants - their ticket sales immediately plummeted. They had simply taken away part of their product, while offering nothing new to drive up interest, while also increasing prices due to high cost of business. A great recipe for chasing your few remaining customers away!
Cirque de Soleil was rapidly expanding during the early 2000's as Ringling was failing to compete with them and floundered by controversy and bad business decisions. Sure they were hit by the 2008 recession and the pandemic, but they have done a lot better than Ringling through all this stuff.
Now, Ringling is supposedly trying to relaunch in 2023, so it'll be interesting to see how that goes. but if things continue to decline like this we could end up in a place where the younger generations don't even know what a circus is. Or a mall. Or a movie theater.
Perhaps one day you can say to them that the world is becoming a circus, and then they can stare vacantly at you and say "A what?"
The point isn't really this or that industry isn't doing well. I think the biggest takeaway is that the people running businesses have forgotten the point of running a business - to serve their customers, the people who consume their products.
- You've got video game companies that care about profits at the expense of making a game that people will enjoy and play for years to come.
- You've got film and television productions trying to shove messages down your throat instead of trying to make a story that will captivate an audience.
- You've got players in the auto industry creating false scarcity to drive up prices and make the same amount of money for less product. (Specifically used cars, there is a TON of used car supply just sitting in repo lots - probably more than ever).
- You've got colleges more worried about profits and catering to special interest groups than actually educating the people that attend.
- You've got corporations that want to milk the market for every penny at the expense of both ethics and the well being of their customers.
- You've got politicians that care more about their ego than whether or not the policies they are implementing are good for or desired by their constituents.
You could probably sit here all day naming specific examples of businesses putting profits over their end user experience.
I mean, it's nothing new.
But it is, in my opinion, a terrible way to run a business.
A terrible way to run the world.
A terrible culture to embrace.
Welcome to the New World.
Welcome to the Circus.
Thanks for coming by.
- Guurg
P.S. I don't want to seem overly negative about it, there is still hope that people will shift this mindset. A lot of entrepreneurs embrace putting their customer first, and Amazon got to be one of the largest companies in the world by putting customer experience above literally everything else. I think there is still a good chance that the culture will shift, as long as we choose to support that change. I'm just saying we should to be aware of it and be communicating with these businesses using our wallets.
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