"Generation Like"

This week in COM 291, we watched the documentary “Generation Like” which explores the sensation of corporate marketers using the value young people place on social media popularity to push them to simultaneously market and consume their products. Overall, I found the documentary to support many trends about social media marketing I was familiar with already. These include the effectiveness of talent that are consumer-marketer hybrids, the trend of using the outrageous over quality content to get more views, and the efforts of social media marketers to make marketing campaigns appear like fun, grass-roots activities to fans (like the Catching Fire leaderboard in the movie). At the same time, I learned some things I was previously unfamiliar with, such as the existence of agencies like “The Audience” that specialize in managing the social media of their talent.

My biggest criticism of the documentary is what I believe to be an over-exaggerated portrayal of the social media habits of young people. Certain scenes, such as the powwow between the high-schoolers over how many likes they were receiving on social media, seem very unrealistic. While young people obviously aren’t ignorant of the strength of their social media presence, no one I know would organize a hangout just to talk about it. I think the producers wanted to present the idea of a like-obsessed culture and set up some situations to make that idea appear reality.