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Q. Is there a bit of an overkill on the Indian team victory and now the Ambani wedding? Or is that what it will be since content is served as per what is consumed most?
A: One needs to be clear about the definition of the word ‘overkill’. IMHO, it’s a relative and subjective concept and what is overkill to you might not be an overkill for someone else. The proof the concept in recent times is the celebration of homecoming of the T20 World Cup winning team in Mumbai. While viewership on TV leapfrongged, an incredible number of fans congregated at Marine Drive. Now, I didn’t go there and perhaps you haven’t joined the celebration too. The final was over on June 29, but the celebrations weren’t. It wasn’t an overkill for fans.
The same is true for other social engagements of celebrities or other leading citizens of the country. Media is in some ways leverages the voyeurist inside us. We like escapism from the daily grind through content immersion.
Biologically, human beings are also programmed to be curious creatures. We have evolved to retain neotenic traits. This implies that as a species we are more childlike than other mammals. Curiosity is one of these neotenic traits that has helped our species to survive as we constantly look for new data points to adjust to our environment.
Social media sites such as Meta, Instagram etc also activate the brain’s reward centre, called the nucleus accumbens. When we get positive feedback on social media sites, in the form of likes, hearts or comments, our brain processes rewarding feelings. Therefore, we become addicted to consuming other people’s social media content as well as posting our own content. Hence, in the prevailing time of hyper-individualism, there is nothing called overkill. Every content has a relevant audience and customer satiation of the same is infinite.