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It's a common tactic. Ebaumsworld and Newgrounds both got popular 15 years ago through the same methods.

Ebaum, perhaps - but I wouldn’t say that about Newgrounds: it was all about user-submitted content, especially original Flash content, instead of being manually curated.

You can rewind to the birth of MTV 15 years before that.

"I Want My MTV" by Tannenbaum and Marks is a great book. Think of it as the bible of what a successful marketing execs wants to achieve.

It's not a common tactic. It is the BASIS of consumer culture. Give people what they want. Target their senses not their minds.

It's how you get everything from the global spread of Pepsi to McDonalds to Starbucks to Apple to Hollywood to the Kardashians having 200 million teenage girls globally wanting to grow up to be like them.

Consumer culture is based on giving people what they want. And labeling it Freedom.

Slight correction: it's convincing people you're giving them something they want, not necessarily delivering what they actually want.

And now, let's repeat the Non-Conformist Oath!

I once watched Jello Biafra lead a crowd in a "we wont follow orders" chant. The irony was literally and figuritively deafaning. Nothing more stuck up than the in-crowd of outcasts.

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