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Comment by freehunter | Hacker News Reader

>things beloved primarily by women and children are the exact things the mainstream marginalizes

Is that really true? Pinterest seems to be pretty popular and is considered a "must have" in terms of social media strategy. There's huge markets in women's magazines, stores like Kohls and Payless as mentioned in the article, Curves, Weight Watchers, and don't forget the makeup and popular music industries. Taylor Swift isn't singing to all the men or old women in the audience.

It seems to me that women and children basically define mainstream.

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It's not even close to true. Women and children are the largest consumer group in the US, and are soon to become the largest consumer group in the entire world. Women control the vast majority of every day spending in the US to the point where most advertising and marketing is meant for women in one way or another. You're completely right, in that women and children do define the mainstream.

[1] http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/news/2013/u-s--women-c...

[2] http://www.unpac.ca/economy/consumers.html

[3] http://data.worldbank.org/indicator

That's why you'll often see men portrayed as idiots in commercials. The ads are really aimed at women, and this is a marketing strategy proven to work.

Most mainstream music (i.e. stuff that makes it into Billboard's charts) is obviously targeted at teenagers and maybe people in their young 20's. I'd say the same thing is true about movies. I guess I wouldn't call any of this for "children" though but I guess this becomes a boring semantic argument at this point.

Tangentially, now that I'm over 30 it's starting to become painfully obvious that new music is geared towards younger people. I don't want to be one of those people who are stuck listening to music of their youth, but its so difficult to find things that appeal to me. I.e. music and films that are mature but still are progressing and not relying nostalgia.

Pinterest is largely an anomaly though. It celebrates things that aren't really embraced in any other major platform, and the only reason it is acknowledged (IMO) is because of how much audience it has captured.

Based on the description of this platform, Pinterest sounds like its closest analogue.

More accurately, I think families define the mainstream. A superhero movie that is PG-13 makes a lot more money than a superhero movie that is R rated for example.

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