ON BANALITY
by Patryk Rebisz

When you visit one of large retailers you are presented an abundance of choices, many items so inexpensive that anyone, no matter how poor, can posses. Those items are of flimsy quality. Often still in the store by simply touching those objects one can feel the object disintegrating in ones hands - before one even purchased it! But longevity is not the objective here. The object needs to survive just long enough for the transaction to occur. Some time ago the manufacturers realizes that majority of people don’t know much about the field they are trying to engage and thus for the know-nothings the main deciding factor on whether to make the purchase is the price. The price is significant because it reveals that the purchaser chooses to take chance on inexpensive object before even knowing much about the field the object signifies. He chooses inexpensive ignorance rather than first educating himself about the field (and thus search for more expensive and potentially durable object). This signifies the ultimate consumerism where nothing but the act of consumption matters.

In the past few years an editor, the one gatekeeper of publishing industry of any kind where content is made, lost its power. With the internet that power went to the people and with that a true democratization of voting process happened. With that the revival of true definition of democracy emerged: the power of the average. With birth of its new currency - popularity, the idea that gets the most votes prevails and through that it forces all other more original ideas to seek that recognition. Thus ideas are reshaped to appeal to as large populous as possible. The average is in and originality means very little. In the past the original was what attracted attention of the gate keepers, nowadays the original is considered too complex to pass the popularity judgement.

Through the mass flow of “average” something started to change in us. We started noticing banality of ideas and thus the wave started to roll back. We started being bored by the popular. The populous is accessible to the most, but also... very boring. Its value, being easily accessible, and thus seen by many, is mostly valuable to the makers rather than consumers. We are at the state where banality of populous forces us to rethink the value of the pop. Pop = value-less. Thus there is value in being the other, the unpopular one, the original, the unorthodox.