I was scanning a run-of-the-mill report on product advertising when I came across a single sentence that explains far, far more about the current problems we face than just the marketing challenges that were the subject of the article. And when I say “we”, I’m talking about humanity, not just the American people.
The article in the Washington Post used a recent ad by a McDonald’s executive to explore–and bemoan–the challenges contemporary advertisers face as a result of the splintered information environment. When there were only three major television networks, for example, product advertisements mainly succeeded through “ceaseless repetition.” You would see the same ads during multiple commercial breaks, repeated night after night. Successful ones would spawn late-night jokes and parodies. Co-workers would hum jingles that you would immediately recognize, and–as the article noted–lines from widely seen commercials would turn into catchphrases.
The marketing messages that became ubiquitous did so because Americans inhabited a common entertainment and information environment. We had–as the article noted in passing–a common frame of reference.
We’ve lost that common frame of reference–a frame that enabled a shared view of reality.
Dozens of streaming television channels compete for our attention. There really is no “mass media” anymore–as I have often noted, thanks to the Internet, we live in an environment that encourages us to “curate” our preferred social and political realities, an enormous expansion of choice that allows us to construct both entertainment and information “bubbles” that confirm our pre-existing biases. The growth of remote work has reduced (and sometimes even eliminated) our interactions with co-workers–it has been decades since office folks gathered around the water fountain to discuss the most recent episode of “I Love Lucy.” (Even recalling that once-common experience seems impossibly quaint.) We are increasingly splintered.
Today, it isn’t simply advertising that suffers from our fragmented and inconsistent media environment. The realities of that fragmentation have enabled and encouraged our political polarization.
We live in a world where the realities we share are steadily diminishing, and the informational and entertainment and political environments we choose to inhabit are not only different, but frequently incompatible. If you are–like me–an older person, you increasingly encounter references to celebrities and “huge stars” of stage and screen that you’ve never heard of, and you’ve had younger people give you a blank look when you reference major events of a history you’ve lived through.
The technologies that allow us to access immense amounts of information with an amazing immediacy have also allowed us–or more accurately, forced us— to construct our own realities, facilitating our separate and increasingly inconsistent understandings of the world we inhabit.
This blog is an example. When I began these daily explorations, I viewed them as extensions of my classroom teaching. I would read something–perhaps scholarly, perhaps newsworthy–and share that information. Since I rather clearly have a point of view, perhaps I would be able to persuade a few others of the correctness of policy approach A or the dangers of pursuing policy B. Instead, this daily exercise has become an example of “preaching to the choir.” At best, I offer extra data to readers who already share most of my biases–readers with whom I share a frame of reference.
I have become steadily more convinced that the fragmentation of our information environment is at the root of our inability to fashion a working politics. When different groups of people occupy dramatically different realities, when person A hears about the disasters we are experiencing thanks to Trump’s insane war on Iran, while person B hears only some version of the rantings the mad would-be King posts on Truth Social, there is no middle ground. We can’t come together to solve a common problem because we don’t see a common problem.
The most confounding part of this dilemma is the absence of any obvious solution.
The First Amendment was grounded in belief in a marketplace of ideas–the conviction that We the People could bring our discrete and disparate views to a common intellectual “marketplace” where those views would be aired and would contend with each other, and the strengths and weaknesses of those arguments would become apparent. The Founders and philosophers who championed that clash of ideas did not– could not– have envisioned a time when no common marketplace existed.
I’m not sure democracy can exist in the absence of a common frame of reference. I guess we’ll find out….
Sunday 9-11 PM CNN is airing a special about our FBI
https://cnnpressroom.blogs.cnn.com/2026/02/17/cnn-original-series-standoff-the-fbi-power-and-paranoia-premieres-sunday-march-22-at-9pm-et-pt/
I 100 percent agree. And I agree the solutions are difficult to find and implement. I know it is a big “if”, however, it would help if we were all aware of our ABC’s ( In this case,:attitudes, beliefs and certainties) and realized the power and benefit of questioning them. It would be a good start. As the subtitle of Scott Shigeoka’s book “Seek” says; curiosity can transform your life and change the world.
I’m not sure if Sheila meant to, but this one paragraph could possibly cause “new thinkers or young thinkers” to flip out on srhooms or gummies all day long:
“The technologies that allow us to access immense amounts of information with an amazing immediacy have also allowed us–or more accurately, forced us— to construct our own realities, facilitating our separate and increasingly inconsistent understandings of the world we inhabit.”
Believe it or not, that very concept played a role in Charlie Kirk’s elimination.
DATA is king!
p.s. There is actually a scene from a Jason Bourne movie that presents this mind-altering concept between a CIA Director and a Facebook Exec over the data Facebook collects from its users.
Sheila – one of your best columns I have ever read – kudos. One might call the phenomenon you describe as one of the “three legs of the chaos we are in” with all the legs seemingly being simultaneously cause and effect. The other two legs are common agreement on what is right and wrong and what is decent and what is not. The result is a general culture and political culture that reflect each other like a mirror.
It isn’t just those technologies that are forcing us to create our own realities. It is the physical divisions in our society that help too. By this I mean the dividing up of living spaces according to age and money. When and where else has the world ever seen such an arrangement where the aged are housed in specialized nursing facilities, the old but still able to feed themselves housed in assisted living facilities, the elderly but able to ride a golf cart sent off to a southern state for sunshine, the middle aged relegated to mansion, lawn care and foreign vacations, the family still at home bunch suffering their own offspring’s adolescence, and the graduated and avowed singles partying endlessly in small apartments downtown? Could there possibly be a connection between all this and societies’ problems with homelessness, drug addiction, and self isolation?
IMO In our fragmented society creating your own reality is a reaction to, and not the cause of, technology.
As you described how advertising used to work, I realized about the only time I even get to see a commercial is during the Superbowl and that’s because those go above and beyond to entertain. Everything I watch is streamed or recorded. I pay extra for ad-free streaming in most cases. I’ve trained myself to not even look at Facebook content that is “sponsored”. I look past Amazon and Google results that are “sponsored”. The radio station I listen to is ad free broadcast from a local high school. I think I am an advertisers worst nightmare. I opt out of all tracking. I’ve always looked at privacy settings on almost all of my apps. I routinely check settings on downloaded apps to turn off location usage and background refresh. Occasionally something I’ve done some shopping for leaks into my Facebook feed, but not often.
I complained to my wife yesterday that because media is so fragmented, that it’s almost impossible to discover local events unless they are huge or heavily advertised. Sites that are supposed to guide you to local going ons are so flooded with routine garbage that it’s just lost.
Good posting, Sheila, said one of the choir, and happy to be. The one of my 2 Trump loving cousins, with whom I still have contact, told me that I live in an alternate universe, and I agree. But, I believe, mine is based on empiricism, while hers is based on the N.Y. Post, and, probably Faux News.
Still, you present an interesting question/conundrum.
Segregation into age groups, classes, castes, races, religions, interest groups etc. is nothing new. In some ways we may be more connected now than we have ever been or at least we have the opportunity to be more connected now than ever. What we do with that opportunity is being worked out as we live it. We, as individuals, decide when and how and how often we reach across those kinds of divides. Personally, I think we have a lot more important things to share than ad jingles!😁