I guess about a decade ago I became aware of a new trend in the music industry, referred to as the “mashup”. A mashup was a combination of two songs — and these songs could be quite different. The result was (I guess) a new piece, and one of the most prominent examples and in any case the one I chose to play time and again for my friends was “Never Gonna Give Your Teen Spirit up”.
This is the same spirit of extreme contrast I want to introduce the concept of “mainstream milieus” with. I have a general familiarity with both parts of this concept, yet these individual parts are, I feel, seldom (if ever) studied with any serious (or quasi-“scientific”) scrutiny. Instead, they are usually bandied about barroom banter and tossed around in an off-the-cuff manner and therefore carry a small tinge of inebriated party-talk.
Before we get the party started, let’s pay particular attention to how the two elements (“mainstream” and “milieu”) contrast. A milieu is, I feel, usually seen as a small group — originally, I guess, this was a way to refer to a group of people who “hung out” together at this or that place. In other words, it almost seems as though “mainstream” and “milieu” could be diametrically opposed opposites along a scale of broad vs. narrow appeal.
Yet over the past few years, people all over the globe have been sort of hit over the head with the stark reality that “mainstream” is largely built upon a myth of quasi-correct popular opinion. All of a sudden, the fake bubble has now burst and a centuries-old propaganda ploy has popped. Ordinary people standing on every street at every corner now suddenly realize that what used to be considered “mainstream” is just as laughable and insignificant as that clown standing behind the curtain in “The Wizard of Oz” … and also just as small-scale as any other milieu.
The contrast of 99% mainstream versus 1% milieu is nothing more than a myth. Today, the world-wide web potentially creates thousands or even many millions of milieus. [1] Some in the publishing industry have even coined a new term for this new-world phenomenon: the “splinternet”. People deeply steeped in the concept of mainstream media find it very difficult to grasp the reality of a highly differentiated real world — a real world with many languages, with many cultural backgrounds and with innumerable perspectives and milieus.
In closing, I would like to try to identify two well-known “mainstream milieus” [2]. First, “mainstream media” — the news and publishing industries that have spread ideas to mainstream media consumers like there is no tomorrow (see also “Trailblazing, Trailbuilding and Ideological Infrastructure“). Second, “mainstream advertising” — the propaganda people who have increasingly been working with digital switches to bait suckers into clicking for them (and their business partners). At this point I merely want to suggest these mainstream milieus, primarily in order to introduce the concept and to get the ball rolling. There are probably many more possibilities — such as government or other mainstream industries such as finance, health, the arts, etc.
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