Recently, in my “Logical Writing” (HS001) class, we learned about the stages of writing a paragraph. The first step — conceptualization — included choosing a topic and the target audience. Target audiences have always been one of the main concerns for entertainment, may it be movies, books, or music — at least for more traditional media. With widespread usage of social media, we are seeing drastically new forms of media: memes and shorts videos. These new sources of entertainment are significantly different from their pre-existing counterparts, making the idea of target audience obsolete.

To see why this new type of entertainment lacks the concept of a target audience, we need to first see their differences compared to traditional media. The greatest advantage memes and short videos have over movies, books, or TV shows are that they are a very small time commitment. A few seconds for each picture or snippet are enough for viewers to feel entertained or at least amused. Because it barely uses the viewers’ time, people can consume them at whatever time en masse without much fatigue, unlike older media. However, being short also means that they have very limited content. These two main characteristics remove target audiences from the picture.

Imagine you are planning a movie. You’ve invested billions; you cannot afford to fail. You need to know someone is going to watch your movie: a target audience. Now, imagine you’re creating a short TikTok video following the most recent dance challenge. By the time I finish writing this sentence, the video will be ready for editing and uploading. There is almost no risk or investment involved in creating memes and short videos, which removes the necessity of assurance that someone will watch them. If no one watches it? Well, time for a new video. Failure becomes a normal procedure for creators of this new type of entertainment. They do not need assurance that consumers will always exist — as long as some of their content is successful, failure is not a setback. 

What about from the consumer side? Being a target audience means they are willing to put in the effort to consume that certain product, in this case the entertainment . Now that anyone can easily make and upload memes or short videos, consumers are overloaded with choices. They don’t need to put the effort into finding entertainment. Instead, algorithms and shares automatically serve their interests on a silver platter. 

Without any purpose for both consumers and producers, target audiences are now unnecessary — the death of a concept that has existed throughout the history of entertainment. We have seen changes in how entertainment is produced, delivered, and consumed. We saw bread and circuses provided by ruling classes using slaves and prisoners in the Colosseum to be consumed by commoners, entertainment created by jesters for kings and their court, and entertainment created by superstars for everyday people to watch in their nearest cinema. All these times, there was a set target audience in mind for the creators of entertainment. The existence of a target audience made entertainment more effective, regardless of its purpose. But now, this is no longer true.

Granted, “old” entertainment is not obsolete yet. However, memes and short videos — the next generation of entertainment — are becoming more appealing to consumers of traditional entertainment. Television viewership is hitting all-time lows while online platforms are steadily becoming more popular. And just like how cinema and television have impacted the culture of people who grew up with it, memes and short videos will also have a significant impact on us and on younger generations to come. Will this impact be positive or negative? We do not know.

However, one thing is sure: we are witnessing the beginning of a new age of entertainment. Everyone has the ability to create entertainment at a low cost and low risk, and share that creation with everyone. It might become a waste on the internet — scrolled and swiped away, ignored — or it might become the next trend for everyone to follow: entertainment for no one and everyone at the same time.