Chasing the Hashtag

Youtubers tend to chase what's trending so that their videos show up on the recommended list of videos to watch when you end up trying to find out what PubG or Tidepods are all about. They have a very fast medium, and many are able to respond to trends quickly.

Blogging has its own niches that if fills, and trending on those topics can be very specific based on not only what the blog is about, but the site it is on. With blogging though, its usually about something that happened, and it can usually be a conversation about it, rather than doing the thing yourself.

I've been writing a fanfic, and it is very much within a category, but all the currently updated stories have been trending to very similar ideas. Fanfiction tends to act more like live writing, with chapters published before the next section is even planned or thought of. As chapters can take time to write, people who read a story and like it, will sometimes do their own version of it quickly. It feels very much like how doujinshi ends up being.

It would be like live streamers watching live streams as they live stream, and imitating the most popular live streams as they stream.

Thing is, that this work, this chasing is what brings views, and depending on the platform, audience and what not, it is what brings in money. But, does longer form media (novels, movies, games) trend this way? Usually there is so much time and energy required to finish these works, that chasing a trend could just leave you being dated. I feel like this kind of work has to do its own thing and in part create its own trend.

As Ford is quoted as saying but probably never did, "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses."

But how do you show up in a search result, if people don't know to search for you? At least SOME of what you do has to chase the hashtag. Some of it has to be based on what is trending. Otherwise, people will never stumble across your content. Chase a little, create a little. Hope that people like enough of your quality and content to want to explore what else you have done.

Some sites make it easy, like being able to browse people's profiles for similar work. Other sites, are a bit more obtuse. Authors for example slowly start replacing the name of their novel, with their own name on the cover of books to help people who liked their other work to find them again.

Actors and directors become the headline of the movie, rather than the movie's subject or plot. Eventually a streamer becomes popular for who they are, and not the game they play. But they had to play that game first. Game Theory had to make theory videos first, and now they make... I don't know, some sort of streaming quizzes or something.

I think that if anything, that is the current state of entertainment right now. I'm not sure this is a good thing or a bad thing. But if you want to get started in any of it, start by chasing a trend or hunkering into a niche, and then go on from there.