Hype vs. Momentum: Decoding Cultural Patterns w/ Matt Klein of Zine & Reddit | S01 E02
Up Next in Tech with Ariba Jahan
Sep 2023
54 min 52 sec
How do you know when something is a trend or just hype? What trends should we even pay attention to right now? In this episode I sit down with Webby Award-winning writer Matt Klein, a digital anthropologist and quantitative futurist with a decade of experience in trend forecasting, communications and marketing to dig into these questions. We also go into how he recognized a gap in rigorous cultural analysis and began authoring articles on cultural observations, eventually writing for Forbes and starting his own newsletter. In our conversation we cover:
() Matt's unconventional background spanning psychology, film, media, and advertising () Meta trends analysis and identifying commonalities () Concern about decline of public spaces and rise of loneliness () Perspective on virtual worlds and the metaverse () Information overload and determining what's real online () Evaluating trends based on adoption momentum rather than hype () We need more porn: patience, openness, receptiveness, and nuance