Julie Steinberg | From niche to ubiquity

It was 10:56 on a chilly Wednesday evening. Six of us hunched over the coffee table, waiting for the finale while I attempted a complicated recipe I had seen the week before. "Dammit! I never should have tried this!" My roommate peered up at me. "You're microwaving popcorn." I threw away the blackened bag in disgust and sat back down, waiting for Stefan to grab the win.

Of course, if you saw Top Chef last week, you know that Hosea Rosenberg took home the title. If you didn't see Top Chef last week, sorry. While the judges' decision could merit an entire column of its own, I wasn't allowed to write about it. Suffice it to say it was the most anticlimactic win ever seen on a reality TV show (with the possible exception of Road Rules: We Have No Way to Stay Relevant).

No, what I'm surprised about is the ratings the finale scored. 3.7 million tuned in to check the Mr. Cleans go (bald) head to (bald) head, a 12-percent increase over last year's finale. How did the most lackluster season garner the second-best ratings in the show's history? Why did more and more people watch a show that was less and less riveting as the weeks passed? And most importantly, how did they get Carla's hair to look so good by the end of the season?

I took a random sample of several students (namely, my roommates) and asked them why they watched Top Chef, especially if they hadn't seen previous seasons. I added a few more questions about pop culture, like how they knew to wear purple leggings to the Girl Talk concert, and why they felt compelled to partake in the new meme that matches your friends to Mr. Men personalities (check Facebook; you're probably tagged). The overwhelming response was the obvious choice: Everyone else was doing it.

Trying to make sense of pop culture trends isn't groundbreaking. Nor is it hard to understand on a college campus. Blogs like UnderTheButton (shameless plug, just pretend it's Gladware on Top Chef) herald the arrival of Twitter, and soon everyone is trying to be witty in 140 characters or fewer. This is an amusing exercise until many people realize they need more than two verbs and a noun to feel syntactically satisfied. The speed with which we can get information now, though, has meant that these viral trends have become superviruses.

But the speed of the trends still doesn't answer how they become popular in the first place. The people who attended the Girl Talk concert last weekend were derided as "scenesters" because they missed out on the original November gig - and bought out American Apparel because apparently all ravers wear neon. That being said, how did every girl there know to wear colored leggings, a metallic headband and Converses? (Full disclosure: I wore leggings and Converses. I still have no idea why.)

Does the normalization of trends necessarily detract from their potency? We all groan when people find out about our favorite hole-in-the-wall bars or incredible Irish-Greek pseudo-emo band. After all, we reason, the commodification of our favorite things will invariably lead to their popping up everywhere.

The advent of grassroots technology has clearly altered that model. Though it's allowed for faster dissemination, it's also ensured a near-infinite supply of cherished nobodies we want to keep for ourselves. Web sites like purevolume.com, a site unsigned artists use to publicize their music, can function as our personal brand of heroin (thank you, Stephenie Meyer, for the one mildly useful line in Twilight). The hungrier we are for content, the faster people rush to fill that void.

As for the internet sensations that don't seem to last longer than Sarah Palin's seven minutes of fame, well, cyberspace is a vast graveyard. Mainstream media, take note: The 25 things you list about yourself on Facebook is no longer a worthy discussion topic. And call me a Luddite, but Twitter seems to be the bacon ice cream one contestant on Top Chef tried to convince us was food. Or maybe it will stick around and I'll remain hopelessly behind the curve.

Either way, I've still got my Tamagotchi to keep me company, even if I end up throwing out the leggings come fall 2009.

Julie Steinberg is a College senior from Boca Raton, Fla. That's What She Said appears on alternating Tuesdays. Her email address is steinberg@dailypennsylvanian.com.

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