What’s old is becoming new again.
Keith Kent | 01/10/2025
The market for experiences and interactions that are rooted in the real world is where value can be found. Trust and affection for online experiences is diminishing rapidly.
In client conversations around business and design the most frequent topic recently is the idea of communities. This is not a new idea, but what is interesting is that there is a huge shift from digital communities to physical communities.
Whereas up to now it was about building followers and likes, views and clicks, it's now more orientated to real-people orientated communities.
The biggest question is always "how can we prove we are real?" This sounds like an existential question in isolation, but what they mean is how can they show that they exist. That they are legitimate and that people can trust them. That they don't melt into the digital ether.
This is pertinent because global web traffic analysis has repeatedly found that bots – good and bad – account for over half of all internet traffic.
And to top it off, research shows that almost 60% of users often can’t tell a bot from a real person.
This is a startling fact for anyone that wants to connect with an audience.
Platforms, phonies and phones.
The online ecosystem where most people spend their time is, let's be brutal here, a sewer. The beauty and freedom of the world wide web has been compressed into a few centralised platforms, where most users are trapped with very little control over the information they receive. Everything is blurred, sped up and obnoxious. The real blends with the fake.
"Balenciaga" Pope Francis
Reddit / u/trippy_art_special
For instance - much of my time is now spent trying to figure out if I'm being tricked or not. Is the Pope really wearing a Balenciaga coat?
It could be legit - popes wear cloaks and other funky robes. Plus it's Italy, and they're pretty fashionable there. Alas, on closer inspection, the Pope is not wearing a Balenciaga coat.
The vibes are shifting. In real life (IRL) is where it's at now.
More and more people tell me that they want to spend less time staring at a screen and more time doing something else. Anything will do, once it doesn't involve their black mirror.
Even carmakers are cooling on the overly digital approach. Mercedes-Benz recently announced that the company would be centering future car design around physical controls instead of screens. Volkswagen and Hyundai have said the same. Cars do not need to be giant phones.
At first I thought this angst was from people who are terminally online, the type of people who are trapped in social media trends and who post and film their life obsessively. Yet the more I look around, the more evidence that the yearning for things that aren't pre-packaged, viral and scaleable is widespread among normal folk too. It does appear that the digital panopticon where much of life is now conducted is beginning to wear us down. The vibes are shifting. In real life (IRL) is where it's at now.
How does this affect design, business and branding efforts?
The vibes are shifting. In real life (IRL) is where it's at now.
More and more people tell me that they want to spend less time staring at a screen and more time doing something else. Anything will do, once it doesn't involve their black mirror.
Even carmakers are cooling on the overly digital approach. Mercedes-Benz recently announced that the company would be centering future car design around physical controls instead of screens. Volkswagen and Hyundai have said the same. Cars do not need to be giant phones.
At first I thought this angst was from people who are terminally online, the type of people who are trapped in social media trends and who post and film their life obsessively. Yet the more I look around, the more evidence that the yearning for things that aren't pre-packaged, viral and scaleable is widespread among normal folk too. It does appear that the digital panopticon where much of life is now conducted is beginning to wear us down. The vibes are shifting. In real life (IRL) is where it's at now.
"Balenciaga" Pope Francis
Reddit / u/trippy_art_special
For instance - much of my time is now spent trying to figure out if I'm being tricked or not. Is the Pope really wearing a Balenciaga coat?
It could be legit - popes wear cloaks and other funky robes. Plus it's Italy, and they're pretty fashionable there. On closer inspection, the Pope is not wearing a Balenciaga coat.