Half-life of social media trends, Michael Jackson, iPhones, and electric toothbrushes

Well in a round about sort of way it was whilst brushing my stunt pegs the other day that I stumbled upon the idea of information [or influence] half-life and electric toothbrushes. So here is a quick Oral B-analogy - not aural, what am I the speaking clock? Anyway someone else already had that idea, relatively speaking, quite a short time ago, and look, its virtually dead o’clock, way below 200 meters, already.

Shit stinks and it rots. Every can of bull shit beans on the shelves at Waitrose / Happy Shopper [delete as appropriate - according to your geographic, demographic, iPhone or toaster prefs] has a shelf life, whatever shits in it. Whatever you read on the label the crap within the tin won't ever last forever, but traces of the metal and meat within will linger like toxic waste. However Bad your shit is it’s destined to be sucked up, shit or spat out, and sometimes swallowed - [consumed one way or another]. And swallowing is bad for you - ask your dentist.

What's this electric toothbrush shit mean? There’s nothing in life better than brushing your pegs with a brand new, fully charged electric toothbrush, sporting a brand new head, for the first time. Over time, the more you brush, the more your brush gets bent, the head gets dirty, the battery fizzles and your smiles yellow. Similarly ideas, information, thoughts, trends, information, buzz, hype and absolute nonsense all get spat out, consumed, tired and less effective over time and use [call it popularity] as more and more people [aka the girlfriend / baby / crowd] uses your brush and wear away at the consumables. The same tipping-point b-analogy would naturally work for razor blades.

So what’s my worn out bristly / razor sharp point? Just like the nasty stuff we were shipping off to Brazil and Africa for recycling on the cheap, the bad press lingers, but looses potency over time, like the depleting waste's toxicness, only much faster. So, however good your brush is, however clever your trend or idea was, however popular MJ’s Thriller album was at the time, its not going to be as effective, popular, or potent tomorrow as it was when it hit the moon dancing floor the first time, and will probably be less popular / relevant / newsworthy the day after that.

Depending upon how your shit's distributed and the potency of your shit the half-life can be super short or seemingly infinate and for sure it can be re-packaged, re-shipped or re-charged [like a quickly released greatest hits album to pay for your gold coffin] but it aint never gonna feel the same as the first time and will forever taint popular culture / blow Bubbles / ruin your super-charged death hyped street cred.

Now for all of you numskulls that can’t read between the lines, here is some chatter from Twitter that I think sums it all up quite nicely, in response to a slightly different question posed by a clever guy called Justin. Probably, not definately maybe --->

• By the time something has become a trending topic, clicking on it returns 80% spam. Is there a pre-spam apex for still-relevant hashtags?
• @JustinKownacki I have a theory ---> its called information half-life, trends & electric toothbrushes. Potency depletes over time / use.
• @benferrier You may be right. Which means that (as an extreme definition) by the time anything becomes popular, it's irrelevant.
• @JustinKownacki In immediate period after conception/distribution, a short period of super-charge [hype] then irrelevance. can be re-charged.
• @benferrier At least a topic has increased (post-irrelevance) awareness to help fuel a recharge. But "improved" is never as sexy as "new."
• @JustinKownacki Absolutely - that's why its so nice to use a brand new fully charged electric toothbrush for the first time ;]