EDITORIAL—Goodbye, My Niche Community
- Allan Tompkins
- 2 hours ago
- 3 min read
By The Log Staff
Social media has once again adopted a new word into its vocabulary that may represent something much larger than itself.
The word “niche” has lost its meaning in the world of online media. What used to describe something truly unique has now become an adjective for just about anything. The need to feel, or rather appear, different has never been more popular than it is today. And while the concept of embracing one’s differences is not something that should be frowned upon, changing one’s personality and interests simply for the sake of validation is a harmful gateway that “niche concepts” are offering to Gen Zers.
It’s no lie that Gen Z enjoys being acknowledged, especially in a growing online culture that rewards engagement. A survey of over 1,000 U.S. managers of Gen Z employees reported that 71% of Gen Z expected praise for meeting basic expectations showing how prevalent the desire for recognition already is. With this in mind, it’s evident that Gen Zers, especially on social media, try to label things as being “niche” to display their interests as ones that aren’t normally liked, or popular in an attempt to put on the persona of “being different.”
The problem with this is that the ironic mainstreaming of “niches” has created a growing pattern of personality-altering, exclusive communities that can collectively enjoy their “unknown” interests in a way that provides some feeling of superiority to the mainstream crowd.
In collaboration with Horowitz Research, Voxmedia conducted a survey where out of 800 Gen Zers, 81% would prefer to be defined by attributes like personality traits or hobbies. This means that despite someone potentially enjoying mainstream media, the inferiority associated with liking popular artists over ones less talked about creates a pressure to conform to a niche personality, which many describe as defining who they are.
Rather than embracing one’s potentially childish or mainstream list of favorite movies, people search for a niche French film from the 20th century that somehow really resonated with them. Anyone who questions this opinion is written off as lacking the depth to appreciate the film and is essentially pushed into this position of inferiority.
The ultimate product of the niche epidemic is the ostracization of others. The idea of gatekeeping one’s favorite song or artist cannot be accomplished by literally stopping someone from hearing it, but rather making them feel unwelcome to the community.
Along with this, the word “casual” is increasingly thrown around in a negative context to describe someone who is just getting into something like watching sports, listening to a band or starting a hobby. However, every single one of us was once a “casual” and may have grown to love that thing we got into. Therefore, it’s those who intentionally went into the depths of the media to identify with something that made them feel different that feel a desire to exclude these people by labeling them in order to preserve their own superficial uniqueness.
A study from the Telematics and Informatics Reports shows how online identity-based deception is often linked to negative psychological outcomes such as increased anxiety, lower self-esteem and depression raising concerns over the well-being of those who safeguard their niche identities as well as others who are introduced to them.
In the end, it seems as though being niche is the new mainstream. Despite some mainstream media lacking in the more artistic aspects of lesser known media, if people like it, they should enjoy liking it and not feel a need to suppress who they are as a person in order to gain the validation of others.
As far as the niche communities go, its culture of exclusivity promotes hostile attitudes towards “casuals” who “don’t see eye to eye with them” and who they don’t want to see eye to eye with for the sake of their preserved secrecy. A report by Cigna exacerbates the issue by finding that 73% of workers aged 18-22 feel lonely, while Gallup shows 31% of Gen Zers expressing a lack of love or support, showing how significant an online sense of shared communities is in these times.
In a society that is dealing with ever-dividing conflicts, the last thing that needs to be happening is the division of the youth over art, a subjective matter. By promoting inclusivity and spreading one’s interests, people can truly learn from each other and about each other in an authentic manner that strips us of condescending judgment and instead allows for genuine appreciation of things we never knew we’d like.