The Virtue of Selfishness

While I’m a fan of Ayn Rand’s objectivist philosophy, borrowing the title of one of her books as the theme for this blog is in many ways an anathema to modern day political correctness.

And yet, when it comes to media consumption, specifically online video, we’re all guilty of a bit of selfishness.  We want media delivered on our terms, to our devices and at times that are convenient for us.  We rely on terms like uniqueness, relevancy, targeted and in-context to avoid the ugliness of the word “selfishness.”

But let’s call it as it is shall we?  Selfishness is the natural reflex to decades of having to deal with the one size fits all mentality of traditional media.  Today’s environment though has changed dramatically, with more content available than ever before and on more mediums than we can possibly watch in the span of a day.

So doesn’t it stand to reason that being a bit selfish and picking the content or information that is important to us and watching it how, when and where we want is now the expected norm?  And as a corollary, by allowing me to revel in my media-centric selfishness am I not giving programmers, advertisers and others in the value-chain a better glimpse into who I am, how I think and what I’m interested in?  Doesn’t that lead to increased value?

I would argue yes to all three.  My selfishness means that if programmers want to reach me, they need to make their content more widely available and in different consumable formats so I can choose what I want.  By doing so they get the benefit of learning more about their viewers, which can lead to greater programming diversity – both in terms of content choice and distribution.  Advertisers benefit as well as they can segment viewers more effectively thereby increasing the relevancy, and thereby the ROI of the ad placement.  Finally, consumers’ benefit by having a wealth of content at their disposal that can be packaged to suit their needs.

So is selfishness really a bad thing after all?