Why's it so impossible to be niche anymore?

The backlash against overexposure has finally begun, and honestly? thank god.

We’re entering an interesting phase of internet culture. “Chronically Online” is what we used to all boast about in our interviews. We used it to prove cultural awareness, some sort of digital fluency and a shortcut way to land “I’m on the pulse”. But increasingly, it’s becoming less of a badge of honour and more something people would rather keep confined to their sofas, bed rots and screen time reports they won’t even look at - which says a lot about where internet culture is heading.

For the last decade, virality has been treated as an unquestionable good. Brands wanted it. Products needed it. Places chased it. Clients slipped it into deliverables very casually. Everyone was told it was the overnight success key that felt comfortably in reach for almost everyone thanks to the randomisation of the TikTok algorithm.

But now, I’m not so sure virality can be applied as a blanket measure of success.

People are exhausted by everything becoming content, overly shared and instantly visible to everyone, everywhere, all at once. I’m tired of the queue coming out of the door of my ex-off-the-beaten-track Saturday coffee because someone posted it in their “10 Hidden Gems in London”.

Everywhere feels online now, even when we’re offline. The experience of just being somewhere feels increasingly shaped and connected to its digital reputation and how we’ve experienced it online - often first. We don’t discover restaurants, neighbourhoods or even cities ourselves anymore because we’ve already judged the version of it that has been filmed and reviewed by thousands, before we’ve even arrived.

Part of what made these places special was that they felt human, local and real. The more a place, product or experience is optimised for sharing, the harder it becomes to feel like you’ve discovered it for yourself, and some of the joy of discovery disappears with it.

For product businesses, virality is obviously different.

I recently listened to the Ladies Who Launch podcast episode with Vivien Wong, Co-Founder of Little Moons. Lockdown transformed their business and introduced millions of people to a product they otherwise would never have tried. So at its best, virality can create huge genuine excitement, conversation and commercial success for a product.

But people are becoming more selective with their attention, more conscious of what they consume and more interested in things that feel genuinely worth their time. We can see this in the shift towards ’offline’ and the purposeful reduction of screentime, it’s all intentional.

This BackMarket proves exactly that, and sparked this thought piece in a very roundabout way

Doom scrolling isn’t disappearing unfortunately, but it does feel like people are becoming more intentional about where they spend their energy.The problem is when everything becomes viral and nothing gets a chance to stay small and genuinely niche anymore.

Demand outpaces the supply for almost everything and the second something is deemed worth having, seeing, wearing or going to, it’s overly visible and oversubscribed.

But more exposure doesn’t necessarily create more meaning or automatically build affinity. Just like jumping on every trend doesn’t make a brand relevant.

We’re seeing this shift in the age of community for brands. It’s why platforms built around conversation and shared interest are growing. It’s why people increasingly trust recommendations from communities over recommendations from algorithms.

It’s why live experiences and community events are booming. Real life is becoming more valuable.

Which leaves brands with an interesting challenge. For years, the goal was attention attention attention - but increasingly, the goal is becoming intention. Consumers still love great content, they’ve just stopped rewarding content that feels engineered purely to go viral.

So, it seems we’re heading in a direction where the brands that win won’t necessarily be the ones shouting the loudest, but the ones with the best intentions, communities, thoughtful partnerships. The ones with the strongest point of view - and the clearest understanding of where they belong and most importantly, where they don’t.

On social, they’ll be the brands creating depth through stories, people and experiences, while building community through participation and moments people genuinely want to be part of.

I have hope that the next decade of the internet will belong to the brands creating things people genuinely want to be part of. With any hope, being niche might become the most valuable thing on the internet again.