The New Media World Order.

I am reading Ian Kershaw's "The End: The Defiance and Destruction of Hitler's Germany, 1944-1945" right now. It's a long book that details the actions of the German military and police apparatus and civilian behavior during the collapse of their war machine in the last days of WWII.

After the Allied landings in June, 1944, and the Stauffenberg assassination attempt roughly seven weeks later, it was obvious to most that the war, to the Germans was a lost cause. They couldn't withstand the combined men and material might of the Russians in the East and the Allies in the West.

But of course, the Germans fought on for almost an entire year. In fact, they lost as many soldiers in that year as they did in the first five years of the war combined.

All was lost, yet they fought on. By now both military brass and "the people" recognized that the propaganda from Berlin was delusional. Yet they fought on and by fighting on brought death and suffering to millions of people who might have been otherwise spared.

There is an advertising point in all this. It's a point about fanaticism, fervor and absolutes.

In the past dozen or so years we, in the marketing world, have been besieged by an onslaught of braggadocio, bombast, puffery and hype around various media and tools that "will change everything" down to the very wiring of the human brain (such as it is.)

The agencies that have grown up around each of those various media believe to their death in the efficacy of their particular cause. Their way of promulgating their own particular vibrancy is to denigrate the efficacy of the media they compete with.

So what we are living through right now is a battle over the New Media World Order.

As the Tweeters and the Likers and the Grouponers feel ever more attacked by the Traditionals, their blandishments are issued ever shriller.

That doesn't make them more correct, more substantial, more relevant.

Just louder.