Lockstep Conformity

“For example, in the fifties, when something became hot, something on the order of hula hoops, everybody had to have one. And they had to have on because they had to be like ‘all the other kids.’ But snookered by our new consumerist culture, we now see that everybody has to have the latest hot thing in order to be different. In other words, in the old days you had to be like everyone else in order to be like everyone else. But this new generation coming up is media-savvy and street smart-hop; they have to be like everybody else so that they can be different from everybody else. The old conformists at least knew what they were doing. The new conformists haven’t a clue” (Future Men, pp. 153-154).