Do you own any of the media you consume? Chances are, the answer is no.
You stream music you can’t download. You watch shows that vanish without warning. You scroll feeds that algorithmically decide what lives and what dies. Our cultural memory is now rented, licensed, and ephemeral. The internet is the new Library of Alexandria, and we’re already watching it burn.
For marketers, this is both terrifying and fascinating.
Cultural touchpoints no longer stick around for years, let alone decades.
Campaigns, brand collaborations, even viral content live in a flash before disappearing into the void of expired links, removed posts, and forgotten feeds. Even the brands that built equity by leaning on nostalgia or cultural permanence are starting to feel the squeeze.
How do you anchor your audience to something that might vanish overnight?
There’s also the fact that most humans hate impermanence. And this has given birth to the countermovement: archival obsession, retro tech, and physical media resurgence.
Suddenly, owning culture is a form of rebellion.
Collectors hoard DVDs, vinyl, zines, even cassette tapes, but not like they used to. Now, there’s more purpose than “hey this is a cool relic of the past.”
Even hardcore internet users back up every deleted YouTube video and Tumblr GIF they can find. The Internet Archive is frantically trying to preserve what corporations would rather let slip away. Nostalgia isn’t a marketing lever or nice to have anymore. It’s a survival tactic.
This shift matters because it reveals how much control, or perhaps ownership, has slipped from our hands.
Streaming services, social platforms, and even AI-generated content engines dictate what survives in our cultural ecosystem.
Renting culture breeds literal detachment: you consume, you forget, you move on, you consume, you consume, you consume. There’s no sense of ownership, and without ownership comes a subtle erosion of agency.
For us marketers, this is a warning. Brand loyalty anchored purely in transitory content or fleeting trends is inherently fragile.
Consider the psychology behind the archival impulse. Collecting, preserving, and curating are all about control. It’s why people still buy vinyl or print film and zines in 2025: it’s resistance against a system that says your culture is disposable.
If you understand this tension, you recognise audiences want to hold on, not just scroll past, and therefore have an opportunity to forge deeper connections. Limited editions, tangible experiences, and campaigns that respect permanence start to matter more than ever.
Of course, the question remains: who decides what is remembered?
When HBO Max deletes shows, when music disappears due to licensing lapses, or when an Instagram archive quietly vanishes, the narrative of culture is curated by corporations, not communities. And for marketers trying to tap into cultural relevance, that’s a tricky landscape.
We already know it’s not enough to chase viral trends. But we need to understand what our audience actually values enough to keep.
So, what’s the takeaway for brands and media professionals?
When everything is temporary, owning nothing is a strategic blind spot.
Campaigns need to account for the ephemeral nature of media while also respecting the human desire for permanence. Archiving is defiance. And if you can acknowledge this tension (and maybe even help audiences reclaim some ownership) you can create a form of trust and cultural relevance that no algorithm can erase.
The internet may be burning, but there’s still a chance to save something for tomorrow. And so the question remains: will your brand be the fire or the preservation?
-Sophie Randell, Writer
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