The term Money Grab has begun to pop up in culture this year. I first noticed hearing it during conversations with people about the COVID-19 Pandemic. It became aligned with many terms and or themes throughout the years masses of generated content. It\’s hard to identify the source but I have begun to document its use in content being generated for the internet such as news, media, and editorial sources.
Just this week an article on the accusation and alleged sexual abuse by Bob Dylan was published by Rolling Stone. The article is titled Bob Dylan Brands Sex Abuse Lawsuit a ‘Brazen Shakedown’ by Unbalanced ‘Psychic’. The story announces the lawsuit as a “ludicrous” money grab by an unbalanced “psychic” who once stated she had been “abducted by aliens and piloted their spaceship.”
Another article published by the New York Times this week uses the term Cash Grab. This story presents a narrative of a hockey team in South Dakota that placed $5000 on the hockey rink and allowed/forced/presented the opportunity for ten teachers to compete/fight over the money for use in their classrooms. The article was titled “Hockey Team Apologizes for ‘Degrading’ Cash Grab for Teachers.”
In my opinion there are terms that become repeated in culture as well as commonly accepted trends that are associated with the new norms of each generation and the Zeitgeist of the times. Generation Z and or the Zennials are what I now call Generation Content and or The Content Generation. The popularity of postmodern ideas and appropriation and the blurring of plagiarism has been a big focus of this generation. How we source our content and or generate/aggregate new content from other people and let\’s admit it, even bots, creates a sort of vacuum and or sort of cyclical reiteration of data and content. This method sometimes latches onto catch phrases and struggles to copy and paste new synonyms for such New Narratives.
With that said the new narratives, as iterative or reiterative as they are, the process of this is rooted in what I believe to be the Hegelian Dialectic. This to me is a very good thing. Although there will always be redundancy and perhaps heaps of trash to wade through, there will also be huge rewards in the end for those with a critical eye.
For more works by Derek Rankins you can visit his personal website at www.derekrankins.com