• Elle Nerdinger

The Internet has given more visibility to a wider range of topics, ideas, flavors, and aesthetics than ever before. Our culture is growing together - not only through corporate globalization - but though a network that is still free enough to allow people to share, see and become inspired every day by what others share. This has lead to a wider scope of what is cool or acceptable. For at least the last two decades, the Internet is making it possible for formerly isolated people or groups with special interests to band together and claim visibility. This enables potential access to becoming part of what is called the mainstream. 

This new situation is the stage for a new form of credibility concerning many things fabulous, whimsy, and fashionable. As the year 2016 has put many question marks in front of things we have formerly taken for granted, our wold has been turned upside down. For for better or worse. This has not only given more visibility for political angst to enter popular discourse. It has also made way for a growing number of formerly unpolitical media outlets and parts of our culture to become political. These areas are becoming platforms for formerly marginalized parts of our culture that are now shouting out loud to be heard – and are taken seriously. 

This talk will show how the Internet has not only lead us to something like a boss fight to defend diversity, democracy, and the right to decide who you want to be, against harder and stronger conservatism dreaming of past greatness. It's about how our views of what credibility and political weight look like - and how it has  changed drastically in 2016 alone. 

Taking a deeper look into what has changed and why, can help us realize how far the population of planet Earth has come and what potential there is, if only we keep embracing diversity as something that makes humanity as a whole stronger, happier and more peaceful.