Let's make sure we understand...

VS.

You're standing by the water fountain in a park and just across the concrete path, about 30 feet from you, there's a young lady sitting on a bench. Very quietly, with an intense focus, and a degree of serious concentration, she's lost in a book that she's reading. There's very little movement from her other than the occasional rubbing of her nose or a quick scratching of her head. Not drawing any attention to herself, she's clearly enthralled in whatever's happening on those book pages. 

As you're standing there, quietly observing her, you hear a bunch of yelling and shouting in the opposite direction. Across the grassy field, from where you're standing, two guys are talking smack to each other. As a small crowd begins to form around them, they heighten the intensity of the situation by egging on the two men. You immediately lose interest in the young lady, as nothing eventful is happening there. The two gents, though...that has your attention. Something's about to go down...

The young lady reading her book is fundamentals (personified). Quiet, serene, and a bit on the excitement-less side. This can be the nature of fundamentals, but not necessarily always the case. She's  focused, engaged, and measured in her responses to anything outside of what she's immediately doing. At first glance, she's not much of an attention grabber, a bit mundane to an extent. If you were to chat her up, in a conversation though, you'd probably see that there's more to her than meets the eye.

Now on the other hand, the two gents getting ready to throw down... are hype. Loud, brash, over-exaggerated and often seeking attention for the sake of seeking attention. They have the crowd frenzied, rooting for them, with excitement stirring in the air. The crowd is animated; clamoring and in an uproar, interested in seeing these two men go at it. There's alot of excitement buzzing and plenty is going on. Peel the layers back and peer just below the surface of all this ruckus; nothing of significance is really happening at all.

This is what happens often in today's hashtag, like my page, what's trending now, this week's youtube sensation, give me hype or give me death environment. Now there's nothing wrong with this in and of itself, but when it occupies so much space that you can barely see, hear or get access to quality concepts and/or fundamentally good and sound ideas, then this is when it becomes a problem.

What makes this doubly a problem is when this hype-space becomes the market interpretation of choice (across many channels). This now creates a (social media) reality distortion field - It's claiming to bring you customers, make your brand relevant, give you buzz (and I could go on), when in acutality it's often lacking conversations around numerous other value factors (story, emotion, empathy...). These accepted interpretations that run rampant in 'social media circles' speak partially to what's happening in the market. Digital media pundits many times focus on fleeting value that feeds short term "hype," often getting lost in their own techno-babble, forgetting about the issues of sound ideas and basic business fundamentals.