How would we get another "Big Search"?

I remember replying to this thread a while ago but seeing it show up in the recent posts again, it's fun to revisit four years later.

I think to some extent, with the direction and popularity of lost media nowadays, the "big search" idea that has existed in different iterations of the community isn't around in the same way it used to be.

Back when the community was smaller, when topics like Clockman and ADWSS would come up, their popularity would expand beyond what the lost media community was. They would become more like internet mysteries or appeal to casual users because of their broad existence.

But nowadays I almost think it's the opposite, because the lost media community is so large and lost media itself is more defined, topics that end up gaining popularity get picked up by smaller groups or communities and mostly exist only within them.

I view this as a reason why we haven't seen any searches ever reach the popularity that ADWSS had, which was almost a decade ago at this point. The last big internet wide search I can recall was Go For a Punch, and while I wouldn't include it within the ranks of the classic big searches, I would definitely say it spread way beyond where a normal search would go.

Everyone Knows That might be the only other contender, but even then, it's mostly existed within the lostwave community and the discussions about it on here are limited. Jeff the Killer was also really popular for a while, but I never saw it talked about that much outside of the discord server dedicated to it, and a few YouTubers that specialized in covering scary lost media.

So even with the biggest topics that have made the rounds within the past couple years, they're still not really as broad and the appeal isn't as inclusive as the old, big topics used to be.