Is Culture Stuck? | Hacker News Reader

Is Culture Stuck?

paulskallas.substack.com

38 pointsvitabenes20 comments

Culture used to be a generations common denominator. People drifting towards certain media, fashion or consumer products that allowed to express themselves as individuals and as part of a larger group at the same time. That concept got grabbed by marketeers, who now monetize every fledgling new trend before it gets a chance to be organically adopted. It's likely through ads and product placement that new trends will reach you first. And they will tell you what value to assign to object X or style Y before you ever get a chance to make up your mind yourself.

People older than 30 will remember a time when their generation got to shock the previous ones with their electronic music and indie movies. Newer generations never had an equal opportunity to find their own 'vibe'. It was sold to them.

“Yes but”: the Sex Pistols were already “sold to”. Arguably even Elvis was. It’s just that generations of the past got to coalesce their chosen canons over a few years, because of physical limitations of media distribution that allowed for critical elaboration and recreation; now show-business is just another “business at the speed of light”, like Gates predicted, so trends get created and vaporised too quickly to properly decant into homogeneous subcultures. By the time you’ve learnt to play the guitar or your ProTools, your cult band or DJ is already passé.

I enjoyed this article.

However, one possible explanation is that much of what the article calls culture simply doesn't matter anymore.

Carriage Horse fashion seems stuck as well but people moved on to automobiles and then that went through rapid iterations. Maybe peak fashion or peak culture is a thing and becomes wasteful after a certain threshold. Also the fact all media is available at anyone's fingertips in a second means that they don't have to wait for the mass media gate keepers to finish milking trends before a new consumer identity starts being marketed because You can have Anything Right Now!

Were a less material society now so it seems inevitable that material culture will decline.

> Were a less material society now

Genuinely curious as to what led you into thinking that.

I’d guess they mean the “millenials prefer experiences to things” zeitgeist, which I think is broadly true.

Older generations valued having many possessions, whereas newer generations seem to see having lots of stuff as limiting. Of course, one way to not have much stuff is to regularly throw things away and buy more (e.g. fast fashion), which is... not ideal.

> In fact, Apple basically “improves” every new model by adding another camera to the back. Much like razor companies release a new razor by adding a new blade.

I'm not sure smartphones (or razors) need to be drastically redesigned every year.

However, internal upgrades matter: CPU, GPU, custom coprocessors, camera internals and processing, 5G, battery life, etc.. Ten years of incremental upgrades produces some impressive changes. Not to mention the software updates, new apps, and less obvious hardware improvements like better screens, waterproofing, lidar, etc..

The new iPhone has LiDAR. It's a really big deal — if LiDAR becomes standard in phones it changes the game completely for how 3d content is produced and consumed.

It's such a myopic statement to say `Apple basically “improves” every new model by adding another camera to the back`.

> it changes the game completely for how 3d content is produced and consumed.

Can you elaborate a bit on the possibilities?

I don't really like the word 'elaborate' because I'm too lazy to belabor the point. I can give you some examples, though.

— Here's an example of the kind of tech people are hacking up with this phone: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-D8OZNYQynY

— Here's an example of the kind of tech you can expect to become commonplace when anyone can take 3d photos: https://lookingglassfactory.com/

— Here's a line of hardware that's going to be able to be completely replaced with an app: https://matterport.com/

That's good elaboration I would say. Thanks

http://www.globalization101.org/timeline-of-media-mega-merge...

Well, that's a long timeline, but I could argue that the creative effects of the media megamergers probably "trickle down" from the C-suite at around this time.

It might also be when global revenues for movies began to surpass domestic, so the movies go to the current visual-heavy dialog-whatever formats and more into caricature marketing of long-running symbols (super/comic heroes).

But I would agree, the 1995-2020 is basically the same as now fashion-wise superficially.

The fact that EVERYONE seems bombarded with distraction also seems to have engineered a culture that prevents deep thought, deep creativity, and reflection. So creativity seems superficial, which will also seem recycled.

The algorithms, be it computer or more universal marketing "strategies" (aka algorithms) are an interesting point. Marketing is a lot more prevalent, since you now carry a mobile advertising portal and happily consume it as much as possible.

It seems as if the virtual omniscience of the internet makes subcultures impossible since there is no mystery anymore.

Subcultures were a primary driver of all this cultural churning through the decades. Greasers, hippies, metalheads, punks, etc.

In the past people were able to differentiate themselves this way. Outside the subculture nobody would know what you are doing, or the words you use. They may fear you.

And you couldn't just be anyone in order to achieve a certain look. Punk gear didn't come off the rack. Now it does.

Now you could have a conversation with any random stranger in full goth attire and everyone will carry on as if nothing is out of the ordinary.

At most they will just think you are lame, and a LARPer.

I had hoped the internet would enable formally disparate subcultures to get a slightly better "critical mass". You do see this in places...

But the net effect is that the outreach allows the "big media" to increase their footprint, and that footprint quashes innumerable nascent subcultures from forming, just from sheer greed in consuming your attention.

Boredom also used to fuel imagination.

I reckon the studios cooked their goose. They started having an outsized focus on big budget blockbusters, given the enormous investment required they preferred to stick to safe bets such as existing franchises and crowd pleasing story lines. The age of streaming means they need a lot more content, I believe there's a massive market for medium budget movies at the moment. Aside from Netflix's studio, who are ahead of the curve, the rest of the studios have been caught with their pants down and are scrambling to deal with the fallout, that covid fast-tracked.

All those big-budget sequels are also designed to make money globally, so they tend to avoid cultural context by design.

We are in an internet revolution which seems at least 10 times faster than the industrial revolution so something will be happening.

I think people tend to forget the quantity, rough figures -

IMDb "Top 250" (Sorted by Year Descending) https://www.imdb.com/search/title/?groups=top_250&sort=year,...

2011-2020 - 47

2001-2010 - 47

1991-2000 - 44

1981-1990 - 27

1971-1980 - 21

1961-1970 - 16

sequel/remakes/second in franchises ~9 2011-2020, ~7 2001-2010, ~3 1991-2000

That list simply reflects the fact that older movies are forgotten and newer movies are more popular.

The rate of studio releases has been flat for decades and is even declining.[1] Television shows have certainly grown in number, diversity, and quality. But perhaps that's just because we spend more time in front of screens and have more disposable income, not because the pace of art and culture has sped up.

[1] See https://stephenfollows.com/how-many-films-are-released-each-... But before you argue that this is evidence of acceleration, if you read further down, and if you follow the money, it's more a reflection of a deluge of independent "releases" that nobody is actually watching. And it's not a long-tail phenomenon that's growing the viewership market; the vast majority of people only watch studio films.

2020 - 1968 = 52 years (counterculture in full speed by then)

1968 - 52 = 1916 (who knows what was going on then, except WWI but a lot different than 1968)

So stuck is an understatement

Tl;dr

> Culture is no longer made. It is simply curated from existing culture, refined, and regurgitated back at us. The algorithms cut off the possibility of new discovery.

At first there was gaming culture (clans, leagues, events, lan parties, modding, communities, etc). Now there's "watch someone else play" culture. Really shallow and self-oblivious like with much of the rest of the web.

(I know some things have survived, but certainly not grown proportionally with internet user base)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com