I feel like social media trough its amplification has lead to a global sync in topics and experiences.
I’d argue a kid growing up India or China shares much more culturally today with a western Kid than 30 years ago.
Take the news for example. Last weeks it was tariffs. The entire world was talking about the same thing.
To the contrary I feel like we are living more and more in the same global reality going from one headline to the next every week.
But everyone knows Britney Spears, even if you were never in her target demographic. This sort of global fame now requires so much more to reach because of how many are really locked into hyper personalized online experiences. I used to be able to reference the latest big movie or show and people would know, now that’s mostly turned into an explanation that the movie or show even came out and exists.
There's still enormously mainstream culture. Even more enormous in the fat tail than before.
There's just also a shocking depth in the mid tail now too.
The problem with movies is that Hollywood killed itself and tech helped. Movies and TV just suck now, for the most part.
Music, fashion, and visual culture are still alive and well.
Taylor Swift has relatively niche popularity in India.
Chinese are blocked from accessing any western social media, and no access to YouTube, Netflix, Spotify, etc. Taylor Swift is popular there but the Chinese have their own version of the internet separate from ours.
Not just the Internet. Before cable and satellite TV, even. Similar to Muhammad Ali in that sense - a globally renowned icon, regardless of cultural or languge barriers. In the west, there is the idea of a rivalry between Michael Jackson and Prince, but globally, there was only one King of Pop.
Taylor Swift has mind-boggling levels of fandom in the Anglosphere (even if it is largely limited to women), but her music is pretty straightforward, there are other artists like her who would be considered interchangeable with her given enough publicity. But the full package of Michael Jackson was groundbreaking and inimitable: the musical production, the dance moves, the songwriting and the music videos.
I challenge anyone from the '80s not to know of a few songs by Madonna or Michael Jackson.
Taylor is huge with some fans and completely unknown to her not-fans and there seem to be a steel transition between the two states.
This is unheard of for children to say this. If you mean adults, there were plenty of adults in the 80s that didn’t know Madonna songs, and even Michael Jackson
You probably think this because you were a child or young adult at the height of her fame.
My parents, who were middle aged at the time, certainly don't know who Brittney Spears is. They may have heard of her, but they couldn't recognize her or name any of her songs.
Consider this thought experiment. Imagine you're going to get coffee with either a random person in your neighborhood, or a random HN user. Which conversation will have more shared topics of interest?
This is the "global village" which was prophesied in the 1960s. It won't go away until interstellar colonization creates communication delays and a new era of cultural fragmentation.
What you’re describing is an echo chamber. Which is what most sites optimize to produce (when optimizing for engagement and). I switch between bsky where it frequently feels that way “everyone is talking about Y” and mastodon where the chronological timeline makes it clear that a lot of people might be talking about it, but they’re also talking about other things.
I feel that one of the most broken things about our current reality (with so many social sites) is that it feels so singular and shared, but turns out that’s not the case at all. My partner and I have started to use the phrase “my internet” to refer to the general vibe we are taking in as in “is your internet talking about scandal Z?” I’m frequently surprised stuff that totally flys under their radar (and vice versa).
Sure the shared cultural experience of being limited to a handful of TV channels is gone, but it's been replaced by a handful of streaming services. The world has shared the Marvel Cinematic Universe and 800lb sisters and Taylor Swift.
First time I hear of these. I now wish I had not looked them up (I did not think it would be so literal).
(I also now realise that I cannot even remember how Taylor Swift sounds like, despite hearing about her quite frequently...)
When I was young you couldn't NOT know the song "semi-charmed life" by third eye blind, or 50 other songs. Nowadays idk if that's the case. Then again, I'm not sure how much would be lost if my whole middle school didn't know the song "shake that Laffy taffy".
... I mean, that's because it's a global economic crisis. In the early 70s, the entire world was talking about the oil crisis, another induced economic shock. Late noughties? The Great Financial Crisis. That sort of thing is _always_ going to be news everywhere.
The whole world was talking about tariffs? Nope. They were talking whatever they saw on their personalised feed.