Yes, all generations have their unique references and fixations. But what’s different for generations growing up with the internet is that ads/marketing optimization has made it easier to create the same signals across different cultural mediums, so everything roughly becomes, looks and sounds the same. Gen AI is only going to make this worse, especially for music.
Nothing makes this more obvious than the fact that even the “alternative” culture is cookie cutter down to a set of ingredients and shapes. For example, black lipstick if you’re {type 1} {goth}, {makeup item} on men, etc. It’s not “alternative” if it’s an identity uniform.
The other disappointing thing is that even crossing international borders doesn’t change what you see and experience because there’s a checklist of experience optimization that filters out anything unique, different, or weird that may not be immediately accessible.
You’re all on my lawn.
techblueberry•1h ago
All the mediums she listed are old now. Manga and anime have been around since I was a kid in the 80’s watching Akira. We’ve been having the “are video games art” now for decades. Debate over. They are.
I think culture has to have a more narrow definition than like “all the creative output”. And the atomization of creative has an impact on what we collectively experience as “culture”.
If you want a new word to mean i can dig through all the things and find unique things i like. Great! I agree, that possibility has never been greater. But that’s not culture.
And I feel like one of the big differences to say the rise of hair metal and EDM, is that young people recognize this shift as much or more than old people, in fact I feel like it’s a pretty narrow set of like millennial influencers trying to push this idea that Tik Tok is just as valid a cultural touchstone as classic rock.