Pop Culture Is Dying

Pop culture is dying. The unifying, everchanging elements of our collective culture have been on the decline. And  it's going to continue to decline as time goes on. At the moment, it kind of feels like people  are more fragmented than ever in our world, and a lot of that has to do with  the deterioration of pop culture. The decline of pop culture  really started in the 2010’s. What's considered pop culture now is often a  continuation of something that existed pre-2010. Movie studios, for exam

ple, don't often  invest in big budget blockbusters now based on something that did not exist before 2010. Let's take a look at some of the biggest pop culture standouts of the past  few years to see what I mean. Spider-Man: No Way Home had a huge moment in  2021, but the Spider-Man character first debuted in the popular zeitgeist in 1962 via comic form. Barbie and Oppenheimer, which had a big same day release moment in 2023—Barbenheimer—was  based off a doll that premiered in 1959, and a histor

ical event from the 1940’s. I'll let you decide which one was the doll, and which one was the historical event. Even Taylor Swift, who is arguably the biggest musician in the world at the time I'm recording  this video, began building her audience in 2006 with her self-titled album. Again, pre-2010's. If you look at newer elements of pop culture,  they aren't necessarily resonating in the same way, or entering the cultural  conversation on the same mass scale. No shade to Dua Lipa, but Dua Lipa

is one  of the biggest pop stars at the moment. She had the number one Billboard hit  in 2021 with the song Levitating, but if she were walking down a street, she might  not be recognized by the majority of people, and that could differ from… I don't know… a pop  star that had a number one hit twenty years ago. Her presence in pop culture is somehow limited,  even though she's at the top of her game. The past few years, it seems like people  are more interested in sharing their individualized Sp

otify Wrapped list at the  end of the year instead of discussing the Billboard top charting songs of the year. Individualized tastes seem to be becoming more important than collective culture. So let's take a look at pop culture, how it developed over the years, and  why, exactly, it's declining today. By the way, if you've seen any other  videos on my channel, you'll know that my style is usually more… chaotic. But I wanted to try something a little bit calmer. It's an experiment; we're going t

o see  how it goes. Popular culture, or pop culture, is defined as ‘a set of practices, beliefs,  artistic outputs, and objects that are dominant or prevalent in a society at a given point in time.’ Pop culture has its roots in mass communication, because in order for something to become popular,  it must be widely consumed. We use the term pop culture now to discuss shared cultural elements,  but back in the 1800’s, culture was actually split. There were two types of culture; the first  type wa

s called official culture, or high culture. This included highbrow cultural elements intended  to be consumed by the elites. Official culture included literary books, operas… Off… … Official culture included literary  books, operas, art exhibits… you know, elitist stuff. In the mid nineteenth century,  a counterculture of regular people emerged, which was then named popular culture. Popular  culture was thought to be lower class, and it did not carry the same status. You know; it was  thought to

be easily accessible by normal people. Popular culture included things like jokes that  were meant to be spread across populations, and early popular culture was often more localized  due to a lack of wider distribution opportunities. But increased general education, AKA the ability  for a lot more people to read because school systems were better, allowed popular culture  to really begin to thrive in the mid 1800’s. And also because of the Industrial Revolution. As masses of regular people mov

ed into cities during the Industrial Revolution, who often  did not have a lot of money and had to live close to one another, these people began  creating a shared common culture that updated more frequently with their shared proximity. The first real media form of popular culture during this time were the penny dreadfuls,  especially in the United Kingdom. These were mass produced, cheaply printed small  books meant to be rapidly consumed that contained low-brow stories. Penny dreadfuls were mu

ch cheaper than novels that circulated around the official culture. Things like sporting events, pub culture, and newspapers also served as early pillars of popular culture. But what really accelerated the growth of popular culture was the advent of film and radio. I talk about the expansion of film in the United States of America in my video about why  popcorn was initially banned in movie theaters, but film and radio allowed ideas to spread  across society like never before. There wasn't nece

ssarily a barrier to entry when consuming  film and radio, besides, you know… buying a movie ticket or having an actual radio to turn on. This  allowed mass communication to spread across wide demographics of people. I mean, theoretically. Popular culture became even more widespread in the 1950’s with the widespread distribution of  televisions in households. In 1958, the term popular culture was shortened to pop culture,  and we've known it as pop culture ever since. The Walt Disney World Resor

t in Orlando, Florida  even has a value resort theme to pop culture called Pop Century. It has five areas, and each  area represents a different decade of pop culture; the 1950’s, ‘60’s, ‘70’s, ‘80’s and '90’s.  I wanted to mention this resort somewhere in the video because I thought it was  cool, but I couldn't figure out where to put it in the video, so… here we are. Pop culture marched on through the 20th century with its ever-shifting trends that  everybody talked about, but since the 2010’s

, pop culture has been on the decline. And since  the 2020’s, that decline has greatly accelerated. Human loneliness is also an emerging problem in  the modern world, too, especially for younger people. A 2023 study found that thirty-eight  percent of Gen Z's actually report feeling lonely. So what does the lack of unified pop culture  in the modern world have to do with loneliness? Pop culture is actually the result of monoculture.  The definition of monoculture is ‘The cultivation of a single

crop in a given area’, which does  not make any sense in the context of this video, because we were never talking about farming in  the first place. But today, the term monoculture is often used to express ideas about a  monolithic culture, a singular culture. For monoculture to thrive, culture needs to be  driven from the top down, and traditional media companies created an environment of monoculture. If we go back to the origins of pop culture and look at, you know, the penny dreadfuls, the  n

ewspaper, film, radio, T.V, whatever, it all… more or less… had the same format. Executives at  the top decided what content would be distributed via their distribution channels, and as they  decided what was, and what was not shown, they became Gatekeepers. Gatekeepers of culture.  And this made sense logistically; it wasn't, you know, necessarily devious or anything. Mass media companies are companies that are trying to make money by making mass media. These  businesses needed to maximize thei

r own profit by deciding what to publish—and what not to  publish. A lot of time, money, collaboration, and resources were poured into the projects that  these mass media companies produced. Pre-selected and screened elements then were blasted down to  the masses, where the businesses producing the media would hopefully profit. For a long  time, there was no other effective way to have your media shown unless you went through  these mass media companies, and these media companies would see each

other succeed with  different things and then copy one another with new projects. This top- down capitalistic  approach led to a monoculture of mass media. The public wasn't forced to like anything though;  for example, with movies, there's box office hits, and there's box office bombs. But both come  through the same kind of method. You know; the top down with a movie studio. And the biggest  successes in monoculture often cemented themselves in the collective cultural narrative. I have a  sep

arate video on social proof, but when something catches on with some segments of society, a lot  of new people will also give it a chance because they think that they'll like it themselves. This helped lead to cultural phenomenon’s in a monoculture. Due to the pre-screen top-down  distribution method of monoculture, monoculture did not necessarily produce a great diversity of  thought; a lot of ideas being blasted down were of similar mindsets, even if they were produced by  different companies

. With traditional television, audience members would watch the same episode of  the same T.V. show at the exact same time. If a half hour show started at eight, for example,  everybody watching would start at eight, and then finish the show at eight thirty,  even though many people were viewing the television show individually in their own homes. As a society, watching the T.V. show was the collective group experience. Phrases like ‘the  water cooler effect’ came into prominence, where people w

ould gather in social settings to discuss  the show that they'd all seen the night before, and to speculate about what would happen in the  future. This created a shared cultural identity. Radio stations tended to play the same singles,  too, so everybody around knew the same songs. With similar radio, books, television, and  movies, pop culture could thrive across varied audiences because people were engaging with the  same source material at roughly the same time. So what happened in the 2010'

s  that disrupted pop culture? People often point towards social media as  the reason that pop culture began to fall, but that's not necessarily true. Instead, it's  really about the lack of gatekeepers at the top of social media, but that's kind of complicated. When social media platforms were introduced in the mid to late 2000’s, they often served as  a digital extension of real life, where users interacted with people that they actually knew.  But that's not always how social media is now, an

d in many ways, social media has taken the  place of traditional media in many people's minds. Natalie Portman, a movie star you  probably know, told Variety in 2024, “The striking thing has been the decline of  film as a primary form of entertainment. It feels much more niche now. If you ask someone  my kids's age about movie stars, they don't know anyone compared to YouTube stars… or whatever.” The decline of the movie star is a much broader issue, but the decline of the movie star is  related

to the decline of pop culture, and the two tie together because of algorithms. Somewhere  along the way, the early concept of social media lost the plot a little bit. Instead of being about  interacting with people that you knew, social media became about expressing individualism for a  lot of people, especially the younger generations. In fact, fifty-eight percent of Gen Z’s  recently expressed in a study that social media is the only place they feel like they can  authentically be themselves.

Social media serves as a hybrid of entertainment and socialization,  where users interact with people that they know, people that they don't know, for a mixture  of entertainment and socialization purposes, which largely contrasts to the  non-interactive traditional entertainment only media. On social media platforms, users often upload content that they've made themselves, and algorithms assist other  users in determining what content they should, and what content they should not watch. Or, i

n the  case of short form content, algorithms determine exactly what a user will, or will not see. Therefore, algorithm’s become the new gatekeepers. Except, algorithms are kind-of  complicated. Streaming services use algorithms to help users find traditional media. But  with streaming services, there's only so many shows that a streaming service can produce  and still be profitable. Many streaming services aren't actually profitable right now, but that's a  different story altogether. Social me

dia, however, is largely individualized, with the content  it's shown being user generated. But algorithms are creating problems that are impacting our  society at large, and often in severe ways. Unlike traditional media, there is no barrier to  entry to have your voice heard on social media. I did not need to get an executive's  approval to upload this YouTube video; I simply decided to film myself, edited  this video, uploaded it, and am hoping for the best. Anyone can upload anything they  w

ant on social media, which is, honestly, either a good or bad thing. Viewing options seem  endless, unlike a streaming service, and users will interact with content that specifically suits  their individualized taste. This, by default, shatters the gatekeeping of traditional media,  encouraging a wider diversity of thought. Instead of a shared pop culture being pushed from  the top down, social media pushes content from the bottom up. Individualized recommendations point  users towards their ind

ividualized interests, and instead of encouraging more open conversations  within a shared monoculture, such as the water cooler effect, it can create subdivision and  polarization, which is clearly happening in our society today. Just… turn on the news. Come on. Regardless of the social media platform that you're on, an algorithm's main objective is to  keep you on their social media platform for as long as possible. For example, if this  video was recommended to you by YouTube, YouTube thought

that this might keep you  on YouTube for a longer period of time, thus allowing you to see more ads and making them  more money. And if you're still here, I assume that YouTube was right in in showing you this  video because, obviously, you made it this far. The thing is, it's not necessarily the function  of a social media platform to show you balance perspectives that you might not be interested in.  Instead, social media shows you content that it thinks you'll engage with, whether that's thi

ngs  that make you happy, things you'll find useful, things you'll find entertaining, or things that'll  outrage you in just the right way to stay engaged. And this is great for the social media platforms  because the longer somebody's on their platform, the more money they make. Additionally, to keep  people engaged on their platforms for as long as possible, social media algorithms will keep  showing people the things that they like, which is often just showing the same type of perspective  ov

er and over. This isn't necessarily a bad thing on the surface. Like, if I go on YouTube, I  would like to see videos recommended to me that I'm actually interested in instead of having  to go through a whole bunch of crap that I don't care about to hopefully find a video that I like. But this type of approach leads to polarization in society. Social media algorithms can actually  loop people in small, niche echo chambers, often blocking out opposing viewpoints and increasing  the prominence of

their own views to keep each user on the platform for as long as possible. This  is attributed to why many people, especially young people, feel like social media is the only place  they can authentically be themselves. Because it's easier to be yourself in a like-minded echo  chamber compared to a monoculture where there's a lot of different personalities, which can then  lead to loneliness in the real world because people can't relate to people like they can  online. It's a whole thing, don't

get me started. What this means is that, in a world  that's increasingly online, algorithms create skewed versions of reality that a lot  of people start to see as normal, or at least, extremely appealing. Let's circle back to that  Dua Lipa example. A lot of her success is due to social media platforms like Tik Tok. But instead  of her music spreading through society as a whole, social media algorithms can keep her confined to  a corner of the internet. Traditional media with their top- down ap

proach appears to be struggling  at the moment, whereas social media platforms with their bottom-up approach appear to be thriving.  And this, obviously, makes traditional media companies nervous. The social media platforms can  monetize varied echo chambers that coexist all at once housed on their social media platform,  but traditional media companies that have to produce their own expensive content are the  most profitable in a thriving monoculture. To majorly simplify this, it's a lot more 

efficient for a traditional media company to make one movie that engages everybody  than a whole bunch of movies that are made for different market segments… assuming, you  know, the budgets are similar. Obviously you want to spend the least amount of money to get  the highest amount of return. But people appear to be more interested in their niched out echo  chambers compared to an overarching monoculture. As pop culture has been on the decline, large mass  media companies have recently tried t

o launch new franchises, but they haven't always resonated with  audiences. There's a variety of reasons for this, which I will not be getting into during this  video, but I suspect a lot of it's actually a quality issue which makes the whole  situation more complicated… no one cares. What we've been seeing, you know, at the time of  this video, is that traditional media companies largely rely on franchises and elements that rose  to popularity pre-2010, because they're safe bets and were alread

y part of the monoculture pop  culture narrative. But when these traditional media companies try to make something new, it  doesn't necessarily have the same opportunity to spread now like it may have in a pre-2010's world. So where does that leave pop culture moving forward? No one knows what's going to happen in  the future, obviously. Artificial intelligence has the ability to divide pop culture even further. In  particular, auto generative AI, which is AI that can produce its own content. If

in the near future  it becomes easy for people to have AI create content for them and the public embraces the idea  of consuming auto generated content, people may ask AI to make them specific things and consume  content that's intended for them as a specific individual. This would place these individuals in  their own solo echo chambers. This scenario isn't even out of the realm of possibility, based  on current technological developments. Auto generative AI could get weird, I'm not going to 

lie, and I'm extremely freaked out about it. This could happen sooner than you think. But will AI play out like that in the future? Who knows! I don't. Traditional monoculture feels more like a thing of the past, and individualized, niche echo chambers  seem to be the future. I assume there's still going to be elements of an overarching pop culture  that's going to like, rise up, because we're human. We'll have to see! Popcorn used to be banned in  movie theaters, and yes, I'm trying to transiti

on you into the next video. I make no apologies. If  you want to know why popcorn was banned in movie theaters, please click on this video over  here! And thank you so much for watching!