Something I was reading lately is how if you look at people's media consumption habits they're simultaneous more oriented around monoculture media and weird obscure stuff. The basic idea being that the middle part of media is getting hollowed out.
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In other words, there are a small number of mega-spectacle films and TV shows everyone has to see, and then there's a huge amount of fragmented media consumption in the long tail. And ever less in between.
Something that really interests me about the next, say 30 years of media, is whether we reach a kind of final state for fragmentation. Basically, it's already insanely easy to make stuff to post online. But as AI video improves, it also becomes possible for everyone to make high end stuff.
And so at some point does monoculture just cease to exist? Or at least, never again exist like it once did, where some high percentage of all people saw some particular movie or heard some particular song.
What's interesting about that it's it's kinda a mix of past and future?
I think the past you imagine, never happened. There were always traveling minstrels who carried songs from place to place, and there were always songs that were so hugely popular that ~everyone knew them
Modern music notation traces back to the 10th century and was used by The Church to ensure that services everywhere in Christendom could play the same music
Meaning, part of the lost charm of modernity is that places are less different. You can't -- as you really could only 50 years ago -- wander around rural areas collecting songs that had passed down from long ago and far away and evolved locally over time.
One of the cool things about modern media is that it doesn't have to be mass media. If you're really into 1840s chamber music, you probably have several options available. But it's not the old fragmentation of different communities. It's the new fragmentation, down to the individual.
I, being a maker of weird media, benefit from this personally. But, I also find it kind of distressing because it seems like an end state you can't get out of, where we have ever less shared life experiences?
I guess the extreme version of this would be a world where half of the time, I watch stuff like Squid Game, not because I actually like it but because everyone around me talks about it; and the other half, I watch some AI-generated shows that Netflix has produced just for me and nobody else?
The top end has already gone. Seinfeld would get 30 million viewers; even American Idol at its peak. Now the top end is all football and it peaks at about 20m.
Prestige replaced it, but Game of Thrones and ‘the series everyone is talking about’ are in the rearview mirror.
I was just looking at this! The Simpsons spanned this period, and the ratio of peak to current is about 30:1 in terms of audience. Some of that is because of streaming, though.
That statement sounds weird to me. It feels like most of the media me and the people I know consume would be in the middle part in terms of how many people know it / heard of it. Usually stuff from a few specific genres that isn't super weird or obscure.
For example, Three Body Problem isn't something "everyone has watched", but "everyone" in a certain demographic probably has.
On the other hand, "everybody" would occasionally watch things like game shows, but most people would only watch a tiny bit of those compared to the binge-worthy shows.
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What's interesting about that it's it's kinda a mix of past and future?
I once nearly had an existential crisis from seeing multiple kinds of bananas in a grocery store up on a mountain in Virginia in March.
The abundance is good, but the sameness is unsettling.
Prestige replaced it, but Game of Thrones and ‘the series everyone is talking about’ are in the rearview mirror.
On the other hand, "everybody" would occasionally watch things like game shows, but most people would only watch a tiny bit of those compared to the binge-worthy shows.