Article by ICG member Hanna Chalmers
Sameness is everywhere. And the internet is to blame.
Much has been written about the plague of the global coffee shop, so called ‘enshittification’, AI eating (or reading) itself, the global TikTok ‘mewing’ of teenage boys, beauty standards that reduce all women to a Love Island model of smoothness, all lips and lashes. The colours of beige, putty, cappuccino from cars to leggings, brands that all spout the same words, if it has been ‘crafted’ and ‘artisan’ for the last five years, it’s now all about ‘joy’.
It’s all so seamless and dull.
We’ve reached a point in mainstream culture that has never felt less exciting.
As a life long fan, watcher, non sneery participator and lover of #mainstreamculturethis is a hard truth to stomach.
The algorithm, designed to serve us what we want to see (buy) and tempt us with what it thinks we might want to see, is driving us downwards into a spiral of sameness and echo chambers. At best, and most hopefully, we are served more of the niche content we are interested in, at worst algorithms suck us into new uncomfortable and sometimes sinister spaces.
All the while, it’s watching what we look at, ready to flood our screen spaces with more of what we have half-heartedly browsed.
This surveillance has, until now, been a price worth paying for many, the content vs ads balance felt worth it. But, as content creators are pushed to create blander content in order to get the brand deals – again we are seeing – people that we might have enjoyed watching in the past – become less idiosyncratic, less opinionated, less lively. And in doing so, they become less interesting to watch, more cynical and more sales focused.
But this surveillance, which is the pact we make as social users, whether as viewers or creators, is also becoming riskier. As the geopolitical climate hardens and becomes more divided – what we view, say or do, online is being more widely monitored. For most of us, similarly to the balance of content vs ads – this notion of surveillance has felt tolerable (less so in Germany where the long shadow of cold war surveillance tactics has impacted heavily on concepts of privacy).
Recently, we have seen stories emerge of law makers attempting to access period apps in order to police women’s bodies. We’ve seen broadcasters lose their jobs for voicing their opinions. We also police our own reading material according to our preferences politically and culturally. And that means there is a shrinking of exchange, less open conversations across the boundaries.
A lot has been said and written about this process of silo-fication. Less is said about the consequences of losing out in being curious about other people and different cultures.
As a Gen X’er (just) I grew up in the 90’s rave scene. We were unsurveilled – we raved, we did what often looks like quite mad dancing, many took ecstasy and gurned (!) for hours in fields all over the country with no thought given to how they looked – male and female alike.
Looking at the footage (there are so many pages/accounts on social media devoted to old 90’s rave footage) as someone that was there, and that has experienced what life was like before the internet, it still has the ability to sort of surprise me – it looks totally anarchic – unfettered, unconstrained, nuts and genuinely joyful.
Watching this old rave content with Gen Z’ers (my teenage sons) it’s sort of incomprehensibleto them to have lived in a moment that was so unsurveilled. And it brings into sharp relief the constraints of today’s level of surveillance and self policing.
Is it any wonder clubs are dying a death – when everyone now feels so self-conscious, body and internally focused, rather than outward looking?
But as we see in trend cycles, as mainstream culture feels like its imploding in on itself, interesting things, as ever, are emerging at the edges. It’s more or less off-line – or at the very least in private online spaces, – it’s smaller, more DIY in sensibility, and it’s a safer space for its participants.
What we’re seeing is a return to difference. There is real emotion, angrier music/art/media, a rejection of so-called perfection, more anarchic, non branded, not chasing ‘likes’, with an embrace of greater physicality, bodies that we simply inhabitrather than view from the outside in and outspokenness. A fuck you attitude, is just around the corner.
And as a Gen X’er looking on – I can’t wait to see more.
#enshittification #entertainment #massmarket #mainstreamculture #subcultures #offline #rageagainstthemachine #ai #punk #rave #politics #sameness