I feel like the 2010s are the first decade in 100 years that doesn’t have a recognizable aesthetic or vibe.
Every decade since the Roaring Twenties had its own recognizable culture, visual aesthetic, music and so on. In the 2010s, the Internet allowed us to become cultural omnivores. It’s good that everybody had access to whatever niche subculture they enjoy but it also meant that there was no more monoculture that we all shared.
I’m not quite so sure whether this still completely applies to our current times. Nowadays the feedback loop between the cultural industries and its consumers is the shortest it has ever been. The industry knows what you consume, when you consume it and they A/B test so they can figure out what leads you to consume more and more. It is certainly no accident that the average length of a tiktok video is also the average length of a tv advertisement (around 30 seconds) and like where do you go from there?
(Pssssst…the same thing was happening decades ago lol)
Pop music had a well-established formula back in the 90s, for example. It wasn’t Beastie Boys, Nirvana, and NWA playing on radio stations. It was Backstreet Boys, N’Sync, 98 Degrees, Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Mandy Moore, Mariah Carey, and dozens of other copycat Mickey Mouse Club kids. Then there were the Will Smith movie tie-ins and other soundtracks topping the charts.
Corporations had this shit down to a formula a long time ago. There’s ad placements in movies for as long as there have been movies (Marty McFly just so happens to say “Wow nice truck” as one drives by in the background in a film about a DeLorean? Totally not a paid ad by Ford).
The only thing that’s changed is the internet. They don’t use Tupperware parties anymore, they use food review channels on TikTok. The same half dozen companies that owned 98% of all media in 1995 still own 98% of all media in 2025.
fucking obviously this has been a process that has happened since decades. What I am saying is that the internet has given the industry such deep and granular analytical view of the consumer that there just isn’t any further room for change in that system.
The cool thing is that if you believe in Marxism there never was room for change in that system because the base (what we can possibly make and who decides what to make) determines the superstructure (culture).
You’re simply complaining about the change in strategy of selling cultural commodities, something that you never had a say in.
When I wrote “change” I obviously didn’t mean the fucking revolution, I meant that there’s no more space for mass culture to go. And sure if I lived in 1915 I’d think that would obviously be good because that’d mean capitalism was at its end but I sadly have to live in 2025 where we’ll destroy our planet before that happens