monoculture

Many social critics, notably Chuck Klosterman, have written a lot about the disappearance of the 20th century monoculture. The basic thesis is simple: in the 20th century, limited mass media and television created a more focused, common national pop culture. TV shows had fixed times and huge audiences, which in turn created common watercooler conversations. News came from limited elite outlets which, for better or worse, created a shared mass understanding of politics. Ditto for youth culture via music and MTV. Superstars were larger than life; the hardest thing to do in 1984 was finding a way to avoid Michael Jackson and Madonna. Modern proliferation and decentralization of digital media have shattered that. Algorithms drive individually-curated tastes; news comes from a million different sources. To a first approximation, no one (and no thing) is famous anymore. Klosterman loves to note that most episodes of Major Dad—the completely forgettable modestly-popular sticom from the…