A boring segment

Are we stuck in a boring culture?

According to plenty of people, yes. For the purposes of the next few hundred words, we’ll ignore the irony of everyone making the same critique being equally boring. 

The Financial Times appears to be on the frontline of this argument. Jemima Kelly blames the mighty algo for feeding us what we already like, keeping us stuck in a stagnating loop. Janan Ganesh points to the fact we’re largely able to minimise mass societal and economic upheaval as an antidote to creative leaps forward.

They’re not wrong. Spiderman Brand New Day is on track to be a massive hit, yet is the 38th film of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Shows like The Office and Suits dominate streaming platform most watched lists. Israel Daramola at Defector points out that even mainstream hip hop has gotten old, although how Pharrell Williams is 53 is beyond us.

This is all before we even get to AI. A study from some academics with lots of names found that generative AI outputs quickly converged onto a narrow set of generic themes, no matter how varied the prompts. If you think culture is boring now, just wait until it's produced by a machine designed to aggregate what’s come before.

Even if you can create something truly different and original, getting anyone to pay attention is a whole new challenge. Such is the deluge of content, cutting through without an existing platform is becoming increasingly difficult. 

We may, therefore, be stuck with a boring culture. Perhaps the best thing we can do to help is to stop pointing that out.