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Notes -
Do you see an end to pop culture within our lifetimes?
Undeniably, we've reached the bookend to the 80's blockbuster era of mega franchises like Star Wars. But the vibe of recent years is not only "These corporate products suck" but a subtle apathy toward media in general. Songs are going viral on TikTok, hitting #1 for a single week, then disappearing. Obscure songs from the past are going briefly viral and then disappearing. We see and consume more media than ever, yet paradoxically we care about it less than ever too. There are no new phenomena like the Deadheads or 80s goths where media spearheads an alternate lifestyle. There are no new games we continue talking about for years after release. Fanbases are less passionate, less distinct, and shorter lived. Fanfiction is less popular. Being a gen Z fan of the smiths or deftones means having their greatest hits in your playlist while not knowing any of the band members besides Morrissey, Marr and Chino, let alone their history, their gear, their influences, famous gigs, etc. Modern artists get this treatment too. People just don't care anymore.
Do you guys notice that in your hobbies too? I.e. younger "fans" totally lacking the ability to nerd out? Do you sense the general level of passion drying up?
Roblox and Fortnite are the big ones for young people. The reason there hasn’t been a ton of new contenders for popular games is that the industry has figured out which game types are most addictive and have optimized for it. If you want to compete against Fortnite, you will have to compete against a company with 100x more resources and half a decade in specialized knowledge. You need a psychological zero day to compete against Fortnite, in the way that Fortnite competed against CoD (more colors, more discovery, more progression, third person skin views, updated maps, etc). Fortnite was such an insane piece of popular culture that when I saw an opera in ~2019 a character did the dancing emote to the laughter of the crowd. Fortnite was plausibly more culturally dominant than any other game in history — it changed how kids danced and created new slang (“bro did the default emote”)
The egirl and eboy aesthetic is arguably new, and it’s not like there were many 80s goths
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