Pop culture is spiralling.
I had no idea what “mad magazine autostereogram, cutecore” meant, but it was enough for Midjourney to create this:
Older generations have always been left out of the codewords and trends of the makers of pop culture, but the gatekeepers and lack of shelf space kept pop, popular. There are only 40 songs in the Top 40, only a few hit network TV shows.
Three things have changed:
- The long tail means that there’s room for more. Always. As many as 25% of all Spotify songs have only been listened to a few times. The average video on YouTube is seen once a day.
- AI generation of art, music, video and writing means that the pace of creation is going to grow exponentially.
- Memetic identities, genres and codewords are easier for AI to begin with than complex images. And so, new genres multiply, get exaggerated, evolve and morph into new genres. It’s genetic material, run amok.
The end result is that pop is not popular anymore. It may never be again. The center was a moment in time, but the edges are now everywhere.
We should plan accordingly.