In my sophomore year, I had an incredible art history professor who, when explaining modern art, once said: \u201cToday, we don\u2019t know which rules to break because there are no rules. We don\u2019t know what to do because we can do anything.\u201d She was referring to how, in the past, groundbreaking artists understood the rules well enough to subvert them meaningfully. Now, with no clear boundaries, true innovation has become harder to define.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Her point applies far beyond the arts. When creation in any field can be anything<\/em>, it becomes incredibly difficult not only to do something genuinely innovative but also to judge what\u2019s not innovative enough \u2014without slipping into the ridiculous or the bizarre, or both.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Looking at previous generations or decades, we can often define an era by its trends. As Jason Parham, a senior writer at WIRED<\/em>,<\/a> puts it: \u201cA generation\u2019s currency is measured in trends. Only these fads are no longer dictated by a handful of tastemakers. Instead, what gets crowned as cool is often determined by how well a trend appeals to the rhythms of a specific platform.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Before the internet, radio, TV, and magazines were the main gatekeepers of culture trends. For example, music videos on channels like MTV were a must-watch if you wanted to stay attuned to the latest fashion, style, vibe, and slang. Today, digital platforms dictate trends, based on sketchy algorithmic metrics and on how easy it is to replicate them. \u201cMediated through platforms, all trends, to a degree, become memes, our primary language of the internet, the digital tongue we all speak\u201d, Jason commented. And maybe sharing the same feeling as my art history professor, Jason called it the Age of Everything Culture: <\/em>a cultural soup where anything can be thrown in\u2014yet no matter what, it lacks flavor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cEvery day virtually there\u2019s a new kind of micro culture, micro niche, aesthetic or vibe,\u201d explains Tony Thorne, director of the Slang and New Language Archive at King\u2019s College London. \u200b\u201cAnd what is happening, in a way, is not new at all. It happened many times in popular culture in the past. (\u2026) What, of course, is new, though, is that the technology and the access to media has changed, and the media itself.\u201d He continues: \u200b\u201cFirst [there were] the internet and messaging, then mainly verbal platforms like Twitter and Reddit. But this has moved to much more visual-based platforms. That\u2019s what helps to shape these micro trends. Because of the way TikTok and Instagram work, that\u2019s helping to generate this kind of new media.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n As I\u2019ve written elsewhere, material actors<\/em> \u2014our tools and technologies\u2014 shape how we think. And as the saying goes, if you have a hammer, everything else is a nail. In this case, if you have Instagram and TikTok, everything else is a potential new short video.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n But does that mean trends are essentially dead?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n In this brave new online world, anything vaguely popular must be named and packaged to be sold as the next big thing<\/em>. \u201cNo one is sure exactly what a trend is anymore or if it\u2019s just an unfounded observation gone viral,\u201d writes VOX<\/em> reporter Terry Nguyen.<\/a> \u201cThe distinction doesn\u2019t seem to matter, since the consumer market demands novelty. It creates ripe conditions for a garbage-filled hellscape where everything and anything has the potential to be a trend.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n For example, Terry points out that \u201cTikTok plucks niche digital aesthetics out of obscurity and serves them up to an audience that might not have known or cared in the first place.\u201d Whereas aesthetics once played a meaningful role in shaping subcultures, they\u2019re now flattened into vague, viral visuals stripped of context and meaning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, the problem isn\u2019t trends themselves\u2014it\u2019s how they\u2019ve spiraled into a meaningless cycle of consumption and reproduction. And this trend-induced brain rot has spilled into how we communicate.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n This kind of binary, oversimplified communication reduces rich, complex culture into a doom-scrolling feed composed only of meaningless stuff<\/em>. In other words, what symbolized a certain group breaking away from some social norms by creating their own, now resembles an army of Rick and Morty\u2019s<\/em> Mrs. Meeseeks<\/a>, all screaming, \u201cLook at me!<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In this chaotic media landscape, calling something a \u201ctrend\u201d often serves as hollow propaganda\u2014a desperate plea for attention (\u201cLook at me!\u201d). And the truth is, no one really knows what\u2019s going on. Unfortunately, most people don\u2019t see a way out of it, leading to what writer Alexei Yurchak describes in his book Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More<\/a><\/em>, as hypernormalization. <\/em>He explained that when the USSR began to collapse, politicians and citizens kept acting as if nothing had changed, because they couldn\u2019t imagine an alternative status quo. History, it seems, repeats itself.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Taylor Lorenz, writing in The Washington Post<\/em><\/a>, observed that \u201cvirality has changed dramatically over the last decade,\u201d due to fragmented platforms, inflated metrics, and ever-shorter media lifespans. In this environment, even the idea of going viral has become devalued.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, an even deeper issue has emerged: when anything can be something, and no one really knows what\u2019s happening, we create room for grab-and-go<\/em> specialists, ready to make big statements that might go \u201cviral.\u201d The louder your opinion, the more attention it gets \u2014because this is the new metric of \u201csuccess\u201d. And just like a virus spreads sickness, culture begins to rot.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n When having an opinion becomes mandatory for \u201csucceeding\u201d in the digital world, everyone is expected to chime in \u2014even when they know nothing. But unsolicited opinions have consequences. \u201cThey can catapult people into public positions they aren\u2019t ready for, resulting in frequent and intense internet backlash,\u201d says Kate Lindsay, an internet culture specialist.<\/a> I\u2019ve seen people completely change their careers or audiences after being cancelled<\/em> in their previous space. And not surprisingly, there are always people who are consistently determined to willfully misinterpret what you said \u2014which only makes things worse. \u201cAfter 10 years of algorithmically driven feeds that give users extra incentive to comment on trending topics and reward increasingly \u2018hot takes,\u2019 users are making the choice to opt out or otherwise radically alter how they post their thoughts online,\u201d Lindsay notes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This issue extends to creativity as well. If everyone<\/em> is \u201ccreative\u201d\u2014in everything, everywhere, all the time\u2014 so nothing really is, because everything is. So, how can we actually measure creative potential without becoming a fortune teller? Or else, if creativity can be anything, why even try to define or assess it? In the end, when we\u2019re constantly chasing the next shiny thing, there\u2019s no time left for reflection. And thinking takes time. Creativity takes time.<\/a> As Becky Korich beautifully wrote:<\/a> \u201cWhat\u2019s missing is the lack. (…) It’s not with excesses that voids are filled. More than that: some spaces exist precisely in order not to be filled.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In my sophomore year, I had an incredible art history professor who, when explaining modern art, once said: \u201cToday, we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":793,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-792","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"yoast_head":"\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n