The author has stumbled on a core contradiction of surveillance capitalism. Capital has taken the business model of fast fashion and applied to all cultural markers. They need cultural churn to speed up over time in order to bolster growth. At the same time, they also work by bottling cultural moments and extending them for as long as possible. So on one side, they succeed by creating 1000 movies and milking the top performers, freezing those cultural moments in time and relying on them to remain valuable. On the other side, they need more interactions and engagement about their products, and every single one chisels away at that product’s relevance.
Something’s gotta give, but is the result going to be that people will stop fetishizing art products? Absolutely not. If I were a capitalist with the kind of influence to sway the tides, I’d say the splintering of pop culture into unknowable sub-niches seems like a good way to beat the dead horse for a while longer. Everyone will have their own version of what they think everyone else likes. And we’ll know it’s an algorithmically constructed bubble, but in a way that allows the delusion to creep back in.
A+ for provocative free association
F for predictive analysis
The author has stumbled on a core contradiction of surveillance capitalism. Capital has taken the business model of fast fashion and applied to all cultural markers. They need cultural churn to speed up over time in order to bolster growth. At the same time, they also work by bottling cultural moments and extending them for as long as possible. So on one side, they succeed by creating 1000 movies and milking the top performers, freezing those cultural moments in time and relying on them to remain valuable. On the other side, they need more interactions and engagement about their products, and every single one chisels away at that product’s relevance.
Something’s gotta give, but is the result going to be that people will stop fetishizing art products? Absolutely not. If I were a capitalist with the kind of influence to sway the tides, I’d say the splintering of pop culture into unknowable sub-niches seems like a good way to beat the dead horse for a while longer. Everyone will have their own version of what they think everyone else likes. And we’ll know it’s an algorithmically constructed bubble, but in a way that allows the delusion to creep back in.