The Increasingly Esoteric Future and the Decentralization of Culture

One aspect of the internet that people love to tout is its ability to connect us to the rest of the globe in weird and interesting ways – the platonic ideal of globalization. However, there are some second order effects we’re currently experiencing in real time that are probably related to our increasing atomization.

Consider Christianity in America: As of 2024, the majority of Americans still identify as Christian. However, American society as a whole is increasingly secular and areligious. While the aesthetics of Christianity may be important in American culture, religious participation and professions of faith are trending down. What exactly does this mean? When you and everyone were regularly participating in the Church back in the 70s, you all had a shared network and culture to draw from. You all attended Sunday sermons, maybe some Bible studies, and shared the same cultural background and shibboleths. As Americans become more secular and less invested in their churches, that Christian background is no longer a guarantee. Religion, a major cultural pillar, is now a question mark.

Where else do we draw shared culture from? Media: Books, Radio, TV, and the Internet. Let’s discuss the culture of media pre-internet so we can cover the disproportionate impact of the internet after. So Books, Radio, TV. The common thread between these forms of media is they’re broadcast only. The signal of media only goes one way, and the output of the media is dictated by publishers. The gatekeepers here are essentially the arbiters of culture and taste. But what’s also important to note that pre-internet, widely consumed media also worked as shared cultural touchpoints. I’m going to gloss over the golden age of TV, because I wasn’t alive during that era, but at least for the Gen-X to Millenial generation, The Simpsons was essentially the Rosetta Stone of understanding Gen-X and Millenial culture. Because these two generations were also the first digital native generations who comprised the majority of the early internet users in the 90’s to 2000’s, You’d see people dropping Simpsons references constantly. I’m not even going to get into their impact on literally every animated American sitcom that came after or American animation in general – if you’re from the time period, its impact is apparent and obvious. Of course, I’m well versed in golden age Simpsons since I’m from that time period, but my personal white whale is Dragon Ball Z. The cohort for this show is roughly Gen-X to Millenial males – if you find yourself talking to someone in that cohort, the odds are good they watched DBZ growing up. Pre internet, you could draw from these different wells of shows and media to relate to others. However, post internet, not only are our activities different, our entire media channels are more and more disparate.

We have youtube channels, discord channels, twitch streams, and a billion other forms of content and social networks dedicated to increasingly esoteric niches. Right now, my hobby is messing with AI stuff, so I browse twitter and the localllama subreddit to stay abreast of whatever’s happening. Some people are locked in entirely in tiktok ecosystems in specific niches – think of the NPC trend a few years back. Sports gambling communities are huge right now as online sportsbetting is legalized across the country. With the decline in third spaces, and the increase in online participation and explosion in niche communities, we’re basically becoming more and more out of touch with our neighbors and people in our local communities. I don’t mean that in a boomer “you need to go outside and touch grass” way – I mean you are more likely to have more in common in your niche looksmaxxing discord than you are with your Amazon delivery driver. You share less physical presence with the people around you and are increasingly drinking from different cultural watering holes. Is it any surprise that everyone’s feeling disconnected?

These communities in and of themselves aren’t necessarily bad – the problem is they’re displacing our physical relationships since we only have 24 hours in a day. If we still had robust in-person relationships, these would be fine as a side dish, but they don’t work when they become the entree and the physical relationships become the side dishes. Accordingly, the problem with us not having anything in common with the people we see day to day means that it’s increasingly harder to relate, but we actually need to relate more to people around us than our niche digital communities. Our time and relationships are zero sum – we’re not consciously deciding to let the digital world parasitize our physical relationships, but that is essentially what’s happening.