nothing new

Sam Buntz makes the opposite case: his claim is that streaming platforms and TikTok have flattened cultural time so completely that Gen Z can’t form the generational chain of influence that has driven every major artistic movement for centuries.

Gen Z reacts to everything and nothing, lost in what Sam calls “the Archive” — a Borgesian labyrinth

Zoomers, you see, live inside the Archive.

Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that they are imprisoned inside the Archive—a Borgesian labyrinth. Everything that has ever happened exists at their fingertips, assigned equal weight (or assigned whatever weight the fickle algorithm happens to be assigning on that particular day). This is also why

Since every era is equally available, and all events are potentially happening at the same time, the chain of causality and influence breaks down completely.

Gen Z doesn’t experience cultural time this way. They’re reacting to everything that has ever happened

Gen Z finds itself in a state in which the fillings have all been scattered on the ground, perhaps experiencing some ambient attraction from the lodestone, but unable to really connect with it.

Can this state of affairs create vital popular music? It appears not. The results seem to be avant garde Adderall brain slurry—100 Gecs and nettspend and hyperpop—for a tiny, cultured minority. The masses just keep listening to Taylor Swift on repeat. And for those of you who want to object by saying, “No, no, you have to hear my cousin’s noise

Sometimes, I wonder if this will ultimately result in a state of cultural affairs in which fresh artistic creation stops entirely. Unable to have a satisfactory relationship to the past from which we can create our own art, we’ll end up settling for reviewing the archive of all prior creative events.