Sublime
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While the anthropological definition is certainly less overtly racist and elitist, it is clear today that this approach can and did open the door for a pernicious kind of cultural commodification—that is, a set of conditions wherein the collective heritage of a neighborhood, city, people, or nation is commodified via tourism or the selling of goods
... See moreDavid A. Banks • The City Authentic: How the Attention Economy Builds Urban America
Pop culture soothes and placates with a steady series of uncomplicated morality tales in predigested narratives where nothing ever really changes and so there’s no worry that the storyline will move in a way that hurts your feelings. Crowdsourced “content” is built on ephemerality.
Freddie DeBoer • You Are You. We Live Here. This Is Now.
Foreman feared “an Internet-dependent population is being drained of its ‘inner repertory of dense cultural heritage’ by outsourcing all information and connection to a vast web that spreads us wide and thin and is accessed by the touch of a button.”
Algorithms and the Homogenization of Taste
The Missing Piece in Conversations about “Cultural Decline”
culture.ghost.io
What makes this trend so dispiriting isn’t artists seeking financial stability – it’s the hollowing out of cultural aspiration itself.
“Now the culture is most exemplified by people whose entire end goal appears to be empty profiteering. ... Double sell-outs don’t deserve our esteem as ‘creative’ people. They should be content with the reward they c
David Teiger,
Sarah Thornton • Seven Days in the Art World
