Social media eats cultural source material. Does culture grow from social media?
Does culture make media or does media make culture?
They are not disentangled—there’s no precise answer to this— even as substantial slices of the political strata wish they were.
The problem, I believe, has to do with a culture persistently determined to live online. Millions of people believe that clever bits of easily digested, easily excreted media are adequate replacements for more substantial creative work. That’s also not to say there isn’t immense creativity in the online world every single day; there is. But there’s a difference between a meme-able clip and a work that might stand the test of time, even if that work is just a pop confection.
It would be perfectly appropriate for this blog to hijack itself and get into the meaty matter of who has agency, who has a voice, who has credibility in terms of making something culturally relevant. Those are worthy conversations that historically did not get the amount of attention they rightfully deserve. For now, however, let’s table them. Matters of voice and agency have become an electric fence that not only divides vast swaths of culture, but also burns those who seek to engage. I’m not afraid to engage them in these spaces; we’re simply talking about something else today.
There’s never been a global monoculture, and I hope there never is one. But the atomization of culture leads to the pulverization of culture. One need not be Spanish to be appreciate Picasso. This isn’t about looking to set up some sort of qualitative scorecard, about figuring out how to measure cultural relevance of creative works.
Let me break it down to a thesis. The cultural forces that shape artists shape their art. The art that Picasso created subsequently had a profound influence shaping the culture of those who followed. Art shapes culture; culture shapes art.
Imagine a disentanglement. Imagine this, and despair. Imagine a creative process that essentially feeds on little more than what’s cool right now, a millimeter deep understanding of our collective roots and our personal roots. A culture that doesn’t understand its own references, that trades primarily in disposable memes, is a culture doomed to being controlled by whatever political forces ultimately own the platforms of distribution.
Here’s another way to say it. When our cultural references are shaped more by algorithms than those who actually know us, we’re treading water among dangerous objects.