This echo-chamber effect doesn’t just apply to pop culture, either; it’s trickling into politics, too. When you’re never exposed to opposing ideas or ideologies, you lose touch with what’s actually happening in the real-world landscape.
People end up blindsided by perspectives they didn’t even realize existed, and the more we live inside these insulated bubbles, the more self-centered and individualistic collective humanity becomes, because everyone is so consumed by their own curated version of reality.
And that’s the key difference between then and now: We used to share a collective cultural experience, but today, we all live in personalized realities.
This is why there will never be another Michael Jackson, Madonna, or Beatles; fame itself has been democratized. The spotlight that once shone on a select few now shines everywhere, refracted into a million smaller beams of attention.
In the past, being a celebrity meant being a shared experience; now, it means being a tailored one. That shift doesn’t make modern fame lesser, just different.
We no longer worship at the altar of a few cultural gods; we scroll through an infinite feed of them. And in doing so, we’ve traded the hysteria of the monoculture for the intimacy of the algorithm.
