Celebrity and commerce displaced creative invention as culture’s central values.

Evidence

This shift also reshaped the principles underlying mass media. The new generation of creators flooded public discourse with content that more closely resembled reality television than traditional narrative art. Even in ostensibly creative spaces like SoundCloud rap, the appeal was not particularly musical: As Pharrell Williams noted, “There are no hooks. There’s just vibes.” The spectacle was everything, and this fit seamlessly with the broader trend in digitized youth culture: For both stans and influencers, commerce and celebrity were the obvious focal points. Creative invention was not just an afterthought, but a potential hindrance on the new path toward fame and fortune. — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 565

Categorization

• SEED: Relevant counter-case: could argue that the ‘vibes’ aesthetic, meme-fluency, and attention-maximization are themselves the era’s genuine signature that Marx reads only as blankness.
• XREF: connects to: Fame has become a purchased product of the cultural system. — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from…, 114; The longing for transcendence through exalted humans predates celebrity culture — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 770; An era’s commerce came to be led by celebrity industrialists. — Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone The Collapse and Revival…, 1305