Declining media jobs and algorithmic platforms fail to explain the cultural crash

Evidence

Others have pointed to structural shifts in how culture is created and disseminated. Critic Scott Timberg attributed much of the “culture crash” to the decline of middle-class media jobs, which traditionally supported cultural production. Yet there are now more than three hundred million people worldwide who consider themselves “content creators.” Meanwhile, Kyle Chayka, in 2024’s Filterworld, blamed algorithmic platforms like TikTok and Instagram for “flattening” culture. But the blank space emerged well before the advent of these apps. — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 19

Categorization

• XREF: Marx rejects Chayka’s algorithmic-flattening thesis (which the reader knows) with a timing argument that dates the blank space earlier than these platforms. — connects to: Broadcast television shifts track thirty years of British cultural decline — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1678