Low creative barriers cause rapid novelty decay in cultural artifacts

Evidence

Even the early AI-culture breakouts seemed to quickly grow tiresome. In March 2023, a YouTuber named demonflyingfox received accolades for his Balenciaga-inspired high-fashion video parody of the Harry Potter series. But with few technical or creative barriers to producing these videos of “one IP in another style,” there was instantly a flood of copies and spin-offs. The charm evaporated within days. — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 696

Categorization

• CANDY: The ‘Balenciaga Harry Potter’ video that charmed the internet for days is a fun, self-contained anecdote.
• SHARE: Worth sending to anyone tracking AI-art culture specifically — the novelty-decay timeline of the demonflyingfox meme is exactly their beat.
• XREF: connects to: Clip-show culture operates like anterograde amnesia, unable to make new memories — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 2426; Information loss from imperfect copying is a constant drag on cultural transmission — Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success: How Culture…, 713; Stone-tool complexity showed no improvement trend across 700,000 years — Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success: How Culture…, 937 (+1 more)