So on the first example, I wouldn't be surprised if regular people everywhere had somewhat similar tastes and can't see why it would be a bad thing. Aesthetics

So on the first example, I wouldn't be surprised if regular people everywhere had somewhat similar tastes and can't see why it would be a bad thing. Aesthetics diverge because of artistic cultures. If you're not a part of an "in" crowd, well, there's no reason why you'd be clued into what idiosyncratic things to like. Breaking out of isolated villages is actually a great thing of modernity, if you have any practical idea of premodern life. I prefer not to be locked into life of my rural grandparents, no matter how "authentic" it could be. For the mass culture part, skepticism of most of the comments here does feel cheap. It's not that you aren't allowed to think about the world without properly hacking your p-values and pinky promise double blind peer review by your bros. I think there's some merit to the feeling we are living in times of neo-midcentury rampant social conformity and anxiety to fit in, or else. A big part of this, I think, is economic anxiety that one has to conform to biologically survive in an unstable world and not be left alone. Though from my experience one can still escape much of it by dissociating from the terminally online algorithmic mainstream. Numerically most (?) of people don't care about it that much. It's good not to care about mainstream acceptance for yourself and your stuff, which is of course harder to do if you are an advertising person. Let's hope these will be kinds of problems we'll care about in 10-15 years.