I have two problems with this narrative, roughly summed up as: 1. No, culture is _gone_. When you transform people into individual economic entities each respo

I have two problems with this narrative, roughly summed up as: 1. No, culture is _gone_. When you transform people into individual economic entities each responding to the market conditions in what approximates the most efficient manner possible and when your societies denigrate, minimize and underfund institutions meant for collective good, then there really isn't any material reason for people to form a "culture," if you understand culture to be a mutually supporting social fabric meant to improve some idea of public good. Margaret Thatcher literally loved to say "There is no society!" and this is basically the idea that the modern anglosphere has built the last 3-4 decades on. 2. There is a ton of cultural innovation out there. Untold richness. What is missing is the funnel which used to select out elements of cultural innovation and elevate them to "mass culture." In our current world, where you can search out exactly what you want, the power of "global tastemakers" like record company scouts and media critics and movie producers and so on is, in most respects, muted. The market forces these institutions and players to play to the absolute lowest common denominator to maximize market reach. In the past the music market, for instance, was pretty inefficient, and what was cool was at least strongly modulated "top down." But all that is done. If you want cultural novelty, its everywhere you could choose to look. But don't expect much of it to become truly popular. The economics of media has shifted away from that model.