it's about meaning. there was a great HN post once about how "meaning is cohering information forward in time." the things music represented 30 years ago were d

it's about meaning. there was a great HN post once about how "meaning is cohering information forward in time." the things music represented 30 years ago were durable for several years probably because it took a while to permeate the culture. now, a new song or a band passes through relevance in a few days because, yes it's instant, and there's an ocean of stuff coming up behind it. maybe as a culture we've largely ceased to produce new meaning and the old meaning is just being consumed and used up by people hungry for it. after a certain age we stop producing we anyway. most of what's being produced now is just from scraps of retro and sure, the lives of younger people can seem like a meaningless pastiche of contrived tropes and simulacra, but nobody knows that their first time through.