The downside is what media scholar Zeynep Tufekci calls “the attention crash.” When supply is infinite, demand becomes ferociously competitive. Creators burn out chasing the algorithm. Misinformation spreads as easily as truth—easier, actually, because lies are often more entertaining. And the sheer volume of content induces a kind of aesthetic numbness. We scroll faster, watch less, remember nothing. For all the talk of democratization, power has not disappeared; it has merely shifted. The new gatekeepers are not studio executives or network presidents but platform engineers —the coders who design recommendation algorithms, moderation policies, and monetization rules.
But the consequences are profound. Audiences are losing the muscle for ambiguity, slow pacing, and moral complexity. The dominant narrative structure is now what I call the “nostalgia loop”: a story that references older stories, which themselves referenced older stories, until culture becomes a closed circuit of self-quotation. Drunk.Sex.Orgy.Extreme.Speed.Dating.XXX.DVDRiP....
The result is a kind of narrative weightlessness. We feel like we’re experiencing epic sagas, but we’re actually experiencing references to epic sagas . Emotion is simulated through familiar signifiers (the hero’s sacrifice, the villain’s redemption arc) rather than earned through craft. Video games have quietly become the most influential entertainment medium of the century—not because everyone plays them (though hundreds of millions do), but because game design logic has colonized every other form of media. The downside is what media scholar Zeynep Tufekci
Then came the smartphone, and with it, the unbundling. And the sheer volume of content induces a
The ultimate expression of this is the “live service” model. Games like Roblox and Genshin Impact are not products to be finished; they are platforms to be inhabited indefinitely. New content arrives weekly. Events come and go. Missing a week means falling behind—not in skill, but in cultural relevance .
This has produced a new kind of celebrity: the micro-famous. A streamer with 50,000 loyal followers may be unknown to the general public but wields more influence over her audience than any movie star. She knows their names (or their usernames). They send her gifts. When she cries, they cry. When she is “canceled,” they mobilize.
Streaming services dismantled the linear schedule. Spotify turned the album into a playlist. YouTube and TikTok atomized video into six-second loops. The result is what media theorist Kyle Chayka calls “the ambient gaze”—a state of perpetual, low-grade attention where users float between formats. A teenager might watch a two-hour Marvel movie, then a forty-five-second lore recap on TikTok, then a three-hour critical video essay on the same film’s cinematography, all before breakfast.
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