I don’t need to tell you that we’re all feeling out of whack right now. Well, feeling out of whack for the past few years, really. The internet feels insane as we’re hit with headline after doomy headline, and video after video, after video after video after….
The slot machine experience of social media has us glued to our phones almost 24 hours a day, but for a world of people constantly connected, why do we feel so disconnected from each other compared to times gone by?
We can blame that on the collapse of monoculture. Here, we’ll dig into why culture became fragmented, why our scrolls became infinite, and why finding our own village of people became so much more important.
Why does everything feel so weird?
Our once-beloved monoculture was brutally unalived by numerous factors as we entered the 21st century, but two main culprits in particular: streaming and social media.
Cable TV and home recording gave viewers the flexibility of no longer abiding by old-school TV schedules. If you wanted to watch an episode of your favorite TV show, you had to be there or be square. But throughout the latter end of the 20th century, you could simply record the show and watch at a different time.
Where traditional network television offered a limited number of channels, cable TV swooped in with hundreds of shiny new ones that targeted fragmented audience types, thus introducing even more content for the masses.
One event that screams monoculture to me was when the last episode of Seinfeld aired in the ‘90s. 76 million viewers tuned in to watch it, and it was even aired in Times Square because it was such a momentous occasion. TV was more than just entertainment - it was a medium that offered shared participation, and built community around the art.
Even when I was a kid during the mid 2000s, the shared experience of media still felt so powerful. Families would watch the same TV shows each weekend (big up Doctor Who), me and my friends would swoon over the latest pop stars in magazines (big up Aston from JLS <33), and viral videos would be quoted for months instead of a mere few moments.
For a while, cable was the answer to at-home entertainment - though it provided shows for any type of viewer (and most of the time, spoiled you for choice), there was still a finite amount of TV out there. But of course, it didn’t take too long for capitalism to do its thing. As prices for cable grew and ads ran rampant, streaming services saw a golden opportunity: undercut cable and let viewers watch whatever they want, whenever they want - with no ads, no less!
This newfound concept sounded like a dream, and of course, the 2000s saw an increased use of streaming services to the point where more than 80% of adults in America (as of 2025) subscribe to at least one. As the number of streaming services grew, the amount of content followed, leaving us with more TV than we could possibly watch in a single lifetime. Now, we sit in our bubbles, watching content that has been hand-picked by the algorithm for us. No more clicking onto the same channel at the same time as other households.
Speaking of algorithms, that brings us to our final nail in the coffin - social media. Long gone are the days of logging onto MSN after school and playing games on Facebook because there was that little content on there. Y’know, the site actually used to tell you once you’d seen all the updates from your friends? Throughout the 2010s, capitalism came for the attention economy and introduced us to the dreaded infinite scroll. Combine that with a momentously evil push on short-form content with hyper-personalized feeds, and you’ve got a planet full of people living inside their own echo chambers. Now, you can scroll for hours on end next to someone you share similar interests with, never to even get the same video.
Why are there so many ‘cores’?
In the world of the algorithm, shared trends and aesthetics do still exist (I swear, this isn’t going to be a crazy miserable piece), but the collapse of monoculture as we once knew it has completely changed the way that they form.
As the internet has given us access to, well, literally everything, we’re all exposed to niches and trends that better fit our individual interests rather than simply following the status quo. It’s essentially like the concept of cable television took steroids and a load of e-numbers.
While the majority of trends have a shelf life of two weeks, the ones that manage to stick around tend to tap into something deeper than a fleeting algorithmic moment. In these mad, chaotic times, we’re all suckers for nostalgia, and it’s no surprise that it’s one of the biggest factors in influencing trends. Aesthetics like Frutiger aero, dark fantasy, Dreamcore, and liminal spaces aren’t necessarily new, but are instead recreations of previous eras when technology felt more tactile, and the web functioned as an online third space rather than being overrun by aggressive algorithms.
But when culture fragments into smaller niches, we need a language to find our people. So cue, ‘core’. In 2013, normcore was born - an aesthetic moving away from unique coolness and towards the power of fitting in. This was one of the first major uses of "core" to describe a certain aesthetic which, of course, exploded in the following decade….
Like rural simplicity? Welcome to cottagecore. Or do you actually love wearing hiking gear in the city streets? Find your people through gorpcore. Change your mind and love soft pastel blues now? Omg you’re SO blueberry milk core.
While we’re fed a new ‘core’ every other week, there are a handful of aesthetics that simply refuse to die. Oh, and why is that, you ask? Mix that nostalgia we mentioned earlier with escapism, and you’ve got staying power.
We don’t just love Frutiger Aero for the gradients, but for its promise of optimistic technology that lives in harmony with nature. Y2K takes us back to a simpler time on the internet where we could surf the web intentionally, and gorpcore isn’t just about flexing your Patagonia, but represents a desire to escape the city.
As an autumn girly, one aesthetic I’m always excited to see return each fall is Whimsigoth. It isn’t just about velvet and candles, but the dream of a more mystical, analogue world. It’s an aesthetic we’ve seen return and grow over the past few years, because it offers us the fantasy of living harmoniously with nature and connects us with a time before the internet turned into, well this.
With the above in mind, I want to share a little tip for creators. Instead of jumping on every new trend, the more interesting opportunity here is looking at the emotion and desire behind what’s currently trending. Understanding why people are drawn to a certain aesthetic or trend allows you to create something that still feels relevant, but without jumping on an aesthetic that might not feel very you.
Music in the creation space
When a trend or a dance starts popping off on TikTok, it usually comes hand in hand with a short music clip. Think Space Girl, End of Beginning, Apple, My Love, Mine All Mine just to name a few. But is it always a totally organic rise to success? Did millions of people just happen to stumble on these tracks without any external influence?
Back in the day, MTV, TOTP, Rolling Stone and radio stations decided what music millions of people were going to hear. Labels of course pushed artists into those spaces, using totally fair and normal methods to make sure certain tracks got there (there definitely weren’t any scandalous back door payments that ensured certain artists got more radio play than others).
But as the internet boomed in the 90s, music was no longer tied to the physical realm or the broadcast systems that had previously controlled it for decades. Social media, YouTube and platforms like Napster and LimeWire meant people could discover more music than ever before from the comfort of their own home, all while absolutely destroying your family computer.
This changed the game for artists too, meaning they could reach audiences without a label deciding whether or not they were worth hearing. Arctic Monkeys are often cited as one of the first bands that saw what the power of the internet could do, with their early demos being shared on Myspace and essentially going viral in 2000s terms.
That increased exposure to less polished music that artists could share themselves without the backing of a label really made authenticity a selling point, but in the age of the algorithm, how long did genuine authenticity really last?
Remember Clairo's Pretty Girl? It looked like the ultimate bedroom-pop success story - a girl filming her track at home in a lofi edit and then absolutely blowing up online. But once people started digging, the internet began questioning just how organic that rise really was when they saw her father had connections in the music industry (no shade to Clairo - Bags got me through my first break up and I still love her, rich papa or not).
And that’s the thing: the big players in the industry didn't just vanish into thin air when the internet took over, but instead learned how to work with social media. A&R reps used to get paid to find the next big artist before anyone else had heard of them. They’d be hanging out in dingy venues, drinking and listening to music every night (sooo jealous), but now, labels can literally watch creators do that in real time.
A song starts popping off on TikTok and suddenly thousands of people are using the same 15 seconds of audio and it’s being pushed to every other platform, because the audience has essentially done the market research for them.
So, as a creator or agency in the space, where does this leave you when using music in your content? Don’t wait until a song is everywhere before you use it. Think of trends on a scale - undiscovered, rising, saturated, dated.
By the time everyone is using a sound, you're no longer ahead of the trend, meaning your content is just competing with all the other noise out there.
At Uppbeat (a shameless plug, I know), we watch what creators are searching for in real time, which gives us an early signal of where music in the creation space is heading. This research means we’re able to create super relevant collections (shout out to a few of my faves, Coffee shop jazzhop, Dreamcore, Y2K R&B, Phonk) and keep whatever is rising and/or trending in the creator space on our discover carousel.
Depth over reach
So now we know why we’re all living in our own echo chambers, I want to conduct a little experiment. Raise your hand if you remember ‘Charlie bit my finger’, or the nightmare fuel that was ‘Salad fingers’. Okay, well have you heard of the TV show ‘Furious’? What about ‘Lanterns’? Despite these currently being in the top 5 most popular TV shows right now, I hadn’t even heard of them. And neither had anyone in the brand team at Uppbeat (I promise I’m not living in an isolated bubble).
And yes we know it’s because media is hyper-personalised now, and no two people will be getting targeted with the exact same media types (in fact YouTube’s latest research found that 69% of people say they’re watching more content and following more creators that no one they know are watching or following) but, is this all really as gloomy as it sounds on the surface?
While culture is more fragmented than it was, the human desire to belong is still very much there - in fact, 63% of people say sharing the same interests as others makes them feel like they’re a part of something bigger. So, the connection through media created by our once beloved monoculture still exists, just sometimes on smaller scales, and in a lot more places than before.
Just look at BTS ARMY - an entire community connecting through their love of the band, which has grown into one of the most multi-faceted fandoms out there, with microcommunities existing within the larger one.
You've got book clubs like those run by Dua Lipa and Laufey, where fans connect through literature as well as music.
And you have communities forming around artists themselves – like The Last Dinner Party's Discord, where fans can share fit checks and media recommendations with one another.
The difference today is that it’s participation that makes fandoms so strong, as opposed to the enjoyment of something alone.
A whopping 69% of people watch content from what they consider niche communities, but as we’ve seen this year, those ‘niche’ communities don’t always stay so niche…
Take The Backrooms, which stemmed from a post on 4chan, which has since grown into a global phenomenon. Now, Backrooms-related videos have racked up over 15 billion views (take that, 76 million Seinfeld finale viewers) and the franchise has, of course, taken Hollywood by storm.
So for creators, don’t get fixated on views. Lean into your niche and your community
as intentional content consumption rises (try saying that out loud 3 times in a row), which you can read more about in Uppbeat’s Creator report. Take peace in the fact that the biggest signal for success could simply be a small group of people who genuinely value what you’re creating.
So, are we doomed?
While I do yearn for the times where people would bundle up in front of the TV at the same time and for when our attention spans were strong enough not to reach for the bad news rectangle in our pockets every five minutes, I don’t think we’re quite doomed.
Once a huge online city, the internet has fragmented into hundreds of thousands of little villages instead. Connection and shared media might not be as broad, but it’s certainly a lot richer. Gen Z and millennials desire for community and connection fuels an active push for involvement within a community, and while it certainly feels different to when we were younger, we’re all still human, and possess the ability to connect with one another. We just need to make an active effort to do so, and touch some damn grass in the moments between.