Feels the the homogenization of culture driven by social media and online communities. Somebody makes a chicken, and it gets a good reaction, so everybody starts making chickens. At first it's organic but it turns into clout chasing. Pretty soon the chickens will start to disappear and something else will take their place.
Leave it to hacker news to figure out why knitting chickens is actually a sign of cultural collapse.
Not sure if it's cultural collapse per se. Maybe to some individuals it's vapid, but it's just tapping into the natural human instinct to fit into a community (or as we colloquially call it: "fashion").
It doesn't necessarily signal the end of days, but ideally we participate in communities and societies while understanding why we do what we do. Not because "This person did it".
This predates online communities.
My grandmother bought a bunch of knitted chickens in the 60’s-80’s, as did a family dinner I used to go to etc. It’s a relatively simple shape to get right, there’s many options, and they end up looking fairly cute.
Trends have been happening since long before social media. I don't see the problem with "everybody" getting involved in knitting and making chickens anyway, what's the harm here?
I think the "homogenization" is the keyword here. It's not that trends are bad, it's just that, in the 'old days' a trend might start as a community-wide phenomena that over time might spread into neighboring communities, finally becoming part of the local / regional zeitgeist.
These trends would spread slowly enough that other trends in other communities would have time and room to grow and develop. The result is you get a bunch of localized cultures, all unique in some way.
The best analogy I can think of is a plant mono-crop. Instead of different species of plant gradually finding their niche, we plant 50,000 acres with corn or soy.
I have to say, even over the last 20+ years or so, it really does feel like you can go anywhere in the world and get a very similar experience. You can go to the local 7-11, buy a coca-cola, hit up your local costco, listen to people arguing about American politics. It just feels like different countries have gradually been losing their unique culture, and we just have this global homogenized version with slight regional differences.
People have been saying the exact opposite- that we used to all have the same 20 TV shows but now with internet microgenres we don't have enough shared culture anymore.
If you think of the ravelry community as valid as an in person community this will be nicer I think.
Hmm, interesting counterpoint.
I think both things can be simultaneously true. There are a million sub-cultures that can now exist, that are no longer tied to a geographic location. This is both good and bad. Good, insofar as if you're in the middle of Ohio in a 2000 person town, and really-really into model trains or whatever, you can find an online community that shares this. But I also think it's bad insofar as we've lost some sense of culture or commonality with our (geographic) neighbors.
But to the homogenization point; I still think within a specific sub-culture (sewing circles), you can have global homogenization. The sewing circle might new be global, on facebook and tiktok, instead of 10,000 insular hamlets. Is this bad/good? I'm not sure. There's nothing from stopping you creating a local facebook group. And in theory, good ideas can spread rather than be confined to a specific geographic group. But I can't help feeling that some independent thought and ways of thinking are lost through this globalization.
Independent thought still exists and is expressed but the network effects of influencers and copycats outranks independent thought on a platform like tiktok that group ideas and people together. Independent thought only has a place under an existing topic or brand.
>we used to all have the same 20 TV shows but now with internet microgenres we don't have enough shared culture anymore.
It has its ups and downs. It does mean that it's harder to mesh with any given stranger out there (unless you watch Sports, pretty much the last bastion of cable monoculture). But it also means anyone who does mesh with you probably is very easy to form a strong bond with.
But if you never find that person, the world can feel depressingly small. Hence the retreat to online communities and all its benfits and downsides.
Social media is just accelerating trend adoption, peaking, and obsolescence to the point that it can sometimes happen in days, or even shorter.
"Summer in the Sprawl, the mall crowds swaying like windblown grass, a field of flesh shot through with sudden eddies of need and gratification." - William Gibson, Neuromancer
He continues to be the most prophetic science fiction writer, nailing the zeitgeist of the early 21st century in the 1980s.
The harm is homogenization of culture stymies concurrent evolution of new ideas. Whether that’s more important than the sheer speed of good ideas traveling the world is an open question.
But there’s definitely less creative work produced without the direct or indirect influence of outside forces. As an artist you simply can’t unsee things. So we may end up at some local maxima of creativity.
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Its fun to do things your friends are doing, even e-friends. It gives you something to talk about. Not every trend needs to last forever.
I'm a pretty cynical guy, especially with regards to social media, but this seems like totally harmless fun.
> the homogenization of culture driven by social media and online communities
It's absolutely crazy to me how quickly people have forgotten the monoculture that, by my estimate, ended only 10 years ago.
Spell it out for me? The monoculture pushed by network television?
There is definitely this side of things online, you see it a lot in the cooking scene. Where someone creates something simple and unique, it gets popular, then everyone starts doing it as though it was their favorite.
There's unique content and then there's trending content
Dubai chocolate [0] springs to mind as a great example. It's everywhere [1] now.
0: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dubai_chocolate
1: https://www.lidl.co.uk/p/della-sante-dubai-chocolate-cream/p...
Eh, I'd say part of the problem with modern life is there is so many choices. Just go to a restaurant with 50 choices and one with 5, the experience with 5 choices is generally much easier and you're less likely to feel that you've made a bad choice.
I feel this is what trends are for a lot of people. Narrowing down the almost unlimited number of choices you have to something simple. But eventually the novelty wears off and people move on.
think you're reading a bit too much into this one