A whiff of diesel becomes a cloud as a parade of classic cars rolls down the midway. Chrome gleams in the Florida sunlight. In the background, a constant chatter fills the air, amplified by strategically placed speakers under massive white tents: "Gimme-three, three-five, three-five-four, forty-forty, NO RESERVE, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, fifty, fifty-five, gimme-fifty-five..."
This is MECUM Auto Auction in Kissimmee, Florida, one of the world's largest auctions of cars, motorbikes, and road art. And here, from the streamlined shape of a 1930s Packard to the sleek sliver of a modern-day McLaren, lies all the ingenuity that man can give to steel and paint wrapped around an engine. It's beautiful. It's diverse. And it's all imbued with meaning.
Each vehicle speaks to its era and its audience: the padded luxury of the Rolls Royce Silver Cloud, the rubberized ruggedness of the Toyota FJ. But look past the fairgrounds of Osceola Heritage Park (the MECUM auction site) to the streets of Kissimmee, or even to those of your own hometown, and chances are what you see is far from diverse. In fact, given a size and category, many late-model vehicles are blindingly similar. Is that a Ford Maverick or a Hyundai Santa Cruz? A Chevy Blazer or a Kia Telluride? And why can't we tell the difference?
THE MONOLITH
In fact, you may have noticed that a lot of things are twinning over the past five years. In plastic surgery, there's the "Dash Effect," or the desire of more women to have procedures that give them features of the famous-for-being-famous Kardashian women. In home decor, there's the whiteout of "greige", a blend of beige and grey seen as a safe, sophisticated backdrop for one's ever-changing collection of trendy belongings. And the lookalikes aren't confined to interiors either: hegemonic architecture in steel and glass has become the hallmark of cities and their corporate sponsor-patrons. Even Walt Disney World, whose monorail resorts were once exemplars of architectural originality and immersive theming, has opted for a bland-new, five-over-one expansion to its existing Polynesian Resort and de-themed, "West Elm" style interiors for the others.
Why is this happening?
The short answer: The Algorithm.
Yes, there are other factors. Five-over-one architecture is cheap and easy to build, and it often meets existing building codes. "Greige" feels safe an an ever-changing world, where pandemics and protests seem to pop up out of nowhere. Change is a constant; we shouldn't expect old-fashioned, bespoke or original trends to continue ad infininitum. But follow the money and the music, and there's an underlying way to trace it all.
Why are the Kardashians' looks so impressed upon young women' minds? It's not just their long-running reality tv show, "Keeping Up With the Kardashians." It's Instagram, the visual-centric social media platform whose visibility has launched the family into superstar status. The relationship goes both ways: the Kardashians are incentivized to keep their faces in front of yours, as the CEO of one digital marketing company estimates "up to 75% of [the Kardashians'] business is driven by Instagram."
The same goes for "greige." In an article for tech magazine The Verge, writer Kyle Chayka lays this and other vague, mid-century revival trends at the feet of social media, terming the entire aesthetic "AirSpace" or "International AirBnB Style." Because so very many people are interacting via the same platforms, a sort of homogeneity begins to accumulate. In Chayka's words, "The connective emotional grid of social media platforms is what drives the impression of AirSpace. If taste is globalized, then the logical endpoint is a world in which aesthetic diversity decreases."
The platforms themselves, of course, have to bring home a little bacon too. Enter "the algorithm," or the plethora of code that determines what gets seen by whom, when, and how often. Why? As I discussed in "Evergreen: A Christmas Carol for All Generations," social media is not simply a social network anymore. It's a marketplace, and it makes money by selling advertising and getting a cut from its vendors: users who sell things, like the Kardashians and their family-branded cosmetics. Placement in the marketplace is determined by the algorithm, which is coded according to the values of the platform's owners. As Elon Musk's release of the Twitter Files has demonstrated, those values can just as easily be political as financial.
SOUNDS FAMILIAR
How much of what you like is being decided by you, and how much is being decided for you?
It's a difficult question to answer, because although the algorithm may act as an arm of propaganda, it also operates in a capitalistic marketplace. People aren't forced to buy things; just encouraged to do so. With that in mind, the algorithm is also incentivized to give you more of what you want. Think of the dog who gets a treat when he brings you the newspaper one day. The next day, he brings you *all* the newspapers: yours, your neighbors', and those from down the block. Oh boy! he thinks. I'm about to get a whole lot of treats!
Spotify is not a social media platform, but it can sit, stay, and bring you all the streaming music you desire. In an article for The Baffler, columnist Liz Pelly examines the way that like begets like, and how a desire for vibe-y, chill background streaming music has led to a watered-down experience for the listener:
"Musical trends produced in the streaming era are inherently connected to attention, whether it’s hard-and-fast attention-grabbing hooks, pop drops and chorus-loops engineered for the pleasure centers of our brains, or music that strategically requires no attention at all—the background music, the emotional wallpaper, the chill-pop-sad-vibe playlist fodder. These sounds and strategies all have streambait tricks embedded within them, whether they aim to wedge bits of a song into our skulls or just angle toward the inoffensive and mood-specific-enough to prevent users from clicking away. All of this caters to an economy of clicks and completions, where the most precious commodity is polarized human attention—either amped up or zoned out—and where success is determined, almost in advance, by data."
That's not to say that it's impossible to find new artists or off-beat tunes on Spotify. It's just really hard, because economically, individual artists don't have the muscle to beat the monolith. That's not only a money problem. It's a generational one too.
When investment expert Grant Williams interviewed Generations and The Fourth Turning author Neil Howe for the Real Vision series, Howe took Williams to visit several national monuments in Washington, D.C. Sitting beside the World War II Memorial, Howe explained that the design of the memorial was controversial because it "looks like it was built by the very fascists they were fighting." And yet, it was fitting for both the times and the generation.
The G.I. Generation is a HERO archetype, just like the Millennial Generation today. When Howe points to the bas-relief in the monument depicting G.I. workers who would collectively join labor unions as young adults and later, the AARP en masse as retirees, we can draw the dotted line from then to today. What surprise should it be that Millennials find comfort in greige, AirSpace, and lookalike cars? As I wrote in "Take That Hill!: The Militant Mindset of Millennials," sameness is not just what they do, it's who they are.
THE MEANING
And yet, Millennials aren't the only crowd in the marketplace. Besides Boomers and Generation X, Gen Z / Homelanders (ARTIST archetype) are quietly taking stock of the current offerings, and they appear to be unimpressed. These young twenty-somethings and under are of the same archetype as the Silent Generation, who rebelled against the ticky-tacky, cookie-cutter lifestyle of their G.I. Generation elders. In songs like "Pleasant Valley Sunday" they expressed their resentment at the hypocrisy of the rules-based society that promised equality but delivered forced uniformity instead (see my "Commodifying Virtue" Part One and Part Two for more on this).
Again, today's heated discussions of equity, gender, and sexuality should sound familiar. Are we really helping people celebrate their differences if we try to make them all the same? Are we promoting true virtue, or just virtue signaling? Are companies actually serving their customers' best interests, or the interests of conglomerate investors?
On the whole, what Gen Z / Homelanders will find is a marketplace devoid of true meaning. Creative beings that they are, they will have to find a way to navigate this labyrinth, littered with unforeseen dangers and twisting turns. Thankfully, there's a few ways they can do this, and you and I can help.
THE LOVE EXPERTS
While the Crisis Era is fraught with trust issues, you may be surprised to realize how much implicit trust you give the algorithm. Once upon a time, you might have been able to use certain criteria and keywords to accurately find information. But now, search engines have lost that accuracy because SEO experts and advertisers are seizing the top list of results. The products you're trying to find on Amazon or the songs you want to discover on Spotify may suffer from the same issues, or from machine-learning that is trying desperately to bring you more of what you already have, assuming it's what you want.
Maybe you don't need a better tool. Maybe you need an expert.
Many of the Silent Generation found a good career becoming specialists in "helping professions" such as management, law, civil service, or teaching*. The upbringing of Gen Z / Homelanders has emphasized empathy and engagement, making them ideal for this same role. If you're an elder to Gen Z / Homelanders, you can encourage this trait. Ask your young restaurant server, "What's your favorite meal here?" Leave your phone in your pocket and let the sales clerk show you a new product. Talk to your kids about what shows or music they like, and why. Then, be willing to risk some money or time to try it. Your act of good faith is building the confidence muscle in others.
This is possible on a corporate level, too. Music and culture critic Ted Gioia recently outlined the turnaround success of Barnes & Noble bookstores, attributable to a few simple strategies: getting the pricing right, rejecting the promo-payoffs of publishers, and trusting its staff's expertise. Big data and sponsored deals are only worth so much. "If you don’t really love the music (or books or newspapers or cinema or whatever)," Gioia says, "those cash flow projections turn out to be wrong. That’s because creative fields like music and writing live and die based on creativity, not financial statements and branding deals."
I think Gioia is right, and here's why.
I once attended a training session led by Ritz-Carlton, the successful luxury hotel chain. Our trainer revealed that Ritz-Carlton has a motto for its service model: "Surprise and delight the customer." Is it any wonder that they inspire awe and loyalty in their guests? This approach combines empathy (actively caring about what the customer wants/likes/needs) with expertise (creatively meeting those wants/likes/needs). Good art, music, writing, and design are imbued with meaning. The avant-garde nature of classics-to-be surprises us. The staying power of classics means they continue to delight us. Good criticism helps us continue to extract the meaning packed into those works, even as time removes us from their original context.
Mediocrity neither surprises nor delights. Monoliths are boring. But right now, both have a lot of money and muscle.
The sudden influx of AI writing, art, and music programs threatens to perpetuate and increase this trend, but I'm not worried. AI has information. Humans have information *and* intuition. Meanwhile, the societal appetite for gruel is beginning to wane. Call it the "Twilight of the Tech Gods", like Commentary Magazine, or the rebellion against "New Barbarism" like the new trustees of New College of Florida. A change is coming, but you have to sow it to grow it.
There are individual ways to contribute to this change. Funding your favorite creators via Patreon, Substack, Kickstarter, or the occasional Super Chat is a great place to start if you have the money. If you don't, you can still help creators by personally sharing their content with other people you know (word of mouth is still the best marketing!). Or, you could try flexing your own creative muscle. You might surprise and delight yourself with what you can make.
Whatever you do, keep in mind the meaning. The purpose of art is to illuminate truth. If you're not sure what the truth is, today's a good day to find out. A wonderful Creator has all of it to share.
*Generations: The History of America's Future, 1584 to 2069 by William Strauss and Neil Howe, p. 289.
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Want a list of hand-curated tunes to go with this blog? Check out my soundtrack on Spotify or YouTube.