Dead Kulture Theory
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Dead Kulture Theory
I been toying with a concept I call “Dead Kulture”.
Its a theory, of sorts, to describe the world we are living in right now. In a way it builds off the dead internet theory. Which some dismiss as false. If you’ve seen the bot farms and the fake engagement services. The bots on Instagram/twitter, and what A.i can do. You would start to think its not so far outside the realm of possibility.
That theory states that most people on the internet you see are actually A.i or a bot. My theory states that the internet/social media is turning real people into bots.
Stripping the Soul Away
My theory comes from a group of observations on how the modern internet has changed human behavior. As well as negatively affected the arts and creative fields. By stripping soul away from the creative process.
I been thinking about this for the past few years. I realized that quality in pop culture was falling, and gems were getting harder to find. We entered an era of nonstop retellings, reboots, and spin-offs. Shared universes, mash-ups, samples, remixes and all that jazz. Bad movies, bad shows, bad music. Hell it might not even be bad, but for sure not original.
At the same time, I noticed something happening on social media. We have become slaves to the algorithms. It’s become a game and being creative was never meant to be a game your trying to win. Its about expression and passion.
People have changed their art style, their process, output and final results. They have changed the way they think, their expression and their passion. Everything that made them unique, just so they could try and play the game. On top of that, it has created a copy and paste machine, where everyone is creating the same content, the same way.
I’m not even referring to trends, dances or challenges, perhaps a little, but I understand that. Even though it still lacks creativeness if your not adding your own spice to the video. What I am referring to is; all these people telling everyone else to film “this way”. “Edit this way”. “and put captions here, and cut every two seconds”. “and do this zoom trick here to grab attention and post 100 times a day and make this sort of content and blah blah blah.”
Fuck all that! Find your own style in all of that. Everyone’s path is different. We have this endless sea of thousands of copy cats. Chasing algorithms and trends, seeing the world thru a black mirror. It all becomes a mindless, soulless, process of checking off boxes and to do lists, quite literally. There are examples of this below.
It’s like when your character in Tony Hawk’s Underground, loses sight of why he skates in the first place. He doesn’t do it to get famous, but because he loves it. Stacey Peralta tells him “skateboarding hasn’t changed, you all have, just go skate”.
Interesting enough, that’s where we are in the story. Instead of Stacey telling us, we are telling ourselves. A great deal of creators are beginning to feel the burnout. From the top all the way to the bottom.
We should never be burned out from our creative process, if we are, that means somethings wrong.
You have top creators like Ninja, Pokimane, and a whole slew of others taking breaks for mental health issues. The Creative should be the break for the mental health issues.
What’s happened is they’ve turned it into a job and are forced to bend the knee to the algorithm. They are forced to become a character. You will hear them all talk about this. How they are playing games they don’t even like, doing certain things because “they have to”. You have artists staying in one lane. Not exploring or experimenting because its not their “niche”.
You have artists having to become video creators against their will on Instagram.
Tik Tok was the big deal for music creators. It allowed them to break free from record labels and blow up, but did it? One could argue that Tik Tok Algorithm is the new Record label. People are changing what and how they are writing. To try and trend on Tik Tok. You could argue whether this is good or bad or doesn’t matter, its a pretty wild and interesting fact though.
We are altering human behavior in real time for the worse
The point is, you have humans behaving in ways they normally would not. We are altering human behavior in real time, as does most technology, but this seems for the worse. Damage to our attention spans, comprehension, empathy, and communication skills.
Our attention spans have been decimated by the format of these platforms. Its self-evident and there’s plenty of research and articles to back it up.
Its hurting the development of comprehension skills and empathy, Louis C.K puts it well.
The character limits on these platforms. Coupled with our shortened attention spans, have hurt communication. Its hurt language. People speaking in short hand. Incomplete sentences(I’m very guilty of this) and rewiring their brains. People not writing beyond an 8th grade level to reach the masses. People calling for academic journals to be dumbed down and not use big words. Supposedly because “they are just trying to sound smart”, not specific.
Bo Burnham analogizes it to people passing fortune cookies back and forth. He’s absolutely right. This in itself fuels and promotes ignorance. It cultivates a school yard insult dumbing down of culture among all sorts of other things.
Bo touches on many things, and I could too. Social Media and the Internet has changed so much. Less real human interaction and everyone staring at their phones. Ignorance is promoted while what should be is ignored. Everything’s fuckin smart nowadays, I swear to god I saw a smart toaster.
We’re becoming aware and starting to snap out of this soulless race
The first person I spoke with about this was my brother, who shared similar thoughts and ideas. Before this I had not heard of anyone speak on this. Then after my discussion with my brother, I pulled up Tik Tok and this was the first video I found.
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I came across this one today as of writing this, and a few others in between:
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Here are some examples of this I found real quick. There are thousands out there promoting this cookie cutting approach.
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https://videos.files.wordpress.com/qKgXBrJV/snaptik.app_7109698140269333802_1.mp4
People are beginning to notice this and talk about this. Which tells me, we are all on very similar wave lengths. Many have got caught up in this machine and are now becoming aware of it, more so than ever before. It almost feels like a shared paradigm shift for many. We were so caught up in all the positives that we ignored the negatives that were happening.
I’ve touched on some of those negatives. One I really want to point some focus to is this. For every ninja out there, there are millions who want to be him and are actively trying to be but will never be. I see comments from these people. They are spending thousands of dollars, and wasting thousands of hours of their life. Some honestly sound on the verge of suicide. I don’t say that lightly.
Here’s an interesting medium that pertains quite well. https://locusdawn.medium.com/fuck-passion-i-will-do-9-5-f96282e6f07e
How content creation of any form should be approached
You should never pursue something creative for the goal of becoming famous. It will never work. You shouldn’t chase vanity metrics. You should pursue a goal because its your passion and you don’t know how not to do it. It should bring you pleasure, an escape, not a prison that causes stress.
That’s how I have always created content. I do it for me, cuz I love it. I want to look back on my life when I’m old and senile, so I create content on the things I love. I would be lying if I said I didn’t hope things would blow up, but for me that’s not the end goal, that’s an added bonus. In my humble opinion, this is how content creation of any form should be approached.
Important to note, that even though that’s how I approach creation, I still fall victim to these things I speak of. I see some weird picture of like corn have millions of likes, and it makes me think, man is something wrong with my art? Why don’t I get that response? But because of my approach I feel I am much less impacted mentally than someone aiming for that goal of fame. Like I said, I’ve seen countless people be creatively drained trying to please the machine. Form depression, and some even commit suicide. It’s devastating.
You should never measure success or happiness with vanity metrics. You shouldn’t kill yourself chasing them.
A.i’s Adding Fuel to this Fire
https://twitter.com/Dopely_Faded/status/1592652469691363328
A.i like social media is a great tool with a ton of negatives. Not only are so many people turning into bots and creating similar content. Now they aren’t even creating the content.
Articles are being written with A.i writing tools. These A.i, so far, are not sentient beings, they are not writing anything. As it stands, this Ai is data moshing human generated content one way or the other. A sea of shitty A.i generated content will begin to rise.
This is happening in every creative field, music, writing, digital art. The early beginnings. These programs will advance very quickly and beyond our imagined capabilities.
These tools are probably already being connected with a.i bot software.
Its another front that the human element, soul, is being stripped and automated creating a dead kulture.
There are many discussions to be had when it comes to A.i art. I’ve talked about it before. It can be used for amazing things, I don’t think it will ever replace artists. The brush stroke will never die. Social media and algorithm bots will never kill true artistry.
READ MORE ON A.I’S ROLE IN THE DEAD KULTURE THEORY HERE
Bonus Img:
Clarification and Conclusion
This isn’t intended as a blanket statement, these things I speak of do not affect everyone. Some people take social very seriously and others don’t. Some are just doing it for fun and truly don’t care, which is great. It affects some at different levels and scenarios and others it doesn’t affect at all, like with anything.
I also do not mean to imply there are no more artists with soul left, or that there’s no good art out there. There is plenty, you just have to search hard thru the sea of “bot content”.
I’m not saying culture is really dead, per say. My brother and a few fellas on a podcast, put forward the notion that culture isn’t dead. Its split into all these subcultures now thanks to the internet. What I call “Dead Kulture” is just a cumulation of all these mainstream subsects of individual subcultures, spawned from the internet age.
You have to venture out of the mainstream and dig thru vinyls. Check the movie list at indie festivals, or go DEEP in the feeds. There are great movies, shows, music, paintings, drawings, sculptures, any medium you can think of. So why is the crap being promoted over these things?
One could blame Capitalism, the very thing allowing them to make a living off their craft. The people at the top who control mainstream outlets are usually not artists with vision. They are usually suits trying to turn a profit. Which is why you have to go outside the mainstream to find the art with meaning. If they abandoned formulas, took more risks, and gave more power to the creatives. I think we would see a major change and people could still make money.
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Its also important to note that the majority of people I am referring to probably aren’t even true creatives in the first place, which sounds elitist but not intended that way. These social platforms have made the barrier of entry into creative so low, that everyday people are getting in on it. Which is great, no gate-keeping is great, but its causing an influx of copy-cat content, hence why you have to search so hard for the originals. I say dead but what I really mean is the originals are being outnumbered by the imposters.
Some argue that humans ARE the algorithm, and that these companies are highly optimized in giving us what we want. While there is truth there, to that I would say, people don't know what they want. Regardless, it doesn’t change the fact of negative impact.
Social Media is a great tool, that has so many stacked benefits. The exposure to amazing artists and opportunities. New techniques, skills, and influences to inspire and and fuel your creativity is all part of what makes living today so great. I am one of social media’s biggest supporters, and for that reason I’ve ignored the negative. We cant let this tool take control of our art and expression. As it stands, our expression is being tailored by corporations, media platforms. These platforms and the monetization incentives are turning individual artists into “brands”. Corporation like entities who think about the bottom line and vanity metrics. Instead of unfiltered expression. If we are to take this path, we must remember, a brand doesn’t grow by imitating, it grows by innovating.
I’m not trying to scream end of the world, or say art is dead. I find these observations interesting and worth being aware of. One could argue technology will always have positive and negative influences on culture. It is what it is. I talked in a different article, about how google was first and biggest. So they got to dictate a lot of SEO standards. Which affected how designers built websites as well as how articles were written. Which is insane. Its all very interesting.
I’m not out to shame or blame anyone. Like I said I have fallen victim to these things, and I don’t think anyone does it intentionally. Its a wild thing to step back and see how much has changed over the past 20 years. How much technology has effected the world. Its an important thing to be conscious of.