This has democratized media. A teenager in Ohio can become a film critic with a Letterboxd account. A chef in Mumbai can gain millions of followers for his street food reviews. The gatekeepers are gone.
Take Selling Sunset or Love is Blind . While we know they are edited for drama, they shape our expectations of career success, relationships, and conflict resolution. We watch these shows and internalize the pacing: life must be a series of cliffhangers. Conflict must be explosive and resolved in a 40-minute runtime. ExxxtraSmall.23.01.19.Emma.Bugg.A.Tiny.Distract...
However, the downside is the . We are increasingly watching content that confirms our biases. If you click on one "sad ending" movie, your entire homepage becomes a tragedy fest. Entertainment is no longer a shared cultural event; it’s a customized reality. The "Real" Effect of Unscripted TV Consider reality television and docu-series. We often dismiss them as "guilty pleasures," but they have arguably become the most influential genre of popular media. This has democratized media
Psychologists call this the —the idea that heavy viewing of specific content (like crime dramas or true crime podcasts) makes the viewer believe the world is more dangerous and dramatic than it actually is. The Short Attention Span Economy Perhaps the biggest shift in 2024/2025 is the death of the slow burn. With the rise of TikTok and YouTube Shorts, popular media has optimized for "hooks" every three seconds. The gatekeepers are gone