Adam Mastroianni

The Decline of Deviance 2

15 insights saved from this article by @psychology

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The more customers a product targets, the more it serves the lowest common denominator, trading cultural quality for universal reach.
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Smoking, drug use, teen pregnancy, weapons, and crime improved without a deliberate plan. Telling children not to smoke can even backfire.
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Five musicians sleeping in a bus station could signal an artistic subculture. Today, the same deprivation looks like individual homelessness.
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Older generations sharply prefer the culture of their youth. Millennials have broader tastes, while Gen Z’s preferences barely favor any decade.
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Recommendation systems amplify undeveloped preferences, serving increasingly similar content before new tastes have a chance to form.
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No one knows what they like until they encounter it. Art grows taste by stretching desire, not merely satisfying it.
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Culture is becoming top-heavy: fewer major players dominate the top, while the bottom remains chaotic and vibrant.
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Deviance is declining for two opposite reasons: society is more tolerant, and prosperity makes meaningful rebellion harder.
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A few generations of semi-inclusive institutions made more lifestyles socially acceptable by making diversity profitable to politics and commerce.
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Inclusive institutions raise living standards for almost everyone, while mainly hurting kleptocrats who monopolized wealth and power.
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Will people deliberately protect interesting deviance, or passively reproduce the status quo?
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Cultural carcinization happens when countless possible strategies converge on a few repeatedly viable ones, making culture competitive and repetitive.
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The internet did not necessarily start cultural decline, but it can accelerate trends already underway.
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Globalization lets niche creators find scattered audiences, yet commercial rewards push them toward reaching everyone.
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Interesting taste requires encountering art you might dislike, including work that challenges or unsettles your attention.

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