Welcome to CrowdSource, your weekly guided tour of the latest intellectual disputes, ideological disagreements and national debates that piqued our interest (or inflamed our passions). This week: death and rebirth.
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Culture is Dead
It’s a vibe.
“Unending Commercial Break.” Last month, critic Ann Manov reviewed a new novel, Flat Earth by Anika Jade Levy, and took the opportunity to explain why our culture sucks:
The most humiliating aspect of being alive today, I suppose, is feeling like one is living through a single, unending commercial break. As the human race disintegrates into increasingly atomized particles of recluses and rejects, one can only “stay in touch” through increasingly dystopian social media feeds that consist mostly of ads, whether traditional influencer trash and/or semi-real short-form video. … Increasingly, our choices are between two subsidiaries of the same conglomerate; within a few decades, perhaps there will be no real choice at all.
Blank Space: A Cultural History of the 21st Century is new book by culture critic W. David Marx covers “a linear history of 2001-2025.” Marx reflects on the project:
I jumped into writing the book not quite knowing how I would feel about it, and it was hard to avoid being negative in a time marked by AI slop, premium mediocre, enshittification, cryptocurrency counterculture, blind-box consumerism, the manosphere, and celebrities’ with a near-monopoly hold on the discourse.
What’s Missing. In his book, Marx provides a diagnosis:
What’s missing now is a veneration of the artistic mindset, which possesses the imagination to reject kitsch — art that trades in well-worn formulas, stock emotions, and immediate comprehensibility — and pursue work that expands the possibilities of human perception. Doing so requires at least some creators in the cultural ecosystem to strive for complexity, ambiguity, and formal experimentation — attributes that power the masterpieces that draw millions of people every year to museums.
Dead — Literally. An art installation in Australia derives music from the remains of a dead composer:
Revivification consists of an incubator housing a lab-grown “in-vitro brain”. This “organoid” was grown from blood donated to the project by the late American experimental composer Alvin Lucier. Lining the walls are 20 large, curved brass plates. Signals from Lucier’s in-vitro “brain” are transmitted through transducers and actuators, striking the brass and creating sound.
Hope and Counterpoints
Others believe that things are not so bleak.
“The Future is Flesh and Blood.” On Wisdom of Crowds last week, Matthew Gasda described a possible path for cultural renewal:
… live events will gain popularity in direct proportion to the decline of functional literacy; writers will write less for the page and more for the ear; readers will become, functionally and spiritually, listeners, viewers, collective-absorbers, reliant on cues provided by crowds.
Keep Trying. Celine Nguyen reflects on Marx’s book:
… not apocalyptic despair, nor blind optimism, but a secret third thing: a highly contingent, careful prescription for hope. Because despite all the ominous reports of the death of literacy, the death of critical thinking, the death of subcultures, and the death of artistic innovation — no one seems ready, at the end of the day, to give up trying.
Trendspotting. Critic Dominic Green takes issue with Marx’s left wing perspective:
Mr. Marx’s claim that cultural progress stalled because neoliberalism created “seductive ideologies that convinced us to stop idolizing artistic progress” is similarly shallow. The 20th-century culture business produced “profound” popular art even though its contracts were exploitative beyond the dreams of neoliberalism and its middlemen were often crooks. Rather than stifling cultural innovation, Mr. Marx’s ideologies squeeze final dividends from a blind faith in artistic progress that has outlasted the proofs of its paralysis.
The Death of Cool
A theme in Marx’s book is the decline of “cool.” This has been a topic in cultural criticism for at least two decades.
“The Death of Cool,” December 2025. Last week, pop star charli xcx wrote:
I have always rejected the idea that art, film, persona or music becoming commercial means it cannot also be considered cool. The rejection of commerciality ‘just because’ is such a boring and immature argument that is perhaps more suited to some mediums than others but in general I find to be elitist in a way that does not thrill me whatsoever. […] The apex of cool and commercial has always been interesting to me and I have always mused over the point at which something cool dies and is rejected by the initial group of people who made it desirable and aspirational in the first place. Before I go too much into that let me just state that of course I would much rather be considered ‘cool’ by a select few group of people than known by everyone.
“The Death of Cool,” July 2025. Critic David Samuels wrote:
Cool was the lack of immediate availability and accessibility, hands stuffed deep in the pockets of your black leather jacket, smoking a cigarette at the edge of the crowd, conveying both the hope of being noticed and the willingness to be overlooked. The essential duality of youth, containing the possibility of new worlds being born and at the same time inherently superfluous, and therefore likely to be a waste of time. Without facing the glacial cool surface, and risking rejection or simply boredom, it was impossible to know what reflection you might see, or whether you might discover a new angle on art and life.
“How Cool Works in America Today,” July 2017. “Woke” has replaced “cool,” argued the New York Times’s David Brooks:
The cool person is stoical, emotionally controlled, never eager or needy, but instead mysterious, detached and self-possessed. The cool person is gracefully competent at something, but doesn’t need the world’s applause to know his worth. That’s because the cool person has found his or her own unique and authentic way of living with nonchalant intensity. […] To be woke is to be radically aware and justifiably paranoid. It is to be cognizant of the rot pervading the power structures. The woke manner shares cool’s rebel posture, but it is the opposite of cool in certain respects.
“The Death of the Cool,” November 2009. Robert McHenry wrote:
Cool is not dependent on achievement, or vice versa. Cool is how you get there. Cool is just doing the job; not-cool is making sure, while you’re at it, that everyone sees just how tough the job is and thus how cool you are to be doing it. Cool is self-direction, self-possession, self-sufficiency, capability, discretion, and a bit of wit. Not-cool is angst, conspicuous display, disdain, tropisms toward bright lights, crowds, and media—in short, all those adolescent traits that so many people fail to grow out of.
The Birth (and Death) of the Cool is a 2009 book by music historian Ted Gioia. He argued for a model of “cool” and “hot” communication styles which alternate every couple of decades. He predicted the decline of “cool” in the 2010s, to be replaced by “earnestness, sincerity, authenticity, directness, and simplicity.”
Cool is Coming Back Soon. Revisiting his book last February, Ted Gioia now predicts the return of cool:
The last cool cycle started after WWII, and began to lose energy in the 1990s. The hot cycle started then, but most people didn’t really notice the signs until the 2016 election—when it became obvious. […] Trust me, the change is coming. Things will chill. I can’t provide an exact timeline. I can’t tell you if it happens tomorrow or next year or five years from now. But my hunch is that the shift will happen sooner, rather than later.
Green Shoots
Culture happening now.
“Always Now.” For decades, editor Gregory Wolfe has inveighed against what he calls “declinism”: “I do worry that declinism is so pervasive, that it has given rise to so much anger and frustration and shrillness that it now stands in the way of reform and renewal.” Today, Wolfe runs the imprint Slant Books with Emily Starr Kwilinski.
Hyperidean Press, another relatively small but bustling initiative just announced a new membership model. (Editor/publisher Udith Dematagoda has a Substack called Immanent Dissolution.)
“Meet China’s Postman Poets.” Megan Walsh reports on a new working-class literature emerging in China: “Automation, algorithms and AI pose existential threats to everyone’s role in society; all workers will end up competing for similar jobs. In such a world, literature offers an opportunity to live beyond the rat race.”
“No, Culture is Not Stuck.” Our most-read post is still Katherine Dee’s essay: “… there’s a new culture all around us. We just don’t register it as ‘culture.’ ”
From the Crowd
This week’s missives cover Ukraine, Trump’s boat strikes and the word, “troll.”
“Our Spineless Confederation.” John Wilson responds to last week’s podcast:
The whole time I listened to this all I could think was how badly we have strung Ukraine along, truly screwing them over while giving them just enough to drag it out and not enough to win. This will go down in history as a national embarrassment, especially when Russia’s grand territorial aims are restarted again and again. Eventually they will be attacking our spineless confederation, and we deserve it.
Trump’s Boat Strikes. Responding to a point made by Washington Post columnist Jason Willick that we cited in last week’s CrowdSource, the socialist author George Scialabba writes:
“the notion that the president has inherent constitutional powers to summarily kill people he suspects of trafficking cocaine is bankrupt to begin with”
This seems like the heart of the matter. Is it true? I’d say it’s obviously true. First, you can’t simply kill people you suspect are committing a crime; you have to apprehend them and then prove their guilt. Second, you can’t kill noncombatants, period. Third, it’s not a war unless Congress says so, every sixty days, or else definitely declares war. Quite apart from the disgusting slaughter of the two survivors of the first strike, the whole enterprise is squalid, depraved, and quintessentially Trumpian.
Respecting the Trolls. Thomas Brown with a new comment on our podcast with Lea Ypi from three weeks ago:
[…] I can’t help wondering about the word “troll,” especially when used by a public figure with a PhD, etc., to describe online critics, even anonymous ones. Granted, I don’t know the tone of the language used, perhaps it was ugly, in which case the term would be justified, but if they only are objecting to Lea Ypi’s political beliefs. “Her granddaughter is someone who turned out to be an apologist for communism and a Marxist” — isn’t that fair game for public debate? Why not call them by a term that confers a bit more (sorry!) dignity? “Online adversaries,” perhaps? […]
Reader Response. Jack Davey sends us a link to his essay, partly inspired by Shadi Hamid’s new book: “Liberal Democracy cannot exist without America.”
See you next week!
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WoC finger on the pulse of culture. Another great note Santi. Happy holidays to you and the team