The creative decay of Hollywood and Silicon Valley

The business models that promise profit today will become the same models that promise bankruptcy tomorrow.

The apocalypse is upon us. (Probably.)

No, this isn’t some reference to the massive fires in Hawaii, the apparent government coverup of alien spacecraft, the oppressive heat overtaking the American Southwest or even the abysmal cultural decline of American politics. (Although, that last point really makes one want the “end times” to hurry up and arrive already.)

Instead, social media platforms are apparently out of new ideas. According to Wired.com:

Social media is having its quarter-life crisis, if a quarter-life crisis is a thing, if we can even put a lifespan on social media, which might in fact play a role in our society from now until the end of time. After 25 years of status updates, news feeds, clever tweets, performative photos, and endless scrolls, the US social media companies that have commandeered our attention and monetized it so successfully have run out of fresh ideas and are looking to reinvent themselves.

To a certain extent, much of what Wired discusses in its essay about the end-times of social media innovation isn’t exactly wrong. Meta (the social media giant formerly known as Facebook) has effectively created a Twitter clone; “X” (the social media giant formerly known as Twitter) is effectively rebuilding itself as a version of China’s WeChat; TikTok (currently known as China’s unconventional high-tech espionage effort) is basically building its own version of Instagram…

It feels remarkably like the tech giants that have been posterchildren of innovation for the last quarter century are out of fresh ideas. Even as mankind ventures into the realm of artificial intelligence, it’s easy to look around and think “Gee… maybe we’re flatlining” — at least when it comes to radically fresh ideas from Silicon Valley.

In other words, today’s “new” platform features are looking a lot like the kind of recycled sequel and trilogy remakes coming out of Hollywood in recent years: Lazy corporate attempts to dress up old ideas as new blockbusters by adding a few fresh faces and some snazzy graphics. (And, in the case of X, an artistically abysmal new logo…)

Indeed, it seems that the struggles of modern Hollywood are starting to look a little prophetic for the tech industry.

For the last decade, movie studios have been struggling to navigate a brave new world of online streaming, reduced consumer attention spans and a movie-consuming population less inclined than ever to go to the cinema. And rather than reinventing themselves to adapt with the times, they’ve largely recycled old ideas into new offerings as a quick-fix attempt to avoid the difficult task of actually figuring out how to remain profitable.  

The ongoing writer and actor strikes underscore the kind of disruption overtaking Hollywood in our current era — with virtually everyone in the industry trying to figure out how to maintain the celebrity, profits and business models that once dominated a quickly-disappearing version of the industry.

With the proliferation of streaming services, it’s not just DVD residuals and box office receipts that are in decline — so too is the type of mega-stardom once promised by the industry as a seemingly infinite number of alternative content creators gain access to consumers…