We're Becoming A Low-Brow Culture—Maybe It's A Bigger Problem Than It Seems

Art can't compete with a 24-hour news cycle and political drama.

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You scroll through social media for your news. You follow links to journalism covering that news. You work. You take breaks, usually filled with short writing and videos on social media. You unwind after work by watching something on YouTube recommended to you by its algorithm, or on a streaming app, also recommended by an algorithm. You look at your phone and scroll social media while you’re supposed to be watching something to help you unwind from the bad news and the drudgery of your day.

The space for good art in your life has steadily shrunk, eroded by an endless stream of bits of content and low-brow entertainment.

We don’t notice the loss of some things until the pain of their absence forces us to assess the source. The hole in our lives left by art poorly replaced with media—both mainstream and social—is one of those losses we haven’t yet noticed. The signs are there, though: teens increasingly have favorite influencers with the same zeal they once held only for favorite artists. People increasingly discuss politics and news with the same energy once reserved for sports. We once gossiped over celebrity scandals in tabloids, now we invent those scandals ourselves, gossiping about everyday people on social media and turning them into celebrities for a day—all the public scrutiny, none of the media training or money. Instead of fandoms that attach to fictional characters, we have fandoms that mythologize and attach to real politicians.

The art-shaped hole in our culture is more palpable than ever, especially to me, as I’ve watched my attention get pulled away from art and toward today’s real theater: politics. But despite the narratives spread via the news or the stories told via social media, art is meant to do more than entertain us with human drama. Unlike the news or social media, good art gives us what we need more than ever: