Comment by baxtr

I heavily disagree with this one. On first glance what you say feels true, but there are so many mega popular people now that you will never know of despite even being from the same country. People with dozens of millions of fans, selling out arenas doing multinational tours and you won’t know them at all.

But everyone knows Britney Spears, even if you were never in her target demographic. This sort of global fame now requires so much more to reach because of how many are really locked into hyper personalized online experiences. I used to be able to reference the latest big movie or show and people would know, now that’s mostly turned into an explanation that the movie or show even came out and exists.

I think you're both right. Relative to the past, any given locale is more culturally fragmented, but the globe is simultaneously more culturally unified. We've hit a weird midpoint: You might have more cultural common ground with someone on the other side of the globe who follows the same people on social media, than with your next-door neighbor.

Consider this thought experiment. Imagine you're going to get coffee with either a random person in your neighborhood, or a random HN user. Which conversation will have more shared topics of interest?

This is the "global village" which was prophesied in the 1960s. It won't go away until interstellar colonization creates communication delays and a new era of cultural fragmentation.

> The entire world was talking about the same thing.

What you’re describing is an echo chamber. Which is what most sites optimize to produce (when optimizing for engagement and). I switch between bsky where it frequently feels that way “everyone is talking about Y” and mastodon where the chronological timeline makes it clear that a lot of people might be talking about it, but they’re also talking about other things.

I feel that one of the most broken things about our current reality (with so many social sites) is that it feels so singular and shared, but turns out that’s not the case at all. My partner and I have started to use the phrase “my internet” to refer to the general vibe we are taking in as in “is your internet talking about scandal Z?” I’m frequently surprised stuff that totally flys under their radar (and vice versa).

Not just headlines being shared, but culture is still being shared.

Sure the shared cultural experience of being limited to a handful of TV channels is gone, but it's been replaced by a handful of streaming services. The world has shared the Marvel Cinematic Universe and 800lb sisters and Taylor Swift.

> Take the news for example. Last weeks it was tariffs. The entire world was talking about the same thing.

... I mean, that's because it's a global economic crisis. In the early 70s, the entire world was talking about the oil crisis, another induced economic shock. Late noughties? The Great Financial Crisis. That sort of thing is _always_ going to be news everywhere.

Nope you’re wrong. Actually media has become hyperlocal.

The whole world was talking about tariffs? Nope. They were talking whatever they saw on their personalised feed.

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