Comment by 0xDEAFBEAD

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.