Comment by rsynnott

> But what's missing is a shared cultural experience. In the 90s, everyone at my school knew those 40 songs that the local stations played. They might know other stuff too, but you couldn't avoid those top songs. It's not the same today. And it's the same problem for visual media. We all knew the top movies at the theater, because it was the only place to see new movies. And we all knew the top TV shows because they were only on four major networks.

I mean, there's certainly greater diversity (particularly for music, stuff outside of the mainstream always existed, of course, but the barrier to entry was far higher then than now), but there's still a large shared _core_ of content.