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The World Was Flat. Now It's Flattened
The state of the culture, 2025
Ted Gioia
Mar 5

 




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This time every year, I deliver a “State of the Culture” speech.

I do it in my home office—it’s quieter here. Nobody interrupts me. I don’t even have to shave.

Related Article from The Honest Broker:
The State of the Culture, 2023

The State of the Culture, 2024

Okay, it’s not ideal There’s no audience—so I have to imagine applause and TV cameras. There’s no media coverage (unless I create it myself). There are no special guests.

Even so, the State of the Culture is still more interesting than a State of the Union speech, filled with boasts and political grandstanding and pre-fab talking points.

That’s because culture is the ultimate source of everything happening now. Even political change is the result of cultural shifts.

People are starting to figure that out.

Last year I shared this homemade graphic in my “State of the Culture” article—and it reached more people than anything I’ve ever published here.

Chart on the rise of dopamine culture
Source
Even in an election year, this seemed to capture something significant beyond the reach of political discourse.

But what about today?

The State of the Culture, 2025
So remember the first rule: The culture always changes first. And then everything else adapts to it.

That’s why teens plugged into the most lowbrow culture often grasp the new reality long before elites figure it out. This was true 50 years ago, and it’s still true today.

So that’s our second rule: If you want to undestand the emerging culture, look at the lives of teens and twenty-somethings—and especially their digital lives. (In some cases those are their only lives.)

The web has changed a lot in recent years, hasn’t it? Not long ago, the Internet was relaxed and carefree. It was free and easy. It was fun. There wasn’t even an app store.

We made our own rules.

The web had removed all obstacles and boundaries. I could reach out to people all over the world.

The Internet, in those primitive days, put me back in touch with classmates from my youth. It reconnected me with friends I’d made during my many trips overseas. It strengthened my ties with relatives near and far. I even made new friends online.

It felt liberating. It felt empowering.

But it also helped my professional life. I had regular exchanges with writers and musicians in various cities and countries—without leaving the comfort of my home.

I made new connections. I opened new doors.

And this didn’t just happen to me. It happened to everybody.

“The world is flat,” declared journalist Thomas Friedman. All the barriers were gone—we were all operating on the same level. It felt like some imaginary Berlin Wall had fallen.

That culture of flatness changed everything. Ideas spread faster. Commerce moved more easily. Every day I encountered something new from some place far away.

But then it changed.

Twenty years ago, the culture was flat. Today it’s flattened.

“Corporations didn’t intend to make the culture stagnant and boring. All they really want is to impose standardization and predictability—because it’s more profitable.”
I still participate in many web platforms—I need to do it for my vocation. (But do I really? I’ve started to wonder.) But now they feel constraining.

Even worse, they now all feel the same.

Instead of connecting with people all over the world, I now get “streaming content” 24/7.

Facebook no longer wants me stay in touch with friends overseas, or former classmates, or distant relatives. Instead it serves up memes and stupid short videos.

And they are the exact same memes and videos playing non-stop on TikTok—and Instagram, Twitter, Threads, Bluesky, YouTube shorts, etc.

Every big web platforms feels the exact same.

That whole rich tapestry of my friends and family and colleagues has been replaced by the most shallow and flattened digital fluff. And this feeling of flattening is intensified by the lack of context or community.

The only ruling principle is the total absence of purpose or seriousness.

List of problems caused by scroll-and-swipe interfaces.
The platforms aggravate this problem further by making it difficult to leave. Links are censored. Intelligence is punished by the dictatorship of the algorithms. Every exit is blocked, and all paths lead to the endless scroll.

All this should be illegal. But somehow it isn’t.

Do you remember rule two above? It said: Look to the teens, and their digital lives.

When you do that, you see immediately that they are the main victims here. This flattened culture is all they have ever known. It’s now the landscape of their inner lives.

Many of these youngsters lack the skills and tools required to escape. So this flattened world is really their prison—and the billionaire wardens (Mr. Z and Mr. M and all the rest), who get rich from all this dysfunction, want them held in their digital chains forever.

In all fairness, let me say that the corporations didn’t intend to make the culture stagnant and boring. They didn’t intend to cause teen depression, suicidal impulses, anxiety, self-harm, and all the rest.

All they really wanted was to impose standardization and predictability. That’s what businesses always want—because it’s more profitable.

But corporate standardization always brings negative unintended effects:

It destroyed artisans and craftmanship—because uniformity was more profitble.

It eliminated indie businesses from your community—because uniformity was more profitable.

It made every mall look the same—because uniformity was more profitable.

It made architecture boring, turning everything into a box—because uniformity was more profitable.

It banished beauty from everyday life—because uniformity was more profitable.

You can even see this quest for uniformity and standardization in their corporate symbols. Every logo now looks exactly the same.


All logos now look the same (Source: Velvet Shark)
But here’s the problem. With the rise of social media and other apps, corporations are now trying to impose standardization on people.

That means you and me.

Everything we do, from dating via apps to getting a meal from DoorDash to communicating with friends on Facebook, must be handled in a uniform, standardized way. That’s because—yes, you guessed it—it’s more profitable that way.

This is how people get flattened." takeaways of this article in short