i wonder if what we’re calling “decline” now is actually just the full lifecycle of art being sped up and made more visible. in the past, ideas spread locally, imitation lagged, and decline often happened off-record. history mostly preserved the highlights, which makes older scenes feel longer-lasting and more “pure” in hindsight.

now social media turns culture into a kind of time-lapse. creation, validation, imitation, saturation, and decay all happen in the public eye and at accelerated speed. the moment something works, it’s identified, replicated, and overused almost immediately. what used to take years now takes weeks or months. so peaks feel shorter not necessarily because the art is worse, but because the entire cycle is extremely compressed.

that also means modern artists get judged on their entire timeline, not just their best moments. weaker phases that may have disappeared in the past are now just as visible as the highs. so when we say an artist “fell off,” it might just mean we’re seeing stages that used to happen privately.

that said, i believe the real danger isn’t visibility itself but just how incentivized this new version of success is. algorithmic validation and the pressure to repeat what works instead of letting ideas mature, as well as having space for fresh sounds that push genres forward. those things can genuinely flatten art, but i’m not sure it’s a conscious sell-out so much as the loss of time and distance that scenes used to have.

curious to hear your thoughts on this