Comment by sanderjd

Yep, this is my impression as well. The article seemed very dissonant to what I actually see when comparing between pop culture during my 90s childhood and today.

Just to take one top of mind example: Recently when watching TV with my kids, we've been going down a "science and engineering" youtuber rabbit hole, and I think there is essentially no end to it. There are at least tens of popular creators in this genre, and hundreds, maybe thousands, of people doing it. When I was a kid, essentially this entire segment of pop culture was comprised of Bill Nye.

And I see this all over the place. We had Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera. Now there are hundreds of singers in a niche like that who have a following.

So which of these worlds is the oligopoly? Not the one today, I think...

I think the problem here is with the definition of "pop culture" that the article is using. It's true that lots of segments of pop culture that were dominant in the past have been hollowed out. But pop culture has itself just massively broadened out.