![]() Genre-which defined many subcultures-has disintegrated. Its genre is, in fact, K-pop but may be the only K-pop song most Westerners have ever heard. 1 Even counting repeat views, it’s probably well-known to most young people on the planet. Gangnam Style has been watched 2.9 billion times on YouTube. Now, everyone in the world listens to the same music, regardless of genre, again-just because it’s trending on YouTube. In the 1960s, for the first time, everyone in an American generation listened to the same music, regardless of genre-as an expression of solidarity. The atomized mode returns to the universalism of the countercultural mode-but by default, rather than design. With no urge for context to make culture understandable, everything is equally appealing everywhere. Meanings arrive as bite-sized morsels in a jumbled stream, like sushi flowing past on a conveyer belt, or brilliant shards of colored glass in a kaleidoscope. ![]() Unfortunately, with no binding contexts, nothing makes sense. Everything is equally available everywhere-which is fabulous! Now, there are no boundaries, so bits of culture float free. The previous, subcultural mode failed because individual subcultures did not provide enough breadth or depth of meaning and because cliquish subsocieties made it too difficult to access the narrow meaningness they hoarded. However, there is much to like about atomization, and-I will suggest-it provides vital resources for constructing the next, fluid mode. Overall, my description of the atomized mode may sound like a panicked condemnation. We shake the broken bits together, in senseless kaleidoscopic, hypnotic reconfigurations, with no context or coherence. In our present, atomized mode of meaningness, cultures, societies, and selves cannot hold together.
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