Cultural Singularity & The Need for Friction: The Business Case for Thinking the Inverse

How "Hyper-Optimization" threatens creativity and how slowness will save us

A discussion with Tony Wang (TW) on the theory of our “creative stagnation,” the trappings of AI, and the friction required to get us unstuck. Tony is a strategist and the founder of the Office of Applied Strategy. He oversees both the consulting practice and think tank arms of the firm. Previously, he held roles at SSENSE, McKinsey, IDEO, and Google.

MK: A few years ago I published an attempt at naming a bizarre phenomenon – a cultural paradox:

“How is it that during a moment of radical creator liberation, we’re finding ourselves with the same tropes and hooks in our entertainment?

From film and TV, to books, video games, and music, there’s statistically less diversification rising to the top... even though there’s so much bottoms up participation.”

— Cultural Stasis Amidst Creative Surplus, ZINE, 2022

In the years since, there’s been a whole lot more ink spilled on this observation: “The Age of Average,” “Filterworld,” “Algo Supremacy,” “Cultural Homogenization,” “Blanding,” “Refinement Culture” and “Cultural Moneyballism.”

Flattened, algorithmically-driven, risk-averse, accounting-based reboot culture continues to win despite the incredible diversity and eagerness of the creator economy and its long tail of choice and representation.

But despite a firehouse of hot takes, nothing much has changed over the years. Perhaps it’s gotten worse?

In 2024, all of the Top 15 highest grossing films were sequels, franchises or remakes.

Meanwhile, Alien (‘79), SE7EN (‘95), The Mummy (‘99), The Phantom Menace (‘99), The Matrix (‘99), Shaun of the Dead (‘04), Interstellar (‘14), and Whiplash (‘14), were set to return to theaters.

And in the pipe we have: Lilo & Stitch 2, Freakier Friday 2, The Accountant 2, M3GAN 2.0, Five Nights at Freddy's 2, Super Mario Bros Movie 2, Zootopia 2, Incredibles 3, Minions 3, Knives Out 3, Frozen 3, Now You See Me 3, How to Train Your Dragon 4, The Conjuring 4, The Smurfs 4, Avatar 4 & 5, Shrek 5, Avengers 5, Toy Story 5, Ice Age 6, Jurassic World 7, Mission Impossible 8, and Saw 11.

The hottest trend in entertainment is numbers.

This cultural grave robbing has gotten so unignorable that filmmaker Kirby Ferguson reported on it for The New York Times: “Is Creativity Dead?: Or is the algorithm just hiding it from you?” — which I have a brief cameo in.

It’s me.

To be clear, I do not think we’re any less creative. No, creativity is not dead. And arguably, we’re more creative than ever before with mind-blowing democratized tools, lower barriers to entry, and global networks of inspiration and remix.

The issue is just that “creativity” — especially online — is getting harder to surface and our platforms aren’t necessarily asking for it.

When I first published Cultural Stasis Amidst Creative Surplus, I proposed five approaches along with media exec and consultant Ben Dietz to move beyond this regression:

01. Acknowledge New vs. New For Them

We need content from today and for today. Multigenerational third-acts of media aren't all that bad... but for as long as there's also content produced from today too.

02. (Re-)Build for Search & Exploration

We’ve solved the barrier to entry, but we still haven’t cracked the barrier to discovery of the niche. One solution is “Design for Emergence,” which trusts users to chart their own discovery journeys vs. algorithms surfacing what it thinks I need before I even know.

03. Rewrite the Rules for Top-Down Risk

How can creative institutions better celebrate risks, incentivizing creative moonshots, and financially (or emotionally) supporting underdogs? Creativity must be seen as freedom, not liability.

04. Reframe Success & Reevaluate the Charts

We’re mistakenly still using dusty indicators of success in a contemporary media environment. We’re stuck on legacy metrics, lineages, and milestones of success. We need new charts, records, and metrics to compare ourselves to, and more importantly, more healthily reach towards.

05. Seek the Odd with Bottom-Up Risk

It also falls on the audience — us — to zag, making demands for the unique crystal clear. We can’t expect diversification across our entertainment if we first don’t at least taste it.

MK: While, over the years, this idea of “Cultural Stasis” has itself become played out, its presence still looms.

Disappointingly, there has not been a whole lot more proposed remedies to this perceived creative illness.

However... Tony Wang of The Office of Applied Strategy published a dossier: Hyper-Optimization, which doesn’t just call out this conundrum, but productively puts forth more vocabulary and solutions to get us unstuck.

Tony explains,