In this Thursday’s guest post, we welcome Beth Bentley, who is the founder of Tomorrowism, a brand strategy consultancy advising CMOs, CEOs and investors in and around the global fashion system and beauty industry. Previously, Beth was at Vice and Wieden+Kennedy, and is all around a strategic, creative, and cultural force. Thank you for joining us, Beth.

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Pattern Recognition

One year on, the algorithm’s grip tightens and we find ourselves in…

The Meh-ocene?

Half-way through this meh-cade, it’s time to call it what it is.

Exactly 365 days ago I wrote about how I thought life under the algorithm is weirding the way we build our wardrobes, identities, taste, interests and opinions…and making us less interesting.

“Everything looks the same, and everything is derivative of something else.”

What I didn’t realise was how much worse it would get.

Like I said last year, we should by all measures be living through a wild explosion of the new and remarkable. But – and much ink’s been spilled on this over the past 12m – that’s not what we’re getting. We’re getting cultural flattening and sameness everywhere. I called it innovation stagnation.

What’s happening on our watch is so much more than just a drift to the average.

Don’t get me wrong – that’s bad enough, but what I’m talking about is about is worse.

The real problem is that despite everything we now have access to – the tools, the tech, the time, the AI, the networks, the sharing platforms – it’s becoming harder, not easier, to put new, original, interesting, provocative, strange, challenging things out into the world than it was even a year ago.

Because the algorithm will lean towards burying them. In favour of stuff that’s more familiar and palatable and easy for people to engage with quickly and frictionlessly.

Just in: Meta’s Q3 2024 earnings report admitted that Instagram’s content recommendation system now prioritises what they call “high-engagement format alignment.” Translation: posts that closely mimic already existing high-performing content.

Anyone working in brand-building, or writing/creating online, or in film, or music, probably knows this in their bones.

Has it gone so far that someone with an original/remarkable/innovative thing to say now have an additional barrier rather than an additional tool? A. Have idea/create thing, now B. figure out how to game/beat/bend to algorithm.

And ofc it’s not just *algorithms* (…waves arms about). It’s the entire machinery of late-stage capitalism that now rewards conformity over creativity.

The meh-chinery, if you will (can’t stop won’t stop).

Although I did read an economist this week, who I cannot now find, saying they think we ain’t even close to actual late-stage yet.

Some new evidence, officer?

Billboard’s 2024 year-end analysis: 82% hit songs now use one of just four melodic structures that have previously proven most successful by the algorithm. Spotify’s year-end data: the average similarity score between Top 100 tracks reached an all-time high.

BoF x McKinsey’s State of Fashion 2024 report: 71% (sure…cash-strapped, low-growth) fashion industry executive leaders now rely ‘heavily’ on AI to predict and inform design decisions – not to innovate, but to replicate what worked before. The logic being that this lowers risk. But does it??

When Deloitte surveyed Gen Z consumers in November, 72% said they prefer products that ‘feel familiar’ to those that ‘stand out’.

And of course even the colour of 2025 is meh. How could it not be, when the word of 2024 was brainrot?

Elizabeth G’s It’s Nice That piece: “Who is Pantone’s Colour of the Year actually for?”

The algorithms aren’t just narrowing and homogenising our preferences.

They’re making surfacing new/interesting/remarkable things so HARD that everyone’s just recycling old ones.

Even the biggest, most valuable brands of our generation aren’t immune to the brute force of this stuff. I was chatting with

Ana Andjelic

this morning (actually about the pros and cons of PhDs) and she said something smart on this subject: Nike’s troubles really started when its innovation started slowing. And Apple hasn’t had an actual bona fide breakthrough for ages.

The Meh-ocene, then?

…where actual cultural production is replaced with cultural reproduction.
…where what looks like innovation is actually iteration.
…where innovation eventually becomes algorithmically impossible?

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Pattern Recognition

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