How We Became the McWorld - Global Culture is Getting More Boring

In the 1990s, we were promised a digital utopia. The internet would be a uniting, democratizing force, they said, bringing diverse voices and perspectives from every corner of the world into dialogue. Local cultures would flourish as they found their global audiences. Niche interests would thrive in their newfound ability to connect across vast distances.

Fast forward to 2024, and something very different has happened. Rather than a flourishing garden of global culture, we're witnessing the Great Standardization – a relentless homogenization of global culture driven by the very technologies that were supposed to give us the melting pot.

Let's talk about three key mechanisms driving this standardization:

First, the Algorithmic Convergence Machine. Recommendation algorithms, in their quest to maximize engagement, don't optimize for range – they optimize for reliable hits. TikTok's algorithm doesn't care about preserving traditional Malaysian dance forms; it cares about what gets clicks. And what gets clicks tends to converge on a handful of proven formulas.

Consider the "TikTok aesthetic" – that immediately recognizable style of quick cuts, particular gestures, and specific audio cues. It's not Chinese, American, or European – it's a standardized language that transcends (to put it kindly) borders and cultures. Content creators worldwide, regardless of their cultural background, learn to speak this new universal language because that's what the algorithm rewards.

The second mechanism is what we might call "Economic Gravity Wells." Global markets create overwhelming incentives to adapt to whatever is already working. A Korean pop group looking to break into the global market doesn't typically double down on traditional Korean musical elements – instead, they adapt to proven global formulas while maintaining just enough "exotic" elements to seem novel. The result isn't cultural fusion so much as cultural pasteurization – keeping just enough local flavor to be marketable while smoothing out anything too distinctive or challenging.

This isn't limited to entertainment. Walk down a trendy shopping street in Tokyo, Seoul, London, or São Paulo, and you'll find the same international brands, the same minimalist aesthetic in cafes, the same Instagram-optimized interior design. Even "local" businesses increasingly conform to global aesthetic standards because that's what tourists (and locals) have learned to expect.

The third mechanism is the Memetic Monoculture. Just as industrial agriculture favors a handful of high-yield crop varieties over local biodiversity, our current information ecosystem favors certain highly transmissible cultural forms over others. A complex traditional ceremony that requires in-person participation and years of cultural context to appreciate can't compete with an easily shareable dance that anyone can learn in 30 seconds.

You might object: "But look at all the international content we have access to now! Surely that's increasing our shared culture?"

This is the same mistake as thinking that having 500 channels instead of 3 necessarily leads to better television. When everything is operating under the same selection pressures, you get convergent evolution – different starting points evolving toward similar endpoints.

The counterargument might be that we're not losing culture so much as creating new forms of it. Perhaps instead of geographic cultural differences, we're developing novel subcultural distinctions that transcend national boundaries. The K-pop fan in Brazil has more in common with the K-pop fan in Germany than with their next-door neighbors, etc.

But I'm not convinced this is a full replacement for what we're losing. These new global subcultures tend to be consumption-based identities rather than organic, historically-rooted cultural traditions. They're more like fashion choices than true cultures, lacking the depth and interconnectedness of traditional cultural systems. And they don’t connect us to our roots, our communities, our nations, our ideological identities. They’re incompatible with any notion of patriotism while being completely incapable of fostering an alternate set of unifying values or shared morality.

What makes this particularly disturbing is that it's happening without any central planning or malicious intent. No one set out to create cultural homogenization – it's simply the emergent result of billions of micro-optimizations for engagement, marketability, and ease of transmission. But more than that, It’s like we almost choose it. It’s not entirely the fault of “the algorithm” - we have agency and we’re perfectly happy to give up whatever it is that makes us who we are in pursuit of a safe, shared cultural moment that doesn’t challenge or threaten our feelings.

The irony is that this standardization is often marketed as diversity. Netflix proudly advertises its international content library, but look carefully at what gets commissioned and promoted: increasingly, it's shows that follow proven global formulas with just enough local flavor to seem exciting. The result isn't genuine cultural exchange but a kind of cultural strip-mining – extracting the most easily marketable elements while leaving everything else behind as worthless.

So what's the solution? Unfortunately, there might not be one – at least not without fundamental changes to our technological and economic systems. As long as we have global platforms optimizing for engagement and marketability, we'll likely continue to see this convergence.

The best we might hope for is conscious resistance: supporting truly local cultural institutions, preserving traditional practices even when they're not economically optimal, and maintaining spaces for cultural expression that aren't mediated by algorithms or global markets. But our innate laziness, our love of comfort, our malaise in the face of our own mass cultural deletion gives me little hope that we’ll summon the guts to carve out space for ourselves and who we really are.

That said, we should at least be honest about what's happening. The current system isn't giving us any degree of cultural diversity – it's giving us the illusion of variety culture while creating unprecedented levels of cultural standardization. I

It's a McWorld where everything is different but somehow all the same, where distinctiveness is welcome only insofar as it can be packaged, commodified, and optimized for global consumption.

The great paradox of our age might be this: in a time of supposedly unprecedented access to diverse cultures and experiences, we're witnessing one of the greatest homogenizing forces in human history. And unlike previous waves of cultural homogenization, typically limited by geography and technology, this one operates at internet speed and global scale.

The question isn't whether this standardization is happening, or even whether we can recognize it in time to preserve something of what we're losing. It’s whether any of us even give a shit.