Noah Smith tackles a pervasive modern anxiety: why does American culture feel so safe, so recycled, and so devoid of the dangerous spark that defined previous decades? In his review of David Marx's Blank Space, Smith doesn't just recount a history of pop culture; he dissects the structural forces turning creativity into a risk-averse industry, arguing that the stagnation we feel is real, uneven, and deeply tied to the technology we use to create it.
The Crisis of Conventionality
Smith opens by validating a growing sentiment among cultural critics that we are living through a "recession of mischief." He cites Adam Mastroianni, who attributes this to longer lifespans and lower background risk making people less willing to be weird, and Ted Gioia, who blames monopolistic entertainment companies for flooding the market with safe intellectual property. Smith finds this evidence convincing, noting that old media products like sequels and remakes have decisively taken over from new ones.
"Popularity is now more concentrated among a small number of products," Smith writes, observing that while counterarguments suggest creativity has merely shifted to memes and short-form videos, this explanation feels insufficient. He points out a glaring contradiction: if the cost of making movies has plummeted, we should see an explosion of new films. Instead, we are "flooded with sequels and remakes." This framing is powerful because it moves the conversation beyond simple nostalgia; it forces a reckoning with the economic and psychological incentives that are actively suppressing novelty.
The Narrative Trap of the 2000s
Turning to David Marx's book Blank Space, Smith praises the work as a "coherent story" that successfully narrates the internet's role in driving culture toward "bland uniformity and crass commercialism." Smith admits that Marx's storytelling is so vivid that it paradoxically makes the 2000s feel less forgettable than the book's thesis suggests. However, Smith identifies a critical flaw in Marx's methodology: the book relies too heavily on the "Nirvana Moment"—the idea that indie upstarts regularly dethrone mainstream giants.
"The reason it was so impressive and noteworthy that Nirvana dethroned Michael Jackson in 1992 is that that kind of thing almost never happens," Smith argues. He suggests that Marx, a self-described Gen X hipster, over-indexes on these rare revolutions while ignoring the reality that the mainstream usually stays mainstream. This is a crucial distinction. It reframes the current cultural landscape not as a failure of subculture, but as the default state of human taste, where niche communities thrive in isolation rather than overturning the establishment.
The best fashion styles in the world are not being shown on the runway at Paris Fashion Week; they are created by some 21-year-old Japanese fashion student who woke up in an odd mood.
Smith uses this observation to introduce the concept of the "long tail," a theme he has explored in depth elsewhere. He argues that while the center of culture is indeed more concentrated, the fringes are more diverse than ever. He notes that in television, the 2010s saw an explosion of mid-sized comedies like Parks and Recreation and Key & Peele that catered to niche senses of humor, whereas the 1990s were dominated by a few massive hits. Critics might note that this fragmentation makes it harder to form a shared national conversation, but Smith suggests this is a fair trade for the sheer volume of creativity available to those willing to dig.
The Technological Ceiling
Where Smith diverges most sharply from Marx is in his diagnosis of the root cause. While Marx calls for a return to gatekeeping and better taste, Smith proposes a more pessimistic, technological explanation. He argues that novel cultural production is inextricably linked to novel technology. When a new tool is invented, like the electric guitar, culture explodes as artists explore its possibilities. Eventually, that space is "mined out," and progress stalls.
"But eventually, the space of cultural possibilities opened up by a new technology gets 'mined out', progress falters, and a canon gets canonized," Smith writes. This theory elegantly explains why classical music moves glacially (the technology of the violin is centuries old) and why short-form video is currently thriving (ubiquitous camera phones). It also explains why literature and film feel stagnant; the tools for writing and filming haven't fundamentally changed in decades. This is a sobering take. It suggests that the "nefarious force" sucking the life out of culture isn't just corporate greed or risk aversion, but the natural lifecycle of technological innovation.
The Path Forward
Despite the pessimism, Smith finds hope in the fragmentation of the internet. He agrees with Marx that the current mass social media model, which forces artists to perform in a "town square," breeds boring art. However, Smith believes the shift toward small, private group chats and niche communities is the key to restoring creativity. "If artists can only make art while standing in the middle of the town square, you're going to get more boring art," he notes, suggesting that the retreat from mass platforms may actually allow subcultures to flourish before being harvested by the mainstream.
Smith concludes that while Marx's book is a "fun read" and a necessary history, it lacks the prescriptions needed to solve the problem. He waits for Marx's future work to address how to restore taste and criticism, but his own verdict is clear: the stagnation is real, but it is unevenly distributed, and the solution lies in embracing the long tail rather than trying to force a new monoculture.
Bottom Line
Smith's most compelling contribution is his technological determinism, which offers a structural explanation for cultural stagnation that goes beyond blaming lazy executives or risk-averse artists. The argument's biggest vulnerability is its potential fatalism; if culture is bound by the limits of current technology, it implies we must wait for the next great invention before we can expect a renaissance. Readers should watch for how the fragmentation of digital spaces actually plays out—whether it leads to vibrant subcultures or just deeper cultural silos."