The age of TikTok makes access to wisdom so easy that it almost loses its value. Every once in a while, you hear someone you’d never expect say something almost profound, which sparks a surprising train of thought. For me, that happened a few weeks ago when I saw a TikTok (or a Reel—let’s be honest, I’m a millennial) of Matty Healy talking about how there’s no real innovation in music anymore.

“If I said to anybody, the 60s or the 70s or the 80s, the first thing you would think of is the cultural producers of those times… Whereas if I said ‘What’s the sound of 2009?’ It’s a lot fuzzier, right?”

He goes on to reference Mark Fisher’s Ghosts of My Life, saying that if you played Aphex Twin in the 60s, people would say, “this isn’t even music.” But now? Everything feels like a remix.

This isn’t a new thought. In fact, most of what Healy mentioned was from Fisher’s book, distilled and turned into a viral short, which ironically reinforces the point. Mark Fisher didn’t just critique modern culture—he mourned it. At the heart of his thinking is a question that still cuts deep today: why does the future feel like it’s already over?

In Fisher’s view, we are stuck in a state of cultural hauntology: haunted not by the past, but by the futures we were once promised but never arrived at. “It’s not that the future has been cancelled… it’s that it’s been slowly, invisibly withdrawn.”

Are we just remixing the past, or is it still postmodernism?

Is what we call innovation just repackaged revivalism? One could argue there hasn’t been an “original” idea since the beginning of time. All art echoes something. The uniqueness of any piece comes from the artist’s lens.

However, capitalism has trained us to see every skill as a potential commodity. And especially in the past 50 years, more people than ever identify as “artists,” using that label both as an expression of passion and as a professional aspiration. The two are not always aligned.

In the West, this has created a flood of self-styled creatives. Meanwhile, in the Global South, taboos around art and the pressing need for economic stability make artistic risk much harder to take. But even for those of us who have something truly personal to express, the crisis of intention is real.

Our “why” is broken; often unclear or performative. and those of us who are actually trying to hold on to authenticity rarely have access to distribution. Perhaps this is why TikTok has taken off so much in rural areas all over the world.

Perhaps it also doesn’t help that history keeps repeating itself. Much of the art that has remained timeless does so because it’s still relatable. Can anyone really be blamed for referencing art that still makes sense to us? Even if what we have to add to it is still forming.

That’s not to say there isn’t a flood of brilliant art coming out, some of it referencing the past with a unique spin. After all, postmodernism and whatever post-postmodernist soup we’re in now was already unstable to begin with. Scholar Louis Menand once said, “Postmodernism is the Swiss Army knife of critical concepts. It’s definitionally overloaded, and it can do almost any job you need done.”

Hans Bertens adds: “If there is a common denominator to all these postmodernisms, it is that of a crisis in representation: a deeply felt loss of faith in our ability to represent the real… The representations that we used to rely on can no longer be taken for granted.”

Isn’t that exactly what we’re living through? Postmodernist art is basically references to references of references. It’s self-aware, like a mirror facing a mirror: endless and hollow at the same time. Like all of us on social media. Which can be fun, and has potential to pay homage to pioneers. But beneath it, there has to be a kernel of something real. Something intentional. Otherwise, we’re just spinning in place.

Democratization vs. dilution

As content increases, context decreases. Our overstimulated, hyperconnected world has become a collective consciousness of consumption. For those of us not living in poverty, which is not as many as we think, consumption is constant. Once it was commodities; now it’s ads, pretty pictures, brain rot, and misinformation.

The internet, despite its potential, loops back on itself. Algorithms feed us what we already like instead of what we don’t know we need. The idea that creativity is stuck, or that we’re in an age of “cultural recycling”, isn’t new. But it hits different when you want your art to mean something and wonder whether that’s even possible anymore.

Being “on trend” means something else now: trends are increasingly niche, fleeting, and hyper-contextual. What’s popular today is cringe tomorrow. Certain creators ride this wave well, pumping out content that “works”; meaning it gets attention. And attention has become the metric for value.

Once upon a time, counterculture resisted the mainstream. Now, it is the mainstream. Subversion has become aestheticized. Even indigenous or culturally rooted art is folded into this system, becoming “cool” only if it can be branded, scaled, and sold. Tradition, once sacred, is now a commodity.

And who can blame the artists? This is the landscape we’re in. There are too many of us trying to make it, and to “make it” in this version of capitalism means being at least partially viral. If we’re not creating anything truly new, then what is creativity now? And more importantly: what is it for?

Tools, access, and the blur of intention

Since the internet became our home, the definition of art has gotten fuzzier. Distribution is now democratic. Tools are easier to access than ever. That should feel liberating. But instead, it often feels like we’re drowning in monotony.

There was a time when being an artist meant mastery. Creativity wasn’t just about ideas, it was about execution. Master artisans honed their skills. Around the 18th century, art shifted from utility to expression, but it remained slow, studied, and tied to elite tastes.

Post-industrialization gave rise to artistic experimentation: Dada, surrealism, punk, postmodernism. All responses to dissatisfaction. But the fear of stagnation has always been there. What’s new is our infinite scroll, which flattens time and makes everything feel equally urgent and equally disposable.

With it came a subtler crisis (one of many of you’ve been keeping track): the separation of craft from intention. These used to be the two essential components of art. Now, both feel optional. The real crisis of the “new” is a crisis of why. And to find a why, you need stillness. You need self-awareness. You need to live before you can reflect.

But in a generation raised on dopamine hits and constant notifications, trying desperately to make it out of the cycle of brain rot, that stillness is rare. Everyone knows their identifiers, their Myers-Briggs type, their rising sign, their personal brand, but not necessarily themselves. And listen, this takes lifetimes to figure out.

Some people never figure it out. I’m not trying to pass it off as simple. But as a part of the human journey, the process has to start with some semblance of certainty within oneself, in an increasingly uncertain world. Our current media landscape isn’t helping with that.

The slow death of craft

Craft is dying not because people aren’t talented, but because talent alone no longer sells. Mastery requires time, discipline, boredom. None of which fit neatly into the algorithm.

Even in traditional societies, where artisanal and indigenous crafts once held deep spiritual and social value, younger generations are leaving those paths behind, unless some young entrepreneur manages to make them viral and exploit their talent (I’m generalizing of course).

Virality is more seductive than skill. Who wants to spend years perfecting a technique when a trending sound can get you more visibility in 15 seconds? And who gets to say you’re talented anymore? If youve self learned because resources are rare, that can mean you’re sufficiently skilled, or it can mean you skipped through some steps. The hierarchy of skill no longer exists.

No offense to Rupi Kaur, I’m happy for her success, but the fact that people cite her as their favorite poet over thousands of poets across a plethora of languages who spent decades perfecting their mastery of words, makes one think of how times have changed. And that’s even if people still consider poetry important enough for their most important asset, their attention.

Handmade textiles, oral storytelling, shadow puppetry, calligraphy, are being replaced by digital content that is easier to scale and monetize. And again, who can blame anyone? Surviving in a creative field now requires visibility, not necessarily vision. This loss isn’t just aesthetic; it’s existential.

The disappearance of craft is the disappearance of a different way of knowing, of relating to the world through process rather than highly subjective performance and experience.

Creativity as marketing

Another major shift has been that creativity has become synonymous with problem-solving. Not in the soulful, philosophical sense, but in the brand deck sense. Being a “creative” now often means designing pitch decks, social strategies, brand voices, campaigns. Creativity is applied to KPIs, not culture.

There’s a whole generation of brilliant thinkers working in marketing departments, building TikTok strategies for laundry detergents. And honestly, some of it is great work. But when creativity is always in service of selling, not expressing, it loses its edge. Or worse, it becomes indistinguishable from the product.

We’re told storytelling is key, but the stories are always tied to conversions. Narrative becomes currency. The artist becomes influencer. The work becomes content. And the truth of the matter is, these creatives who are essential to building iconic brands are often lost in the noise under the umbrella of the institutions they serve.

The art world as a performance of relevance

And what of the “high” art world? The galleries, biennales, residencies? At first glance, they look like the last havens for raw artistic expression. But beneath the surface, the game is the same.

To stay in the loop, you must perform relevance. Perform identity. Perform struggle. Sometimes, even perform radicalism, just keeping it palatable for the interests of those with the influence.

Art has always been highly political, but it’s also been personal. As mentioned before, the resistance to institutional power becoming the mainstream, no one wants to associate with the old ways of being anymore.

The irony is heavy: the art world critiques capitalism while depending on it. It rewards disruption only when it’s aesthetically pleasing and comfortably ‘radical’. Billionaires who contribute to the artists not being able to afford groceries or pay rent have paintings by those same people hanging in their living rooms above their fireplace, virtue signalling their support of the very people they’re trying to avoid in every way.

As an artist, you have to walk an unbelievably thin line between seeming authentic and actually being authentic. Artists can’t afford to just create anymore. They have to embody the politics of their work and package them for grant applications and collector interests. Authenticity has become a pose. And the loop continues.

AI and the opportunity to rekindle creativity

The new threat and maybe, weirdly, the new hope. Many fear AI because it challenges what it means to create. If machines can draw, write, compose: what’s left for us?

But maybe AI is the reset we didn’t know we needed, if we can get some regulations and enforced boundaries in place, addressing the issues of the heinous environmental impact, plagiarism and stealing of content and data, as well as deciding which one of the many AI platforms causes the least harm on a larger scale.

But in all honesty, as a previous nay sayer, I’ve accepted my fate. And I intend not to be left behind. Plus, there’s way to use AI as a tool that doesn’t infringe on our creative freedom.

Because if execution is no longer a barrier, the only thing that matters is intention. Human curiosity. Human contradiction. Human honesty.

AI can’t replace our capacity to reflect, to wrestle, to experience grief or confusion or love in messy, unsellable ways. And maybe this is what creativity will come to mean: not flawless technique or perfect timing, but truth. Not novelty, but clarity. (I’m writing more on this in a separate piece.)

A new kind of creativity

So, what will it take to be creative now? Maybe it’s less about making something “new” and more about making something honest. Maybe creativity now is an act of resistance: not against the past, but against the pressure to perform. To be legible. To be liked.

Maybe creativity means not giving in to the metrics. Maybe it means spending a little more time thinking than producing. Maybe it means making fewer things, but with more presence. Because if the future has been invisibly withdrawn, then every small act of meaning-making is, in its own way, radical.