What are common pop culture products or experiences in today’s world? It is hard to tell:

Does Eilish, for instance, enjoy the same level of celebrity someone of equal accomplishment would have had 15 years ago? I don’t know. There are Soundcloud stars, Instagram stars, YouTube stars, Twitter stars, TikTok stars. Some artists, like Eilish and Lil Nas X, transition from success on a platform like Soundcloud to broader reach. But like Vine, TikTok has its own celebrities. So do YouTube and Instagram. We’ll always have George Clooneys and Lady Gagas, but it almost feels like we might be lurching towards a future with fewer superstars and more stars.

We can still read the market a little more clearly in music, and on social media, but the enigma of streaming services illustrates these challenges well. The problem is this: At a time when we’re both more able and more willing to concentrate in niches, we also have fewer metrics to understand what’s actually happening in our culture…

We have absolutely no idea. People could be watching “Santa Clarita Diet” in similar numbers to something like “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” or they could be completely ignoring it. The same goes for every show on Amazon, Hulu, and Netflix. We can see what people are chattering about on social media (hardly a representative sample), and where the companies are putting their money. But that’s it. Not only do true “cultural touchstones” seem to be fewer and farther in between in the streaming era, we also have fewer tools to determine what they actually are…

But it also means there’s more incentive for the creators of pop culture to carve us up by our differences rather than find ways to bring us together. It means we’re sharing fewer cultural experiences beyond the process of logging onto Netflix or Spotify, after which the home screen is already customized. On top of all this, it means we’re more and more in the dark about what’s entertaining us, and why that matters. What does cultural impact look like in an era of proliferating niches, where the metrics are murky?

I wonder if this could open up possibilities for new kinds of measurement beyond the producers of such products. For example, if Netflix is unwilling to report their numbers or does so only in certain circumstances, what is stopping new firms or researchers from broadly surveying Americans about their cultural consumption?

There may be additional unique opportunities and challenges for researchers. There are so many niche cultural products that could be considered hits that there is almost an endless supply of phenomena to study and analyze. On the other hand, this will make it more difficult to talk about “popular culture” or “American culture” as a whole. What unites all of these niches of different sizes and tastes?

It will also be interesting to see in 10-20 years what is actually remembered from this era of splintered cultural consumption. What cultural phenomena cross enough boundaries or niches to register with a large portion of the American population? Will the primary touchstones be viral Internet videos or stories rather than songs, movies, TV shows, books, etc.?