Old is the new new

Hey you, creators and consumers. Why aren’t you creating or consuming anything new anymore? If this sentiment sounds familiar, it’s because you’ve heard it all before. 

Today, our screens are inundated with sequels, prequels, reboots, or spin-offs that make up what feels like 99% of box office sales. Studios rely on existing IP to make a safe bet of their investments, and even when they do take risks with original content, they don’t necessarily pay off. “Give the people what they want!” they cry.

But do we really want Jurassic Park 7, Toy Story 5, and Freakier Friday?

And it's not just movies. Much of social media is not (as their brand campaigns would like us to believe) a space for originality and untethered creativity. Algorithms actively encourage trend mimicry over innovation, rewarding us for stitching another creators' creations, jumping on trends, and lip syncing to someone else's profound ideas. 

So why are we all stuck in the past? One reason could be our nostalgia for simpler times. Another could be the saturation of content at our thumbtips, which has set the bar for novelty so low that we have now reached the dead end of original thought (my kingdom for those blissful early days of Instagram when you could be ‘all caught up!’). 

Or maybe the real shift isn't in what we’re creating, but in how we value it. Do we still prize the ‘new’ like we used to, or is intertextuality the new originality? What if remixing is just a modern form of creativity that you (depending on how old you feel) old fuddie duddies just don’t understand? Remixes, stitches, edits, and references are just postmodern tools for meaning-making.

The end. 

“Who are you calling old fuddy duddies? Zoomers didn’t invent the remix!” mutters the indignant Gen Xer, clutching their Avalanches CD.
“Helloooooo… ever heard of collage?” chimes in the Picasso-stan Boomer. 

Ok, ok. Is ripping off and riffing off old ideas a new thing? No.

Has the exponential explosion of content now available to us just made it more obvious? Yes.

Have we been obsessed with finding the new ‘new’ since the Renaissance? Probably. As you were…