Over the past decade, streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, and Disney+ changed the way people consume media. TV viewers flocked to streaming’s promise of liberation from rigid programming schedules and endless entertainment on demand.
Yet today, the same platforms that once dominated the media landscape are facing a crisis. Subscribers are leaving in droves, and streaming outfits are left scratching their heads. The reasons they’ve come up with include rising subscription costs, content fatigue, and competition from new platforms. And they’re contributing factors, to be sure. But a deeper, often overlooked, issue is plagues the streaming model: the end of 20th-century popular monoculture.
To understand the streaming exodus, we first need to address the more familiar factors:
Increasing Subscription Prices: Over time, the cost of streaming services has steadily risen, with many users now feeling that they’re paying almost as much as they once did for cable. These price hikes, coupled with additional charges for premium tiers or exclusive content, have pushed many to reconsider the value of staying subscribed.
Fragmentation of Content: When Netflix was the only major player, it had a vast library of movies and TV series. But with the advent of rival platforms like Disney+, HBO Max, and Paramount+, much of that content has migrated to other services. This fragmentation forces subscribers to sign up for multiple platforms to access all the shows and movies they want to watch. The frustration of juggling multiple subscriptions has led many to decide it’s just not worth the hassle.
Content Fatigue: At the height of streaming’s dominance, platforms churned out original productions. While rapid release initially attracted subscribers, the overwhelming volume of shows and movies has led to choice paralysis. With so many options, viewers struggle to find something they’re genuinely excited about. Many series feel rushed, derivative, or designed to fill quotas rather than entertain. This barrage of mediocre content, alongside beloved classics being rotated out of libraries, has pushed many subscribers to walk away.
While these factors explain part of the decline, they don’t give us the full picture. To understand the deeper forces at play, we need to look at the broader cultural shifts that have unfolded since the height of streaming’s popularity.
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For most of the 20th century, mass media was driven by a relatively cohesive popular monoculture. Whether it was a hit TV show, a blockbuster movie, or a best-selling album, certain works of art and entertainment gained appeal with people from every walk of life. Everyone tuned in to watch The Cosby Show or discussed the latest Spielberg film. Even cable television, while segmented, still produced cultural touchstones like Friends or the Super Bowl.
But the rise of the internet, coinciding with changing demographics, has fundamentally altered the old dynamic. Cosmopolitan audiences have fragmented into smaller niche groups. Rather than rallying around a single show or movie, people now consume content tailored to their specific backgrounds and interests. This fracturing has eroded the monoculture that once made streaming services appealing as one-stop shops for mass entertainment.
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The breakdown of the monoculture makes it increasingly difficult for streaming services to create programming that gets traction with fractured audiences. This fragmenting has profound implications for subscriber retention.
Lack of Cultural Consensus: No single platform has managed to capture the kind of universal appeal that TV networks once enjoyed. Netflix’s attempt to launch “must-watch” shows like Stranger Things and has had some success, but even these hits pale in comparison to the cultural impact of series from earlier eras. Meanwhile, newer platforms like Apple TV+ and Peacock struggle to break through the noise, leading viewers to question whether paying for yet another subscription is necessary.
Niche Overload: As audiences splinter, so do the types of content that are produced. Instead of a few widely beloved shows, platforms are filling their libraries with niche programming aimed at ever-smaller subsets of viewers. While it may seem like a winning long-tail strategy, it often means that fewer shows achieve the mass appeal needed to keep a broad subscriber base interested.
FOMO Is Gone: In the 1990s, if you didn’t watch Seinfeld or The X-Files, you’d be the odd man out at the water cooler the next day. But today, fear of missing out is less motivation for subscribing. With countless options and audiences scattered across myriad platforms, there’s less pressure to watch any single show at the same time as everyone else. People can easily wait or forgo a series altogether without feeling like oddballs.
And that water cooler effect of everyone talking about the latest Netflix hit was a major selling point of steaming. But the rise of niche interests and personalized viewing habits has made that feature obsolete. The breakdown of the monoculture that made it easy to cut the cord is now coming for streaming services. Without the motivation to stay hip to social trends, those monthly fees make less and less sense.
The fragmentation of the monoculture has left streaming services in an existential crisis. Unsure how to appeal to increasingly disparate audiences, streaming platforms are left flailing. Trying to consolidate offerings or cut prices won’t be enough. They must also find ways to recapture the sense of communal experience that once made TV and movies so compelling.
As audiences continue to splinter into smaller factions, streaming services will have to find new ways to build loyalty. Whether that means more curation, exclusives, or catering to hyper-specific niches, the future of streaming depends on resolving the paradox of fostering shared expierence in a post-monoculture world.
If Christopher Tolkien edited a Berserk novelization by Glen Cook
While FOMO doesn’t seem to exist on the consumer side, it does seem to still exist on the producer side. With so many niches and fandom going mainstream, it’s a race to pump out as much content as possible to capture those people.
Under the surface, those fandoms are much smaller and the numbers are overinflated to to tourists/bandwagonners.
An added chink in the armor is that due to many reasons, our division are more pronounced and impactful. Social media lets us get into the minds of others, the anonymity has allowed unfiltered honest expression of people, and on the business side target marketing only further divides us into groups.
We could also be seeing the consequences of a nation not being unified by values that actually mean something. If America was a Christian nation at one time, then that was the glue that held it together. Now that Christianity has been removed from the cultural center, all that’s left is materialistic, petty objects to cling onto. Maybe another way to put it is that our cultural infighting is just the Console Wars on a larger scale.
Not here to argue what came first as the cause for this division, though looking back, it all feels like these factors fell into place at the same time and we’re stuck with the consequences.
For now the monoculture is dead and we will have to wait for a new one to reform later on in time.
It turns out that the Pop Cult cannot sustain a civilization.
When you focus on diversity alienates everyone you civilization will fall.
In a well unified culture, even the differences aren’t deal breakers. It’s like marriage. You want to pick a spouse who shares the same values and the differences you have aren’t deal breakers. Individual citizens are married to their neighbors/communities. Problem is the crop of members being made in the community are full of red flags and we’re all pining for a [violent] divorce.