Critics Declare 21st Century a Cultural Wasteland

A growing chorus of critics has declared the 21st century a creative blank space. In 2011, Simon Reynolds's book Retromania diagnosed the 2000s as an era of recycled past. Mark Fisher's 2014 essay collection Ghosts of My Life called the period from 2003 onward the worst for popular culture since the 1950s. Alex Ross wrote in The New Yorker that technology and populism create an 'ideologically vacant dictatorship of likes.' In 2023, Jason Farago in The New York Times Magazine claimed the quarter-century looks likely to be the least innovative since the printing press. The Atlantic ran a headline 'Is This the Worst-Ever Era of American Pop Culture?' New York magazine's 'The Stupid Issue' asked if 2025 is the stupidest year on record, listing '12 signs of a culture in decline.' The author, who turned nineteen in 2011, notes she has lived her entire adult life in this alleged desert of innovation.