> There has been an explosive growth in cultures which are interest based rather than location based. Board games, furries, car people, kpop, etc. These groups all have their own inside jokes, terminology, events, etc.

Sure, but those aren't internet culture. The internet is barely a hobby/interest any more, it's just part of the infrastructure of every hobby/interest.

> There has been an explosive growth in cultures which are interest based rather than location based.

That was a surprise to the architects of Facebook's original infrastructure. Facebook started in 2004 as a service for college students. Most traffic was expected to be with people at the same college, or at least in the same region. So the servers were regional, with relatively weak long-distance connections. As Facebook grew, the load was nothing like that. They had to redesign the system completely.

The reality is that every middle aged loser knows more than they ever wanted about kpop, labubu, and furries just goes to show it’s all a centralized homogenized monoculture being forced on everyone.

i've noticed an uptick in the last couple years of new outlets doings stories about the slang -- "kids are saying {skibidi, rizz, 67} now, here's what it means."

kids have always had slang, but i don't remember there being news reports about it in the past.

and i think the difference now is that parents get freaked out when some new slang takes over seemingly out of nowhere.

in the past, adults were aware of the media their kids were consuming. they overheard them talking on the phone with their friends. they saw kids hanging out together in real world physical spaces.

but now? kids an entire social life and media ecosystem is private and inside their phone. parents don't have visibility into "kid world" the way they used and it freaks them out.

they worry about bad things happening, but mostly they just worry that their kid has a whole private life that they don't know anything about and they're not part of it.

> Even people saying things like "bet" are all part of new lingo

Maybe I'm just black, but there's absolutely nothing new about "bet." Unless you mean last 50 years new maybe (I can only vouch for 50 years.)

Still goes to your point, though. The kids are just imitating black people like their parents, their parents parents, and their parents parents parents, and their parents parents parents parents, and their parents parents parents parents parents. The desire of the kids to repeat things that they heard black people say is at least 150 years old at this point if the cakewalk (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cakewalk) is a good spot to date it from.

Previously there was way more monoculture I feel. Everyone knew the big youtubers, Smosh, Pewdiepie. Everyone was playing the same flash games. I guess there is still a monoculture in online gaming with everyone centralising on a few top games. But youtube is completely individualised now.

Two users on TikTok are seeing entirely different trends and creators.

Agreed on the last paragraph. When I grew up (long time ago), almost everyone saw the most recent <kids show> because there were only 3 or 4 on after school, and generally only one targeted towards each major peer group.

Sure, you can now choose from 27 different shows in each genre (comedy, drama, romance, business, cops, medical dramas, etc), each with many seasons to watch/stream/binge, but odds that your friend saw the same episode last night? Approximately zero. Whereas, "must see tv", as trite as it was, almost always gave you something to talk about the next day.. "No soup for you!" was huge in my circles for quite some time, for example.

And the less someone shares with you in terms of background, the easier it is to withdraw into your own bubble, and watch more shows alone, and become more isolated..