The Cult(ure) of Everything
How we all became experts in nothing
I once watched a man on the subway explain the entire history of jazz to a woman wearing AirPods. He gestured wildly, as though the spirit of Louis Armstrong had possessed him, while she nodded at random intervals, presumably to whatever was actually playing in her ears. This, I realized, was culture in its purest form — one person loudly performing knowledge, and another pretending to care.
We live in an era where everyone is a self-declared connoisseur of something, but only for as long as it takes to post about it. My friend Liam became a “wine guy” last year after watching three TikToks and mispronouncing sommelier at a dinner party. The following week, he moved on to Japanese calligraphy, though his only real contribution was buying an expensive brush and forgetting it in his car.
The internet has convinced us that culture is something we consume rather than create, like we’re all flavor-testing existence instead of actually cooking. We curate opinions the way influencers curate outfits — strategically, algorithmically, and with just enough self-awareness to seem authentic. I once overheard a guy at a coffee shop say, “I liked Kafka before he was mainstream,” which is a hell of a take about a man who died in 1924.
At this point, we don’t even experience things; we experience the idea of experiencing them. People fill museums, snapping pictures of paintings they’ll never Google again. Concertgoers treat shows as backdrops for Stories. Bookshelves become props for those who care more about appearing well-read than reading. If culture is a conversation, we are all just shouting into the void, hoping the void subscribes to our newsletter.
© Ani Eldritch, 2025. All Rights Reserved.
