a day ago
- The decline of deviance since the 1990s has reduced crime and risky behaviors but also cultural innovation and diversity.
- Increasing prosperity is the primary driver: people have more to lose, so they avoid risks and rule-breaking.
- The internet accelerated deviance decline through cultural carcinization (convergence on few strategies), de-frictioning (perfect preference matching leading to unoriginal content), and the flat-Earth problem (global appeal lowering common denominators).
- Alternative explanations like nostalgia or increased tolerance are considered but insufficient; prosperity explains paradoxes like less teen weed use despite easier access.
- Rising prosperity raises the opportunity cost of being a starving artist, reducing cultural deviance and experimentation.
- Greater tolerance and commercialization (e.g., Hot Topic) co-opt subcultures, diluting their countercultural edge.
- The author calls for supporting 'good deviance' by acting as lenient gatekeepers to preserve cultural vitality.