i’m stuck on joshua rothman’s new yorker article, “a.i. is coming for culture” (august 25, 2025): https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/09/01/ai-is-coming-for-culture
specifically, the intersection of culture and community.
shared culture gives people common touchpoints… the shows we watch, the music we debate, the rituals we share in person. hyper-personalized ai threatens that by pulling everyone into their own stream of custom content. the overlap disappears. and when people start to feel “community” through ai-mediated illusions instead, they have less reason to join real gatherings, talk to neighbors, or participate in local life. over time, offline communities risk hollowing out, replaced by synthetic ones that feel real enough but don’t actually sustain human connection.
what struck me most in rothman’s piece is this tension… ai can generate a torrent of cultural “stuff”… echoes of podcasts, art, comedy… crafted not by human accident or emotion but by pattern and prediction. culture, at its best, thrives on those accidents… on unpredictability… on the grain of someone else’s voice in a crowded room. when ai floods us with curated illusions, shared experience fades… and with it, the union of accidental encounters and collective reference points that hold communities together.
synthetic community can feel soothing… but it isn’t anchored by real interactions… by eye contact, chance meetings, shared rituals.
real belonging still happens face to face.