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We refuse to learn a lesson from what happened to Francis Fukuyama.

With the Soviet Union in terminal decline, the political science scholar became famous for declaring that we had reached the “end of history.” As the Cold War ended and the world went unipolar, Fukuyama inhaled some spice – delivered just-in-time from some far off manufacturer – and saw the thousand-year-reign of a neoliberal global order laid out before him. He trumpeted the triumph of liberalism, even as he admitted that the idea of having no new ideological battles worth fighting was a bummer.

That theory came crashing down at the turn of the century with the Sept. 11 attacks and the beginning of the War on Terror. The decades since have been marked by a global backlash against U.S. hegemony specifically and liberal democracy more generally.

Still, more than halfway through the 2020s, it’s tough to shake the pervasive feeling of being stuck in a holding pattern. Social media users have been debating our supposed cultural stagnation for the last several days, thanks to a post by an account named Sturgeon’s Law claiming that there had been almost no innovation in pop culture in recent memory.

“No new genres of music, etc. So much modern culture is backward-looking & revivalist, to an unprecedented extent relative to past eras that also involved revivals,” they wrote. “Something is happening we don't fully understand yet.”

The hit dogs of Gen Z hollered into the void in response, accusing “Sturgeon” of being over-the-hill and out of touch, but without offering an example of something that is actually new and broadly popular. Zoomers are paying top dollar for vintage mall-brand takes on the blingy couture of the early ‘00s. The pop stars of the late aughts are still the biggest stars in 2026. The rap mainstream, which tends to innovate much faster than its pop and country cousins, has been flitting between microvariations on the sounds pioneered by Chief Keef and Young Thug before many Gen Z listeners entered grade school. Another silver-spoon president is marching us into a Middle East war that nobody wants.

This topic of everything in culture being old and boring has energized plenty of cultural commentators. Critics at The Atlantic and The New Republic have taken a crack at it. Author W. David Marx wrote an entire book about the phenomenon, a cultural history of the last two decades called “Blank Space.” The causes of this alleged collapse vary — the crumbling of newspaper criticism and the rise of poptimism, the internet fracturing the monoculture, late capitalism, rising housing costs — but the conclusions are pretty much the same: Culture has stopped moving forward and is waiting around to die.

Of course, there’s nothing new about this critique either. Marxist culture critic Frederic Jameson was saying something similar in 1984, arguing that the victory of global capitalism would create a culture entirely built on pastiche. Philosopher Jacques Derrida was writing in 1993 about culture being endlessly haunted by the past. Pop critic Simon Reynolds claimed in 2011 that music’s past was calcifying while its future was collapsing. All three of those guys, let’s note, were already on the far side of 40 at the time.

The idea that history is stalling out is perfect fodder for an endless internet debate, since every possible response just inspires more questions. Has pop culture pulled out of a similar tailspin in earlier cycles? Does cultural innovation need to be fostered or will it spring up naturally in each new generation? Is culture ending, or are you just old?

Where do you land? Click the speech bubble icon to leave a comment.

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