The Guardians of Culture Who Missed It…
I used to look to a set of writers, thinkers, and cultural curators for signals about where technology was headed. I consider some of these people my friends. They built their reputations as interpreters of change, people who could tell us what mattered and why before it did. They did this reliably for decades through every massive innovation, until now.
When I put Doomscroll.fm in front of them, every single one of them missed it. Not one saw the value. A few admitted they didn’t get it, but the majority were incapable of seeing it for what it is or articulating even a single word response.
I understand that this isn’t personal on their part, but it is structural. The entire class of “tech culture guardians” has failed to recognize what’s actually happening. They may have mistaken their role as gatekeepers for something permanent, when in fact it was always contingent on scarcity. When information was hard to get, when prototypes appeared only in limited settings, when you needed someone to translate code, product, and function into metaphor, that was when the role mattered.
The gates they keep don’t hold anymore. The machinery is in the open. Culture generates its own defenses and its own commentary in real time. We no longer need a keynote, a column, or a curator to validate it. The roadside attraction no longer needs countless billboards on the side of the freeway announcing it. When an experiment like Doomscroll.fm runs live, with industrial strength, at cultural scale, the question of permission simply disappears.
This failure isn’t new. The same thing happened with every disruptive medium. Photography was declared “not art.” Digital photos were dismissed as worthless. Photoshop was “cheating.” Ebooks were “toys.” Tablets were “gimmicks.” If we look back far enough we will find the same complaints about every technical advancement in our history. The verdicts were always the same: “this doesn’t count.” And every time, culture absorbed the technology, rewired itself, and left the gatekeepers scrambling to reframe, or obsolete if they were unable.
The difference now is speed and scale. AI doesn’t just shift authorship from a small number of people, it hands it out wholesale to anyone who asks. It makes visible, audible, and tangible the voices that never got past the milquetoast gates. That’s what terrifies the old guard. It’s not that the technology doesn’t matter, but that their authority over what matters doesn’t anymore.
I’m not here to burn bridges. I’m just pointing out the obvious: the people we once relied on to interpret the future have failed to interpret this moment. They don’t see it. They don’t get it. And that’s fine, because the future doesn’t need their approval.
Whether they catch up or not is their choice. The stream of progress keeps moving. Doomscroll.fm is one example of flow without pause or permission, proof that the era of gatekeepers is finished.
