Excerpt: The Collapse Of The Monoculture And The Rise Of Feudal Media
Big News: I am turning my Feudal Media concept into a full-on book that will cover the rise and fall of the monoculture and the changes brought about by the rise of Feudal Media. It is due out in Fall 2026. Here’s a little teaser until then.
Introduction
For most of my life, whenever there was a major national, international or weather-based crisis, I would turn to the New York Times to learn what was going on.
While I was well aware that the Times was not without its own biases, there was a feeling that their coverage of major news stories was generally fair, factual and above all, neutral, and that what I was able to glean from the paper’s coverage was reliable enough that I did not feel the need to go elsewhere unless I wanted a deeper dive.
That changed this month with the start of the most recent Iran war.
I would look at the Times and think “well, that’s one way to look at, I guess,” and immediately click over to The Wall Street Journal, Axios, The Times of Israel, the BBC, The Atlantic, Puck and The Free Press (to name a few) to triangulate all their takes before coming to a decision on what seemed to be real and what did not.
Initially, I attributed my need to triangulate to the “fog of war,” from not having any Western journalists on the ground in Iran, but as the days wore on, the pattern remained.
More surprising still, when I’d share this with friends from across the political spectrum, they would, almost to a one, report they’d been experiencing the same thing.
And that we were all somewhat taken aback by the fact that this was happening.
In retrospect though, it should not have been surprising.
Not even a little.
What we’ve been experiencing is what happens when the monoculture collapses and with it any single source of truth.
What’s emerged in its stead is something I call “Feudal Media,” a series of mostly disconnected media bubbles, each with its own truth, its own celebrity influencers, its own memes and in-jokes, its own culture.
Feudal Media extends far beyond the news to include everything from music and entertainment to art and comedy and cooking and health and fitness and everything in between. It’s an international phenomenon too, not just a U.S. one, and feudal media bubbles know no national borders.
But why feudal media?
Because at its core, the monoculture was a lot like ancient Rome.
Where everywhere you went, there was a sense of standardization and uniformity.
There was Latin. There was a system of roads and aqueducts. Towns were laid out in similar fashion no matter where in the Empire you went. There was a standard system of weights and measures. A common currency. Arts and sciences flourished and writers like Cicero and Suetonius were known throughout the region.
And then one day it all disappeared.
The barbarians invaded.
Cities collapsed.
And eventually so did the Empire.
Latin gave way to French, Spanish and Italian. Math and science gave way to superstition. And throughout Europe the centralized system of government that created a common sense of “Romanness” gave way to a series of small, largely disconnected fiefdoms, each with its own ruler, its own dialect, its own customs and superstitions, its own source of truth.
So too, did the monoculture, our Roman Empire of TV, radio and print, dissolve into a series of largely disconnected fiefdoms spread across a range of platforms from TikTok to Spotify to Substack to Netflix.
It’s why we seemingly have so many celebrities you’ve never heard of. Oscar-nominated movies that people in the industry need to Google to learn what they’re about. Cultural trends (“looksmaxing”) that seemingly pop up fully formed from out of nowhere before disappearing back into the ether.
And above all, why we no longer seem to have a single source of truth or anything remotely approaching one.
Making triangulation a very valuable skill to possess.
