Let’s start here:

In agriculture, monoculture refers to “the growing of a single crop over and over on the same piece of land.” It’s a practice designed for efficiency - the consistent, mass-production of one crop lowers harvesting challenges and increases the profitability of a farm. But over time, the monoculture farming method also creates a lack of biodiversity and degrades the soil. Eventually, if not subsidized with expensive fertilizer and/or other tactics to replicate biodiversity, monoculture farming lowers crop yield & quality and economically damages the farmer.

In US culture, monoculture mostly refers to "a Pleasantville image of a lost togetherness that was maybe just an illusion in the first place, or a byproduct of socioeconomic hegemony." But despite this illusion, the persistence of “monoculture” in the narrative of how we interact as a society remains. A simplistic timeline of monoculture closely follows that of media: access to information dissemination formats (radio, for example) starts out limited but grows and spreads as the costs to produce and surface such content go down; then a new media format emerges (TV, for example) that once again starts limited but shows the potential for greater impact and we begin again. 

The constant in this cycle has been the increase in total output. There were once three TV channels, just a few movie studios, and a handful of magazines to read. Now, there’s <holds up iPhone> all of this and what it entails: hundreds of daily notifications, immediate access to billions of hours of content, and algorithms so addictive that they even try to nudge us to stop when we’re in too deep. We’ve figured out how to efficiently mass-produce something that might be called a monoculture, but it’s really just the tools that have become ubiquitous. The ideas found from using those tools are usually anything but mass.

These 3 videos, originally served to users who have been on TikTok for about an hour straight, have been seen over 3.5 billion times. Last year, the platform also added additional videos in collaboration with Headspace that encouraged mindfulness, and a series of videos focused on encouraging people to go to sleep.

In fact, if you dig deep enough into the rise and fall of the different formats for the transmission of culture, you’ll likely find that a subculture (or “microculture” or “counterculture”) pushed the transmission forward first. By definition, subcultures, microcultures, and/or countercultures have existed ever since there was culture, sometimes in the shadows and other times openly challenging the narrative that the monoculture puts forth. Many people regard a symbiotic relationship between monoculture and subculture as one sign of a healthy society that promotes certain freedoms and expressions, creating a “fresh air” that pushes up against monoculture’s homogeneous nature. The challenge historically has been that these subcultures couldn’t compete with the reach of monoculture. That is, until the internet.

The discoverability of subcultures, primarily thanks to mass adoption of the world wide web, has changed us individually forever. Easy access to an encyclopedic database (or “menu”) of subcultures allows individuals to reinterpret and remix their identities in hyper-specific ways. Not only have we thrown aside the traditional pillars of monoculture (with one major exception to come later), but we have reached a point where we are no longer even bound by the same realities and truths. 

New research conducted by Quick Study found that 46% of Americans today feel like they are living in their own bubble more than in years past.* Only 13% feel they are less in a bubble than they have been previously. Women of all ages, people living in rural areas, and those 45-64 years old stand out for being some of the most likely groups to say they are “much more” in their own bubble than they have been in the past. From gender to geography to age to level of education obtained, there is no demographic that conclusively feels less in a bubble than before.**

It’s clear based on these results that the push & pull of mono and subcultures are no longer a specific enough way to describe what is happening to our sense of self. We have reached a new level of depth in our understanding of how we connect to the world around us, and we need to introduce a third level of the cultural spectrum to reflect that. At Quick Study, we’re calling it Soloculture.

Soloculture is the unique worldview a person holds based on how they consume, manipulate, and contribute to the transmission of information.

Put simply, we’re all in our own Truman Show, and the way we interact with our individual “show” impacts how we see society. Our Solocultures are the result of a cross-section of choices: the ones we make for ourselves and the ones algorithms, AI, and others make for us. These choices create a fingerprint for how someone understands the world. 

Because our Solocultures are distinct, we’ve become obsessed with transmitting our version of reality (or Soloculture) to others in order to find small pieces of the connective tissue. In fact, our research found that 68% of Americans introduce friends or family to something new at least a few times a month and 70% are introduced to something new by friends or family at least a few times a month. We also found that one-third of Americans are introduced to something new or introduce something new to someone else at least once a week, and almost 15% say it happens 3 times a week or more. The transmissions we heard about ranged from the simple to the complex, including “an interesting Youtube video about home improvement”, lentil chips, news stories, and a track by boygenius. They are all examples of how much sharing a piece of our Soloculture has become a cornerstone of interaction in society today.

Here are some further examples of the types of conversations we are having more than ever because of our Solocultural existence:

A newfound openness toward discussing mental health

A 2023 study found that one in four people have self-diagnosed themselves based on information they found on social media, we freely use terms like “delulu” to relate to idealistic goals and manifestation, trauma researchers are getting profiles in NY Mag, and a reassessment of how we treat those with mental illness that build their own realities is underway.

Our unending search for authenticity

Webster’s 2023 word of the year saw “a substantial increase” of lookups last year “driven by stories and conversations about AI, celebrity culture, identity, and social media.”

The daily examples of “Who’s That?” Syndrome

According to Glimpse, searches for Jo Koy’s name were up 2,686% compared to the week before the Globes despite him selling out arenas nationwide and sitting at the top of the charts when he releases comedy albums. We’ve also seen “Who’s That?” Syndrome recently with the initial announcement Nate Bargatze would be hosting SNL, or just ask a random sampling of people who Mr. Beast is and you’ll find some confused looks despite him being one of the biggest creators in the world.

The blending of subcultures into personal “Cores” and “Roman Empires”

Our obsession with using common language to express distinct differences in our personalities is showcased best through TikToks and Reels. Cottage Core begets Coquette Core, and a trend asking men how often they think about the Roman Empire becomes shorthand language referring to the very specific things people think about deeply that they believe no one else does.

As you can see, our Solocultures feed off subcultures and the monoculture for initial inputs, but then remix them personally before sending our Solocultural transmission back into the world. It’s a symbiotic relationship that gives us connection while also remaining individuals.*** Even if we do find subcultures to belong to, no one person is forming the same exact connections or doing so at the same time or with the same background. Think of Solocultures like a snowflake; when our snowflakes combine they become something bigger, maybe a light dusting of snow, but the monoculture is the blizzard that brings more snowflakes together than anything else. (In fact, the present state of monoculture is just like snow in New York City: we’re seeing less blizzards than ever before.)

From our disparate Solocultures, to the connective tissue of subcultures, to the conversation dominating monoculture. Each informs and is fed by the others.

Today is an introduction to the concept of Solocultures, but there’s so much more to discuss! Over the next month, three additional Study Guides will go deeper to help to round out our framing of this moment in time and what it means for strategists and brands:

You’ve likely noticed we haven’t taken a position on whether or not Solocultures are a net positive or negative for culture at large. There are obvious issues with a society that cannot collectively agree on the basic facts of their reality, and as 2024 rolls on we will undoubtedly see the impact our Solocultures have on shaping major decisions like elections. We are also living through a loneliness epidemic, one fueled by disconnection and the negative perceptions we tend to form in our own bubbles. Not everyone has adapted to the need to transmit our Soloculture to others or accept that need as a prerequisite for connecting to greater society today. A Solocultural society can and does leave people behind if we don’t build the right safeguards (which we haven’t). 

Ultimately, as we learned with agriculture, a monoculture that goes without variety for too long becomes stale and a net negative for its owner (i.e. humanity). We need the unique connective tissue that comes from connecting our Solocultures to help push subcultures and the monoculture forward. It’s our hope that recognizing the existence of our own individual realities will help start a conversation about how brands can positively influence the bubbles we all form, not just for profit but for progress. That may sound naive to some, but we’re just speaking from our specific Solocultures. Your own reality is up to you.

*OnePulse; January 11, 2024; n=501

**Some hypotheses for why we are more in our own bubbles as noted by respondents: more working from home and a loss of social spaces due to COVID, the "very isolating" political climate, fatigue from trying to keep up with everything happening in the world, and the recognition that "most people don't like what I like."

***Expressing our Solocultures is not only beneficial to us, but also to scientists’ understanding of the world at large. Without the interaction between us and others, we would never know some of the things we are learning about each other today. Remember the white/gold or blue/black dress in 2015? The virality of that content actually showed scientists information that they didn’t previously have related to how we literally see the world. And that’s one of several instances where people being more open about how they process the world around them has taught us new things about the brain. In a piece about these discoveries for Aeon in December, professor Gary Lupyan wrote, “The idea that the same image can look different to different people is alarming because it threatens our conviction that the world is as we ourselves experience it. When an aphantasic [someone who doesn’t have visual imagery] learns that other people can form mental images, they are learning that something they did not know was even a possibility is, in fact, many people’s everyday reality. This is understandably destabilising.” 

Global CEOs are saying Quick Study “moves at light speed without compromising on research and quality” and that we are “the real deal—the kind of team you want in your corner for all the big, gnarly, complex ‘how are we ever going to solve this?’ problems.” If your brand needs some smart problem solving, commission Quick Study to make a Study Guide for you.

Send us an email & we’ll custom design a plan that gets you the answers you need: hello@quick.study