The barrier to entry has never been lower. A teenager with a phone can make a documentary, a comedy sketch, or a video essay and reach millions. The diversity of voices—Korean cinema, African Afrobeats documentaries, Latinx genre fiction—has exploded beyond the old gatekeepers.

But the hangover has arrived. The bill for that $20 billion content spree has come due.

However, the communal aspect of entertainment is fading. We no longer watch the same thing at the same time. We watch for ourselves, by ourselves, curated by a machine that wants only to keep us scrolling.

This is . In a fractured, anxious world, studios have realized that the safest dopamine hit is familiarity. We don't want a new hero; we want to see Spider-Man point at other Spider-Men.

We have become a species of . Data from Nielsen shows that nearly 75% of streaming viewers are simultaneously scrolling through a second device. This has fundamentally changed what "good" content looks like.