🎭 The Conglomerates Gave Us Trash. AI Lets Us Do Better.

For half a century, the biggest machines in media told us what culture was supposed to be.

They had the cameras and the satellites. The studios, the labels, the newsrooms. They controlled the pipelines, the programming schedules, the shelf space, the playlists. They built universes out of ad slots and quarterly targets. And with all that, what did they give us?

They gave us shows engineered in boardrooms. Movies that were really merchandise launch pads. News cycles that pounded the same three fear-drunk beats until information became weather: always there, mostly noise. They gave us pop songs reverse-engineered from spreadsheets—choruses built like billboards, verses like coupons.

It wasn’t art.
It wasn’t truth.
Half the time, it wasn’t even fun.

It was distraction wearing a million-dollar smile.

And it worked. For decades, the machine trained us to expect less and buy more. Cynicism got rebranded as sophistication. Materialism put on a halo and called itself aspiration. “Content” replaced story. “Engagement” replaced feeling. If you wanted to make something outside that logic, you were a hobbyist. If you wanted to be seen, you needed the gate.

This Isn’t the First Rebellion

Every era invents a workaround. Punk didn’t ask permission; it stapled flyers to the city and pressed seven-inches in basements. Hip-hop looped the world on turntables and said: we’ll build a new language out of what you threw away. Public-access TV pointed a camera at the neighborhood and proved you didn’t need a network to matter. Zines photocopied themselves into community. Mixtapes car-stereo’d themselves across state lines. Gil Scott-Heron stood in the doorway of an empire and said the revolution would not be televised—and then proved it by making poetry into news.

None of that was elegant. It was better than elegant. It was alive.

What’s Different Now

AI isn’t a studio replacement; it’s a studio redistribution. Writing, arranging, sound design, cover art, video sketches, layout, rough edits—things that used to cost money, time, and gatekeeper patience now live on the same device you use to text your friend. The barrier between “audience” and “creator” didn’t just lower; it caved in.

You don’t need a billion-dollar label to make something that hits a nerve.
You don’t need a corporate newsroom to say the thing that must be said.
You don’t need permission to publish, to press “go,” to be heard.

And when regular people get the tools, something beautiful happens: work returns to feeling. It gets stranger, funnier, angrier, more tender. It remembers satire is supposed to bite, not wink. It remembers songs can laugh and wound at the same time. It remembers that art isn’t a “vertical”—it’s a pulse.

“But Isn’t AI…?” (Yes, and…)

All tools distort. Tape saturates; cameras frame; edits omit; algorithms push and hide. AI is a blade: it can carve a mask or cut a mirror. The conglomerates will absolutely try to use it to make more, cheaper trash. They’re already doing it.

That’s exactly why independent creators need it in their hands: to make the opposite. Not plastic “content,” but culture. Not volume for volume’s sake, but voice. Not engagement metrics, but meaning.

The ethic is simple:

• Use the tools to amplify humans, not erase them.

• Use them to tell the truth faster, weirder, clearer.

• Use them to escape the production traps that kept good ideas locked behind budget lines.

If a tool helps you say the real thing today instead of the safe thing next year, use it. If it makes you lie, drop it.

What the Machine Gave Us vs. What We Can Give Ourselves

The machine gave us nine franchises and a cliffhanger. We can give ourselves a one-off miracle that changes someone’s week.

The machine gave us a brand strategy. We can give ourselves a voice.

The machine gave us “content calendars.” We can give ourselves songs.

Our Case Study: A Circus with Teeth

Accordion to James — Oompah for the Masses wasn’t workshopped in a boardroom. It wasn’t designed to be “on-brand.” It was built the way culture is supposed to be built: in a room where the floor’s a tangle of cables, the laugh comes first, and the joke lands because it’s true.

It skewers fence-sitting news spin, pharma’s smiling horror, data harvesting, consumer-debt carnival barkers, clout to the grave, and the politics of nothing in particular—and it does it while making you want to dance. It’s an album the machine would never green-light precisely because it’s alive enough to be inconvenient.

That’s the point. Give regular people the mic, and the circus grows teeth.

Where We Go From Here

The conglomerates had their turn. With all that money and pipeline power, they gave us junk food for the mind and spirit. Fine. Keep it. We’re cooking elsewhere.

The future of culture is small and massive at the same time: small in budget, massive in meaning. Small in team size, massive in reach. It happens in public, iterates in public, invites the audience to become participants again. It’s messy, but it’s real. It contradicts itself, but it grows.

The job now isn’t to “disrupt media.” It’s to ignore it while we build better.

Make the thing.
Ship the thing.
Let the people who need it find it.
Repeat.

If You Want Proof, Listen

We didn’t just write a think-piece. We made the soundtrack to it.

✨ Hear what “better” sounds like:
🎶 Accordion to James — Oompah for the Masses
Listen to the music →

It’s rowdy. It’s surreal. It’s satirical and sincere in the same breath. It’s exactly the kind of record that only exists when the tools leave the boardroom and land in real hands.

If you feel it, share it. If you don’t, make the thing you want to hear. Either way, the gate is gone. The door is open. The mic is yours now.

Let’s do better—together.