"Culture is now cannibalistic, feeding on itself."

Martin Cothran writes in Intellectual takeout,

Partly because of the prevalence of digital technology, modern students live in a very culturally homogeneous world. Between video games and text messaging, today's young people—literally and figuratively—don't get out much.

Add to that the fact that the modern pop culture they imbibe through their smart phones is largely self-referential: Almost every allusion in modern film and television is to something else in modern film and television.

...In prior generations, most people read books, and they commonly read books we now consider classics. We tend to forget that authors such as Hemingway, Faulkner, and Steinbeck were not just great writers, but very popular ones. But even if you were not much of a reader, classic literature and history were an integral part of the popular culture you grew up in.

...Rather than surveying our culture's long and interesting history and literary tradition for story plots and settings, an astounding number of contemporary movies are now either sequels or reboots of other recent movies (Star Wars, Star Trek, Mad Max, Spiderman, Captain America, Batman, Planet of the Apes, etc. etc.).

Culture is now cannibalistic, feeding on itself.

Read more here.