From Knowledge to Trivia: How Micro-Creators Changed the Nature of Information
We create as we are, and it shows—in every Reel, tweet, and 30-second story vying for our attention. Today, individual creators and micro-dramas have upended what we once called journalism, fracturing our collective information diet into viral, snackable bites that feel important in the moment but leave us hollowed out and slightly hungrier for something meaningful.
The New Order: Trivia as Content
Our collective feeds—the new public squares—are bustling with creator-gurus and micro-celebrities, each repackaging yesterday’s “trivia” as today’s revelation. I can’t help but notice how, in the race to be first, loudest, or most relatable, stories are stripped of their context and re-posted until their edges smooth into insignificance. What might once have been a dinner-table anecdote is now a 100k-like post, replayed until we believe novelty is in short supply, and reality itself becomes a meme.
This shift marks a slow, subtle erosion of knowledge—which is hard-earned, contextual, often complex—and the rise of trivia: isolated facts, tossed around to score engagement points. In our echo chambers, fresh insights are rare; instead, we find louder iterations of the same tired lists, quotes, and factoids, dressed up as wisdom. The more we click, the more the algorithm serves us mediocrity that everyone already knows, reaffirming our biases and stalling our curiosity.
Whatever Happened to the Responsibility of Journalism?
Not so long ago, editorial standards and journalistic rigor served as filters, elevating substance and scrutinizing truth. Stories were crafted, sources checked, context given. Yes, journalism had (and has) biases—but it also had gatekeepers who saw information as a public good, not merely as viral bait.
Journalists did not just “report”; they debated what was worthy of notice, what should be investigated, and how best to relay complexity to a public primed to care. The best of them made us see—not just what happened, but why, and what it meant for our world. Information moved up the chain from “trivia” to “news” to “knowledge”—layered with nuance, contradiction, and sometimes, hope.
Where AI Should Intervene
As AI now stands sentinel over our vast data lakes and viral trends, it faces a fresh responsibility: to help us see difference, not just similarity; to reward depth, not just reach. AI could curate a healthier information diet—surfacing underrepresented stories, nudging us toward context-building, and flagging recycled content for what it is.
But for AI to truly help, we need to teach it to value originality, to recognize when a creator is merely reheating cold leftovers, and to give weight to perspectives that have, until now, been lost in translation—across language and culture. For this, both dataset diversity and better algorithms are not just technical but ethical imperatives.
Devil’s Advocate: Does This Change Matter?
Still, pause for a moment and consider—maybe the concern is overstated. Is the rise of micro-trivia and creator-led stories truly reducing knowledge, or simply democratizing it? The viral repackaging of trivia might, in fact, be a bridge: making obscure facts accessible, inviting new audiences into the tent. Maybe depth always followed breadth, and our new age’s explosion of content will create a few gems that didn’t exist before.
Perhaps the gatekeepers of old kept too many out, and our collective trivia binge is a necessary mess—an awkward adolescence on the way to a more participatory, diverse era. Maybe meaning-making hasn’t disappeared, only shifted forms, waiting for us to catch up.
In the End, Who Decides?
We are what we scroll. If our collective diet is full of fast-consumable trivia, the fault is not just with creators or algorithms—it lies also with us, the audience, unwilling to chase flavors outside the popular feed. Just as good journalism demanded active, questioning readers, so too must we demand more—of our feeds, our creators, and increasingly, of our AIs.
True knowledge is built when we collect diverse dots and take the time to connect them. Until then, we are just passing around the same old dots—told anew with every swipe.