Strange Loop Culture Index Part 1: The Atomisation of Attention

From The Clip Trap to The Background War: Why Netflix is the new Cable, Linear is terminal, and the "Vertical Screen" is eating the world.

This is the first ever attempt to map the entire culture industry, from mosh pits to micro-dramas, in a single, unified index. Over the next few weeks, we are breaking down 37 distinct categories of culture to reveal the winners and losers of the next three years.

We begin today with the bloodiest battlefield of them all: The Screen.

For this series, Free Subscribers will receive The Map: the narrative, the theory, and the feedback loops defining the era.

Paid Subscribers will receive The Compass. This is the hard data and the strategic playbook. Inside today’s paid edition, you will get:

• The “Inflation Mirage” Charts: The data proving why the cinema recovery (as a headline) is a lie. Revenue is up, but actual human footfall is down 32%. This will continue to hollow out the middle, as well as genre and budget diversity.

• The “Cannibalisation Coefficient”: The specific calculation showing how every minute of TikTok growth directly subtracts revenue from Linear TV.

• The “YouTube Eclipse”: The 2025 data showing how YouTube has mathematically overtaken Disney, Netflix, and NBCUniversal in TV screen time.

• The 3 Demographic Pivots: A breakdown of exactly where Gen Alpha (”The Builder”), Millennials (”The Seeker”), and the Ultra-Wealthy (”The Tourist”) are moving their time and money now that the social feed has flatlined.

• The 2026 Forecast: Our probability-weighted Bear, Base, and Bull scenarios for the entire video industry.

I. THE MAP (Free for all subscribers)

The Strange Loop: We Broke the Brain

You know the core thesis of this series: we shape our tools, and thereafter our tools shape us. But nowhere is this feedback loop more violent, and most importantly, more expensive, than in the sector we call “Screened Narrative.”

For the uninitiated, Screened Narrative is our catch-all for the passive consumption of video. It is the battle for the eyeball that is watching, rather than doing. In this index, it encompasses seven distinct battlegrounds:

1. Theatrical Film (the prestige)

2. Home Video (the dying disc)

3. Linear TV (the dying schedule)

4. Streaming/SVOD (the utility)

5. Short-Form/Micro-Dramas (the explosive)

6. Creator/UGC Video (the infinite)

7. Adult Video (the unspoken)

For the last decade, Hollywood and Silicon Valley operated under the shared delusion of the “Streaming Wars.” The assumption was simple: it was a battle for content. The best show would win; the platform with the most Emmys (then Oscars) would own the living room.

What was a battle for content unknowingly became a battle for neurology.

The rise of Short-Form Video, which our data projects to hit a massive Base Case Index of 300 by 2026, isn’t just a market shift but a physiological re-engineering of the audience. The viewer’s capacity for long-form narrative hasn’t just “changed” or “evolved,” it has atrophied. We fed the audience 15-second hits of dopamine for five years, and now we are shocked that they struggle to digest a 60-minute meal. This rewiring is the universal solvent dissolving the other categories: it is why Linear TV feels painfully slow to a 15-year-old, why “Second Screen” scrolling is decimating theatrical immersion, and why even Netflix is now forced to design shows that can be understood while looking at a phone.

The “Clip Trap”

This is the mechanism of our own destruction. For a decade, we used the “snack” to sell the “meal,” flooding social feeds with viral moments to market linear shows. But the Strange Loop tightened. The audience were trained to believe the highlights were superior: they offered the punchline without the setup, the explosion without the exposition. This is the pornification of all content: you get the money shot without the backstory.

We didn’t just market the content. We obsoleted it. We accidentally birthed “Recap Culture,” where a 10-minute AI summary is functionally equivalent to “watching the movie.” The marketing asset became the primary product.

We trained a generation to view the slow burn of Theatrical Film or the weekly cadence of Linear TV not as artistic choices, but as inefficiencies. We took the atomic unit of storytelling, the Episode, and smashed it into particles. And once you smash the atom, you cannot easily put it back together.

If you doubt this trajectory, look at the industry’s eternal canary in the coal mine: Adult Video. This sector abandoned the “narrative feature” for the “scene” in the 2000s, and then abandoned the scene for the “clip” in the 2020s via the creator economy. The “film” died; the “clip” won. The mainstream screen is simply ten years late to the same funeral.

The Zero-Sum Game: Time vs. Satisfaction

The math of this atomisation is brutal. There are only 24 hours in a day. Every minute given to TikTok, Reels, or Shorts is a minute physically stolen from the “Legacy” screen. This is a zero-sum game of Time Theft.

But the real killer is Satisfaction Density. Short-form offers a higher ROI on time (a higher rate of “dopamine per minute”) than a slow-burn drama. We have conditioned users to panic if they aren’t stimulated every 15 seconds, rendering the pacing of traditional media intolerable.

The result? A “Great Rebalancing” where Linear TV is not just stumbling, but in structural freefall. Our data projects Linear TV will drop to a Bear Case Index of 60 by 2026. In the U.S., pay-TV households have already fallen below 50%. The “living room hearth” has gone cold, replaced by the glow of the personal, handheld dopamine dispenser.

The New Legacy: Netflix is the Old Guard

We need to stop calling Premium Streaming (SVOD) the “disruptor.” In 2026, SVOD is the Establishment. With a projected mature growth Index of 125, Streaming has effectively become the new Cable: a monthly utility under siege by the atomised formats.

This saturation has forced a mutation. To understand the future of Netflix, you simply have to look at who they are trying to kill.

In Phase 1, they killed Cable. They deployed House of Cards and Orange Is the New Black to prove that “Prestige TV” didn’t need a time slot.

In Phase 2, they tried to kill Hollywood. They spent millions on Roma, The Irishman, and Glass Onion to prove that “Cinema” didn’t need a theatre.

Now, we are in Phase 3: They are trying to kill YouTube. Streaming giants realise they have hit the ceiling on your focused, “lean-forward” attention. That capacity is capped. To grow, they must conquer your passive, “lean-back” attention. We see this in the aggressive pivot to “Video Podcasts,” live comedy specials, and unscripted “lifestyle” slates, content designed to be half-watched while you scroll your phone.

We are witnessing “The Background War.” The goal is no longer just to be the event, but also the wallpaper.

Proof Point: The Vertical Revolution is Already Here

If you think “Micro-Dramas” (scripted, vertical series under 3 minutes) are a fad, you are looking at the wrong map. You need to look at China.

By 2023, the Chinese vertical drama market had already reached $5.3 billion. For context, that is roughly 70% the size of the country’s entire theatrical box office. While traditional film fought tooth and nail just to recover lost ground, this sector grew 50% year-over-year.

This isn’t a theoretical “Bull Case” for 2030. It is the financial reality of the present. The atomisation of narrative is rapidly approaching revenue parity with the cinema in the world’s second-largest economy. The snake ate the tail and now starting on the rest of the body.

II. THE COMPASS (For Paid Subscribers Only)

The Intelligence: Screened Narrative Data (2023-2026)

To build this index, we aggregated data from primary industry sources (including Gower Street Analytics, Nielsen, and Digital TV Research) normalising all metrics (revenue, time-spent, or users) to a baseline of 2023 = 100. This methodology allows us to strip away the noise of inflation and currency fluctuation to reveal the raw velocity of cultural attention.