The Architecture of Culture

How values, systems, and stories shape what we believe and build

To understand how to influence culture, we must first develop a shared understanding of what culture is. We use the term broadly to describe these:

Dominant culture.
Subculture.
Minority culture.
Counterculture.
Mainstream culture.

Culture is a container we exist within and a story we write. It’s informed by what we do and how we respond to what’s happening. It’s an organism that inhales data and exhales meaning.

Culture is made up of our values. Our rituals. The way we relate and participate in groups and society. Culture is a reflection of who we are and who we’re becoming. It weaves our stories, histories, and informs our futures.

Culture is the lifeblood of groups. The often invisible artifact of humanity. It’s how we define and differentiate ourselves. It’s also how we relate.

From individuals to institutions to groups, culture is cultivated by those who believe in something, carve a path, define a way of being, and bring people together. Influencing culture is connecting the dots—synthesizing patterns and creating a blueprint for how we can co-exist.

A single person can influence culture almost always by influencing a group. But the collective is ultimately responsible for shifting and shaping culture. Influence begins with expression, but transformation requires adoption. Culture has its own user journey: attraction, activation, advocacy. It requires resonance. Opt-in. Repetition. Moments of truth. Without collective engagement, it’s just an idea. With it, it becomes a movement.

Dominant culture in 2025 is increasingly shaped by technology. AI is redefining culture not just through tools and platforms, but through how it reshapes power, labour, and creativity. The second major force is geopolitical instability. War, migration, political polarization—influencing what we value, how we communicate, and what (and who) we fear. Third is climate. Not just climate discourse but the reality of how it’s shifting lifestyles, consumption, governance, and even community formation. Together, these forces create the dominant narrative, which is currently one of acceleration, uncertainty, and constant adaptation.

Dominant culture is no longer just about shared values. It’s about shared conditions. And the tone is being set by those with access to power, capital, and distribution.

But culture is layered and complex. We risk glossing over its nuances if we talk about it too broadly. Zooming out helps us see its full scope to better understand its patterns, contradictions, and points of emergence.

• Dominant culture is the framework we unconsciously operate within. It’s what gets normalized, funded, amplified, and scaled. A collection of values and beliefs architected by those in power and reinforced by media, institutions, and systems.

• Subculture is a chosen identity shaped by shared values, interests, and aesthetics. It offers belonging or creative expression outside the mainstream. Subcultures are fluid and participatory—when they resonate, they can become global movements that influence dominant culture.

• Minority culture is not chosen, but inherited. Rooted in identity, ancestry, language, geography, history, religion, and lived experience. Unlike subcultures, minority cultures carry memory, practices, ritual, and survival strategies—often misrepresented, erased, or appropriated by dominant culture.

• Counterculture is a rejection of the status quo. If subculture is a response, counterculture is resistance. It questions dominant systems and stories, and is grounded in a radical worldview that seeks to disrupt, oppose, and reimagine.

• Mainstream culture is what most people experience and interact with. It’s not always the most powerful, but it’s the most amplified—what’s considered palatable, profitable, and shareable. It often “borrows” from subcultures and minority cultures, diluting nuance to achieve popularity and scale.

Culture in the age of the algorithm

Dominant culture is context-specific—whatever holds the most power and influence within a given society. For example, in a Western context, that might be Christianity. In Muslim-majority countries, it’s often Islam. But globally, things get more complex. We didn’t used to have a dominant global culture because geography kept us culturally siloed. But innovation changed that. Travel and technology expanded our footprint and interconnectedness. And here’s where it gets interesting: tech companies like Google and Meta are now the gatekeepers and amplifiers of narrative and attention. As a result, dominant culture has become a techno-capitalist operating system with Western aesthetics and values at the core, reinforced by platforms, products, and mass media.

Technology has changed how culture is created and distributed. We’re no longer just passive consumers of culture—we express it, signal it, and share it almost incessantly. We send cultural cues across the globe, creating shared language and access to perspectives that once felt worlds apart. Social media enabled individuals, not just legacy media, to shape the narrative. But while more voices can be heard, algorithms still determine what gets amplified. AI is accelerating this shift faster than we can collectively adapt. We’re overwhelmed by information, split between enthusiasm and fear, opting in or out. It feels like tech is in the driver’s seat, pushing us toward futures we haven’t fully agreed to. What matters now is not losing our grip on what makes culture human: ritual, art, food, expression, belief, and connection.

Platforms influence what we see and what we believe is real. They mirror our biases, filter our attention, and often erase minority culture in the process. The result is a fragmented cultural reality where what’s relevant is no longer decided by the collective, but by the code.

One way to influence dominant culture is to stop feeding it. The challenge, of course, is that many of us now rely on these platforms—they’ve become our channels for visibility, connection, and income. But new models are emerging. Substack is one of them, offering a more intentional way to build, engage, and monetize an audience, without as much of the noise and manipulation of the bigger platforms.

We need new economic engines for culture because dominant culture is trapping us in an algorithmic content machine that’s not mutually generative.

The price of going mainstream

Those of us building subcultures have to be mindful of getting swallowed by the mainstream. It happens across industries—it’s what we’ve long called ‘selling out.’ A subculture becomes mainstream when dominant culture decides it’s commercially viable or socially palatable. Media amplifies it. Influencers adopt it. Brands co-opt it. It gets extracted, repackaged, and sold back to the masses.

What it gains: visibility, influence, resources.
What it loses: intimacy, nuance, authenticity.

The original context is lost. The deeper meaning gets dissolved into a marketable aesthetic. And the people who created it get sidelined—or erased entirely. Mainstream adoption can validate a subculture’s value, but it almost always comes at the cost of its soul.

Things tend to lose their essence—and sometimes their purpose—when they decide to generate more revenue or become appealing to more people. Subcultures and countercultures don’t need strategies—it’s counterintuitive—they intend to stay niche and emergent. Their influence spreads through resonance, not reach. The moment we plan to grow,, we start crossing over to the mainstream. That’s not a bad thing, but it does signal the intent to operate within existing systems.

When we say something used to be cool and now it’s not, what we’re really saying is: it lost its magic when it became a product. Burning Man is a great case study. The now 70K+ festival started in 1986 with a group of friends burning an effigy on a beach in San Francisco. It expanded slowly over decades, evolving from a counterculture event into a global subcultural movement—and eventually into a place for celebrities, influencers, and brands. I haven’t been since 2017, but last I heard from “old-timers,” it’s changed quite a bit—phones, selfies, and festival fashion at every turn. The larger event seems to have lost some of its essence, but the regional burns, which are independently organized by burners around the world, have managed to carry the torch of the original intent. This almost always happens when something counter or subcultural crosses into the mainstream—smaller groups split off, like cells, to preserve the integrity of the original vision.

Burning Man didn’t need a strategy. It had principles. And people who believed in them. But as it scaled, it started attracting people who weren’t there to experience and participate in its ethos. They wanted to be part of the hype. It shifted from a community rooted in shared values to a destination driven by popularity, image, and status. Fringe enough to still be considered too adventurous or risky for the average person, but not so much that it would still be considered counterculture.

“I went to Burning Man when it was cool” is something you’ll hear more often. Because the moment something becomes a product, it takes on the pressure to sell. Which often means i thas the pressure to scale. And once it scales, it’s part of the mainstream.

If you’re building, you’re shaping culture

If you’re building something you want people to care about—a message, a movement, a product—you’re already shaping culture, whether you know it or not. The real question is, how intentional are you being? Culture isn’t just something we inherit or consume, it’s something we participate in, contribute to, and opt out of. We have to ask, who does this centre? Who does it impact? Who does it serve? Who might it erase? As founders, builders, and creators, we don’t just influence culture, we’re shaped by it. That’s why we need to stay awake to the choices we’re making and the futures we’re creating.

If you want to go mainstream, name it. Design for it. If you don’t, ask yourself what that means for your access, income, and opportunities. Know that productizing something sacred has a cost. And that influence isn’t always loud. It doesn’t have to be. Sometimes the most influential people are the ones who aren’t chasing impact—they’re rooted in something more profound. Cultural integrity means honouring the history, present conditions, and future possibilities. It means being honest about our desires, values, and what we’re willing to trade.

We also need to be real about the platforms we’re using. When did we start working for the algorithm? If your growth strategy feels misaligned with how you want to spend your time or connect with people, that’s worth paying attention to. Reach is not the same as resonance. Attention is not the same as depth. Scale is seductive, but some things are more powerful when they remain intimate and niche.

Culture is moving faster than society

Right now, we’re living in a culture of crisis. One shaped by fear—fear of war, fear of collapse, fear of AI taking over our jobs, fear that the economy won’t hold, fear that democracy won’t survive. These narratives are loud, persistent, and reinforced everywhere—from media to policy to algorithm. Dominant culture doesn’t just express itself, it enforces itself—sometimes obviously, sometimes insidiously—through the systems and platforms that shape our perception.

And when culture evolves faster than society or institutions can adapt, we lose cohesion. Things fall apart, or break open. New systems emerge. Subcultures and countercultures form and multiply. People rally, rewrite the rules, and build what isn’t being built for them. Culture is collective memory and future imagination—it threads together what we’ve survived and what we can cultivate.

While culture has its own rhythm, we’ve already disrupted it with technology. So now, the question is, can we guide it, intentionally? I believe we can. But it takes vision, clarity, resistance, creation, and a willingness to build something that reflects us, not just what governs us. Culture and society are inseparable because culture is our collective operating system. If we want to change it, we have to rewrite the narrative—and the code.

In the words of one of the most influential quiet cultural influencers of our time:

“Pay attention to the culture without being driven by the culture.” —Rick Rubin

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