[whorleater]

If we buy into the fact that we can account for "culture" onto this distribution, this article assumes that the distribution has remained the safe size and shape, and so he draws the conclusion that the long tail is declining or disappearing.

But the nature of the long tail is that it is comprised of a series of outliers. To use the author's analogy, what might be happening is that there's a distributional shift occurring at the same time the general amount of "stuff" under the curve is increasing, which gives the appearance that things have become more alike, even though what has actually happened is that the bump has just gotten bigger.