I'd suggest that this effect is a somewhat superficial expression of the deeply rooted problem of people in urban situations broadly losing their personal connections with their own expressions of creativity and art, primarily through doing work that they are not engaged with in a deep, meaningful sense.<p>Perhaps:<p>- People in certain modern, urban situations crave certain types of creative expression that seem to be very hard to find in these environments.<p>- Social patterns place a high value on being seen to have had an experience, that provide a reward similar to being the artist.<p>- People capable of producing these artistic experiences are initially perhaps not so interested in managing the people who are the recipients of their creativity - they are more interested in creation.<p>- Once money and/or fame becomes involved, the artists are unlikely to widely share the skills that lead to the creativity arising, are motivated to protect methods of production, fetishize the product and create strong brands.<p>These factors together create this 'hipster' effect where small points of creativity are heavily focussed on and take a long time to replicate.<p>I'd hypothesize that this situation would go away if people were broadly connecting with meaningful, personal creative pursuits. Or, if the artists flipped their model once they smelled success and were motivated to share everything they were doing, allowing the experience to be rapidly replicated.