Elizabeth Olsen Is Accidentally Making The Most Conservative Argument in Hollywood

Actress Elizabeth Olsen recently made headlines for saying she’s drawing a proverbial line in the sand when it comes to community and shared experiences.

“I think it’s important for people to gather as a community, to see other humans, be together in a space,” the “WandaVision” star told Deadline in a recent interview in which she stressed the importance of releasing films in theaters. “That’s why I like sports. I think it’s really powerful for people to come together for something that they’re excited about. We don’t even audition in person anymore.”

“If a movie is made independently and only sells to a streamer, then fine. But I don’t want to make something where that’s the end-all,” she added.

It’s not just nostalgia for movie theaters. Olsen, whether she realizes it or not, is alluding to something bigger: the death of shared culture and shared experiences.

In an interesting turn of events, Daily Wire podcast host Matt Walsh has been warning about this collapse as well. “Pop culture peaked at a specific and identifiable point in our very recent past,” Walsh said in a recent monologue. “And has fallen off a cliff, perhaps irretrievably, since then.”

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He even named the exact moment: 2007–2008. Walsh pointed to some of the best entertainment from the era, including “There Will Be Blood,” “The Dark Knight,” “The Office,” “Breaking Bad,” and “Superbad,” which came from a time when everyone watched the same things, quoted the same lines, and shared the same cultural conversations.

That’s what Olsen is missing, too. Our society no longer experiences anything together. Instead, they’re fed customized content via the algorithm, guaranteeing that everyone doesn’t wind up watching the exact same things.

Walsh explained it further, saying, “We no longer have a shared cultural experience … All of that has been consumed by an infinite scroll of content created by an algorithm specifically for you.”

He mentioned how there used to be radio DJs, movie premieres, and Thursday-night sitcoms everyone talked about on Friday. Now, everything is individually-tailored and undeniably lonely.

“The algorithm,” Walsh says, “is the only shared culture we have left. And it keeps us staring at the screen alone, isolated, fragmented.”

“As our lives have become increasingly centered around these devices, centered and condensed into these little glowing boxes, we have lost something very important,” Walsh added. “We no longer have a shared cultural experience, what some have called the monoculture, or what you might just call mainstream culture.”

“If I’m very optimistic, which I’m not,” Walsh said, “I’d hope people will rebel against this fragmented, algorithmic pseudo-culture by building strong communities … in physical space.”

Olsen’s pushback against streaming, and wanting people “to gather as a community” is exactly the rebellion Walsh hopes for. She’s advocating for that same thing by taking a stance against streaming projects.

Watching a movie alone on a laptop in your apartment is no different than scrolling through TikTok: solitary, algorithmically curated, and fleeting. Olsen’s defense of theaters isn’t just about art. It’s about returning to in-person human connection. Because once you lose shared experiences, you lose shared meaning. 

Olsen doesn’t have much in common with Walsh: she’s not conservative, and predictably, she endorsed Kamala Harris for president in 2024. But in her quest for in-person connection, she’s actually advocating for conserving the fundamentals of human existence and rejecting the progressive nature of pursuing all types of technology, no matter the cost. 

Because in the end, culture can’t continue without community, and community dies when we choose solitude.