New Delhi, April 15 -- At a friend's party in Delhi, Tanya Kundu, 28, realised she had arrived late to something she had just bought. "I'd bought a really nice top," she says. "But someone told me they had already seen it everywhere." What felt new to her had already circulated widely enough to feel familiar to everyone else. The experience of wearing it came after the experience of it being seen.

This reversal is no longer so unusual. Across fashion, cuisine and other artefacts of everyday consumption, things now travel widely before they are experienced personally. A product, place or idea is seen, shared and repeated across feeds long before it is encountered in real life. By the time it reaches you, it carries familiarity. What shoul...