[JoeAltmaier]

I'd laugh if I wasn't crying. Let me try it in essay form.

The quality of the medium has gone up in 200 years; the quality of the message, down. This is documented. Read old literature, if you can. Its hard for us, with our 9 second attention spans, to follow the thread in old books with their page-long paragraphs. Not because they wrote badly; because we're no longer trained to understand complex ideas. Instead 4-minute songs with one lyric, distilled one-note thought pieces with sophomoric moralizing, videos pandering to the lowest emotion.

Folks reading this will dismiss it as maudlin ranting, misplaced nostalgia. The trend has exceeded a single lifetime. Generations decry the drop in standards, because the standards drop. They had a long way to go, and we near the bottom.

Its not about hair and noise. Its about the message. Which there's no longer any room for.

[jdietrich]

Your comments betray a profound ignorance of historical fact. The "old literature" you refer to is a carefully curated set of highlights, the loftiest and most sophisticated work collected over a span of centuries, written at a time when literacy was largely confined to an elite.

Disposable pop culture has always been with us, we just have much poorer records of it precisely because it is disposable.

I have a particular interest in broadside ballads, cheaply printed song lyric sheets that were made between the sixteenth and nineteenth century. All the critiques of modern pop lyrics are equally applicable to music that is older than the American republic. It's all there - sex, violence, drunkenness, repetitive lyrics, rehashed old melodies.

For example, are you dismayed by the crass sexuality of "Anaconda" by Nicki Minaj? Take a look at "The Maid's Complaint", a charming ditty from the late 17th century that features lyrics like this:

  For I am a Maid and a very good Maid,
     and sixteen years of age am I,
  And fain would I part with my Maiden-head
     if any good fellow would with me lye:
  But none to me ever yet proffer'd such love,
     as to lye by my side and give me a shove
  With his dil doul, dill doul, dil doul,
     O happy were I, etc.

http://ebba.english.ucsb.edu/ballad/21716/citation

The impression most people have of history is mere propaganda, a self-aggrandising origin story. Our past was systematically bowdlerised by generations of puritans and reactionaries. By any conceivable standard, we have not degenerated from some halcyon ideal; rather, we have advanced greatly, becoming more educated, more civilised, more peaceful, prosperous and decent.

[alphakappa]

It is easy to create content now, so yes, there is a proliferation of low-quality content.

That in no way implies that high quality content has been pushed out. There's still great literature, music, and yes even online content that is as great as or greater than anything created 200 years ago. Let the noise not mislead you into thinking that there is no signal behind it.

Those who seek good content will still find it. Keep in mind that all these improvements in the medium have made content accessible to a much larger section of society than was possible a few hundred years ago, so society as a whole is better read, better educated, and more aware than this good old world of yore.

[ergothus]

And yet...

I read a bit of philosophy. It's a delicate balance, because while I feel philosophy cover the truly important questions, some philosophers feel the need to inspect points I don't care much about (and ignore the big points to do so).

Overtime, I came up with a theory - if you can't explain your theory in 2 pages, it's bullshit (or: the communication of it is bullshit). You might have a deep, layered theory, but every two pages I should be getting some jolt to my brain. Some pull it off, others do not.

Am I showing a lack of patience and respect? Or are they simply being poor or inefficient communicators? I consider the most likely scenario to be that both are in play. And the former, in moderation, is necessary to address the latter.

So while I strive to accept that my boredom or frustration is unjustified and should be reined in, I also (easily) accept that sometimes I'm right, and what's being done is longer/slower/off-topic too much.

[pjc50]

What do you mean "we"? 200 years ago, ~40% of the population couldn't read at all: http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/literacy-rates

[j_s]

The second law of thermodynamics as applied to humanity!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_law_of_thermodynamics

[emmett]

“The children now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise.”