[flyingfences]

It would be wrong to say that there isn't unique creativity still out there. What's happened is that the mainstream drivel is now so pervasively marketed that everything else has been effectively pushed out of sight and out of mind.

I see it as a narrowing of a three-tier culture. It used to be that we shared a cultural "core" (shows, bands, books, etc. that /everybody/ knew) and beyond that there were cultures shared by large portions of us and beyond that niche subcultures shared by small groups of us. Recently, it seems to me that the core has been eroded (there's not much that /everybody/ knows any more), the larger cultures have been over-commercialized (Disney Drivel), and the smaller subcultures are starved for exposure. Despite what many of these "platforms" recite about "discovery", a person nowadays has to really search to find a bona-fide niche, a real, independent cultural community.