[mihaic]

You're probably right, but I'm not sure we've hit the peak yet. What I can't understand if why people can't accept that some periods actually are worse, and it's not a matter of preference. The fact that the music in the 70s was so much better than in the 50s seems almost obvious by any metric (diversity, modern airplay). It's possible that things won't hit again that density of output, like painting in the centuries after the Renaissance.

Broadly, I'm seeing this as being the age of "quality doesn't matter". The larger the market, the worse it is for you to be unique and different.

The great cultural product of the past usually had many cooks, that all had personality and a deeper understanding of the process (for music it was the studio musicians and sound engineers that added another level to the production, while movies had way more crew that often clashed with the director just to improve the end result -- like cinematographers and set designers).

Combined with a loss in intergenerational experience transfer, no wonder it's memes that are the most original of all contemporary cultural products.

[ishjoh]

I tend to agree with your assessment that this is the age of "quality doesn't matter" but I would like to tweak it a little bit. This is the age where novelty is more important than quality.

Something new can be of the lowest quality imaginable, but something old still must be very high quality to get peoples attention.

Even here on hacker news where if a title doesn't have the year it was published there will be at least one comment with that information, and often it will later be added to the title.

[mihaic]

Hmmm, I wonder if it might be a side-effect of people knowing that new things are crap, so might as well have the freshest crap.

On the other hand I was shocked when I heard people use "old movies" to refer to those of the 2000s, so maybe I've lost touch too much with mainstream tastes, and how these might have been altered when only consuming contemporary entertainment.

[JoeyJoJoJr]

Anime is obvious example where quality (at least in technical terms) peaked in the 80s/90s. My theory about declined quality of media is that there is a practical limit to what can be achieved in an art form, and creative minds will continue to explore and push boundaries until that limit is achieved. After the limit is achieved there is far less creative desire to explore that art form (until a change in the environment presents a new potential limit), and creatives looks to other mediums or art forms. For Anime the limit was Akira or Ghost in the Shell, for rock is was insane shredding on guitar, for TV it was Breaking Bad or GoT. YouTube still hasn’t hit its peak.