[NoOneNew]

To be fair to both sides of this argument. Yes, if follow the "popular" of any of these sites... Jesus fucking Christ, it's incredibly bland and derivative. Even more so than what it was like in the 90s and 2000s with "popular media" at the time. Algorithms favor repetition, not originality.

That being said! If you're a totalitarian dictator in how you curate your feeds, you'll get the good stuff. Like, my YouTube feed has zero "surprised fucking stupid face" thumbnail channels. If I check incognito mode YouTube, that's all I ever see and it's all derivative, low effort. I have tech essays, writing essays, woodblock printing, photography tutorials and lots of other good stuff on my heavily curated feeds. I also make it a habit to follow up on creators recommendations.

There's effort in finding cool stuff... and to be fair, I feel there always was a certain amount of effort to find "the cool". So... maybe you're putting too much faith in the almighty algorithm.