[112233]

Most things are inedible, yet we treat food poisoning as unacceptable event. Places serving expired food get shut down. Yet preparing speech and sights we feed others is a lost art. When I read how people wrote 100 years ago I feel like a brute

[pfdietz]

I'm very confused by this analogy.

[MarkusQ]

Not the OP, but I'll try to unpack it for you.

Reading online, listing to public discourse, etc. these days is like taking the Tide Pod challenge; people feeding you inedible or even toxic garbage that superficially looks like candy. If we fed others actual food with the same care we employ when producing "food for thought", we'd all be, at best, very, very ill.

When compared with what people wrote in the past (especially through a survivorship bias filter, where the best writing is preserved longer and distributed more widely) what we produce today seems crude and disgusting.

[112233]

Thank you for putting it this eloquently.

Even stranger, for me, is the current prevalence of collective shunning, the so called cancel-culture, that is triggered by the most diverse reasons, but seemingly never buy the negativity and toxicity of the discourse. It is always lone individuals leaving because of that. But as soon as another reason - political, cultural etc. — is added, there is a collective exodus and condemnation. twitter/x is good example.