[nottorp]

> And very little of what has been published in the past 15 years has been worthwhile.

I'd say that's survivor bias. Take any 15 year time period and 98% of what has been published in any form will be crap.

We just remember only the 2%.

I might agree that the shift from art and entertainment to content creation has reduced that 2% to 1-1.5% though.

[devilbunny]

One major shift has been the death of newspapers. When that was the primary way to get information about the world around you, it wasn’t just readers who benefited - it created a steady stream of capable, workmanlike writers. They weren’t literary geniuses, but they were capable of stringing together a few paragraphs of readable prose on a deadline. And they got paid for it; how many people can make a living off their Substack?

[tonymet]

Even peasant Civil War soldiers penned more expressive letters than Ivy League graduated journalists do today, so the source was even more broadly experienced. But you’re right about this one aspect.

[tonymet]

Possibly, but some eras are better than others. And given the volume we are producing, even at 2% it should eclipse all of the books you read in high school. Despite the volume, it’s nearly all garbage from what I can tell (at least what makes it through the marketing and awards pipelines)