I think it’s because articles, videos, podcasts arent really fully consumed. In the case of articles it’s been all about headlines and not the actual content for years. So if no one’s reading that and notoriety is a “good enough” content game where a very small aspect of it triggers a response then the rest is not incentivized to be of any quality. Most short videos on social media are retreads of a previous meme’s audio and visual.
“Content Creators” are paid to stimulate because that’s how they get paid.
People can’t even bother to research anymore, instead more people are having an LLM summarize what they want to know. No need for extrapolation in research because you’re only going to use the information to stimulate a serotonin reaction.
Most people don’t read the article, watch the full video, listen to the podcast. Some listen to a lot of it on 2x speed removing any intended pacing or performance.
“don’t be like so many writers ... don’t be like so many thousands of
people who call themselves writers, don’t be dull and boring and pretentious, don’t be consumed with self-love. the libraries of the world have yawned themselves to sleep over your kind. don’t add to that. don’t do it.” ― Charles Bukowski
I'd argue it is new. Apart from the massive increase in scale, even the cookie-cooker writers from before were at least real people. Here or there in their mostly-boilerplate creative output, some personal quirk would inevitably come through and at least that little bit would be interesting.
Something happening organically is incomprehensible for mentally unstable people.