writing is just generally bad now across the board
This is probably just survivorship bias. You don't remember the garbage of yesteryear. It remains to be seen what works of today will be regarded as good 10, 20, 50 years hence.
I get what you mean, but I would say the standard of writing is generally lower in mass media even if there are still amazing shows and amazing writing on display.
Everything has become samey and some very bad writers (Abrams, Lindelof, Goyer) have all failed upwards and influenced the writing of those that came after in a way that is not good imo.
This is definitely survivorship bias! If you can find a secondhand bookstore, go in and look for older paperbacks written by authors you've never heard of. See how bad their writing is. See how many of them wrote multiple books.
Now, copy editing has become much worse lately, because publishers don't want to pay humans to do it.
Not to mention mention we live in an era with so much more media: TV, film, podcast, theater, novels, essays, and so much more. There's so many people doing creative work, and a lot of it will be crap.
16
u/lowpass 6d ago
This is probably just survivorship bias. You don't remember the garbage of yesteryear. It remains to be seen what works of today will be regarded as good 10, 20, 50 years hence.