I think there's more good stuff out there than ever, but:

• We don't have a good search engine to locate it.
• It's easier than ever to put stuff out there, so it's lower quality on average.
• People hide their stuff inside discord servers and, increasingly, behind paywalls.

There’s more, but it feels less because it’s quantity over quality. There’s so much more content but the quality has degraded that finding something of good quality in a sea of crap and slop is becoming a challenge.

I think companies have gotten more aggressive with theirs algorithms shoveling people towards content that gets companies the most money.

I try hard to block out right-wing crap (U.S.) on YouTube. I'm talking blocking channels liberally and going into my history to delete a watch if I find a video is spreading misinformation. I still get so much of it recommended. And anecdotally, it's gotten worse this year. Not sure if there's hard data available out there to prove it but I agree with you, OP, it sure feels like it.

Spotify is obvious. They dumped a ton of money into Rogan so push his podcast shamelessly to ensure maximum return on their investment, despite Rogan being a piece of shit.

Well I can't answer the other parts, but for games: The games industry has been going through a massive upheaval from ~2022-2025 has seen a staggering number of layoffs, games being canceled, and studios being shuttered. We'd be seeing a lot more games right now if they hadn't been axed over the years.

In the indie game dev side, its sort of* an indiepocalypse where battling for a smidgen of spotlight on Steam is brutal - and even financial "success" doesn't mean you'll have enough to follow up with another game. Also because of the above publishers aren't funding many AA games so its hard to get those going to.

*Its a little different for niches and certain genres so this is a generalization.

you have always had to filter good art (literally all media, really...filter for quality or go insane) from bad art, there's just a lot more shit to go through now with ai content.

Because there's less companies making media...

30 studios will all want to have the blockbuster game of the year, then 2-3 others to be safe.

3 studios want the same thing, but that's a tenth of the games.

Plus to make it even worse rather than a game being a one off sale, maybe some dlc, they want "live service" where people keep buying cosmetics. The studios don't want people buying a bunch of games, they want you playing their flagship and only flagship.

It's less that the biggest studios but up smaller for talent, IP, or anything. They're buying them up to shit them down to squash competition. That's why we're seeing it all over. Why bother making good media, when they can just make sure theirs is the only option?

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Delete your YouTube history, retrain the algo. My tip is female exercise videos work the same muscles but don't put you on the incel algorithm.

Because in the case of YT, Google incentivizes slop farms, or at least they used to, supposedly they're cracking down on slop farms now, but I don't believe for a second that it's for a good reason, instead why I think Google is allegedly cracking down on slop farms is to eliminate competition for their homegrown Veo 3 slop.

A coworker showed me a quote from this guy, Steve Magness (https://www.stevemagness.com/) that sums it up really well - When we're constantly 'killing time' on our phones/screens in every waking moment that our attention isn't otherwise required, we suck up the space that was once reserved for creativity and fill it with garbage instead. We fragment our attention and rarely get lost in our thoughts or follow up on cool ideas. Creativity is dying first before it's born because we don't just sit and engage with our own ideas like we did once...we just scroll.

The second factor is the giant, impossibly sophisticated psychological rat's maze the internet has become for content... we are fed much more than we truly discover, and every day 100k tons more AI shit is shoveled over real, genuine ideas... and it's that bullshit the algorithm will serve you. You have a lot less agency and exposure online than you THINK you do... and that is by design. If you have been on the internet for more than 10 years, then you remember when that was very much not the case and feel the difference.

Hang out with local, creative people in person, ask them what they're into. Stare out a window and think thoughts, shut your phone off and read books. The good news is that there is SO MUCH good shit in the world already that the decline of our civilization and its creative output isn't so bad, if you just get some distance from it.

Not my experience? Search and community have both gotten worse though, and these were great for finding good stuff.

idk I don't feel that way and could list many cool games, albums and videos from this and last year. I can only theorize that for others with that feeling it doesn't help that AI is a thing, and separately if you are reliant on an algorithm and get lazy, it'll give you slop and you won't feel fulfilled

edit: misspell

Only a small blow in a big battle, but one suggestion: Put active effort into your searches for positive content on something rather than negative.

Don’t watch 8 videos about how Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 sucks, and it’s over for Activision. Do a search for videos highlighting 10 great indie games that deserve your attention. YouTube even has an “AI search” that, while it is tools of the enemy, may let you be more explicit about what you’re looking for.

The secondary benefit of finding these videos is that anyone putting them out is probably aware negativity and outrage manufactures more views, and is instead choosing to better their content for its own sake.

Some other search options to curate your feed: Animations by hobbyists and college students, zoologists giving introductions to animals together with their name/location (NOT out-of-context 5 second clips of funny animals stolen without permission), any decent animations in Garry’s Mod / SFM, Machinima…

Heck, if someone wants a specific pointer and has a spare day, look up the Clear Skies trilogy. Yes…trilogy

I think part of it is people leaving the biggest platforms, making everything more decentralized but still on proprietary servers so no federation. That and it's tough out there right now.

Algorithm doesn't have an incentive to shiw anything good, only engaging content. Which is usually trash

I don't think there's less stuff. I think there's more slop and trash, so the percent of good stuff is lower.

Can't say that is true for music at least. I heard new music everyday for the hundreds of artists I follow in youtube music and soundcloud.

Everything and every platform has become gamified and there's no room for true artistic creation anymore.

Because you're not looking.
We have more games, videos, music, and art available right now then at any time in previous history.

youtube is mostly slop, unless you know which creators and follow them that is your niche. slop also includes content creator making lazy videos(the biggest ytubers are part of the problem). propaganda and MSM is also infilitrating YT.

My desire to polish off personal artistic musical expression into forms aesthetic enough for others to pay attention too is largely gone, I think people are far more interested right now in broken visions of human art thrown into a woodchipper and disfigured into lifeless forms on demand than humans making art. Obviously not everyone, but materially I think society is now very hostile to artists for a variety of reasons (largely cost of living increases).

Game development is even worse than music, it has become an extremely toxic, brutal industry and I don't recommend to anyone even though I love videogames (and music).