> I think that has always been the case, we just tend to compare today’s average stuff with the best stuff from earlier days.
I agree with this of course, because generally nobody remembers the bad stuff unless it was the worst. I beg to differ with music, though, because there's an opposing effect: we tend to be left with the most marketed music, which was usually a cheap knockoff of something interesting going on at the time. The shitty commercial knockoff becomes the "classic" while the people they were ripping off don't even get a wikipedia page.
I agree with this of course, because generally nobody remembers the bad stuff unless it was the worst. I beg to differ with music, though, because there's an opposing effect: we tend to be left with the most marketed music, which was usually a cheap knockoff of something interesting going on at the time. The shitty commercial knockoff becomes the "classic" while the people they were ripping off don't even get a wikipedia page.