"The Fall of Modern Literature"

I encountered this phrase in the context of someone complaining about fan fiction. But, you can find this sort of notion about many of the arts: it could be "the decline of hip hop" or maybe "the decline of TV series" or just "the terrible state of the modern teen"

Or if you find those absurd what about "the decline in manufacturing quality" ?

Ah. Maybe that one has a point?

These pro-nostalgia arguments may vary in validity but they face common hurdles.

1. When comparing works of the past with what is made today nearly always there has been an increase in both volume and diversity. Today we have MORE music, more books, more art, most of it isn't very good.

2. We tend to compare what survived from the past, the most enduring and best work with the average work of today. (Architecture and furniture do this often.)

3. Related to #2 what is popular now, may not be what ends up defining the era when we look back.

4. Leave them kids alone.

There is some interaction between these common place and comforting falsies:

* More history keeps happening the closer you get to the present.

* The Decline of ...."

These are based in similar statistical issues. It's all sampling errors.

@futurebird

@futurebird although I do feel like "the decline of TV" might be accurate because in most places where someone might have been watching TV they could just be watching videos on an internet connection and have more choice over what they watch.

It's the same as how most people don't drive carriages pulled by horses; cars provide the same effect, but more convenient (because you can feed a car with a tube and it poops a gas)

@ben

But that brings us back to it being a sampling error.

@ben @futurebird "Decline of TV" if you mean actual broadcast/cable rather than writing of shows is a platform enshittification feedback loop. People who don't approve of it shifting to brain rotting right wing drivel and who aren't stuck in their habits move to better media, leaving behind only the worst audiences and making a financial incentive to dig in further on top of the political incentive. Similar thing happened a long time ago with AM talk radio then radio in general (Clear Channel).

@dalias @ben

What has become of the Radio Play!!

@futurebird @dalias methods die as more convenient methods become available

people aren't using telegraph machines or using modems to dial up a BBS anymore, but we're still talking to each other over long distances by writing very short letters

@futurebird I said something like this (i.e., that it's sampling errors) when Ray Kurzweil came to give an author talk at Google about _The Singularity Is Near_. He was silent for about a minute. It was pretty clear this possibility had never occurred to him before. Then he said something that didn't address my question, and moved on.

@RuchiraSDatta

**modem connection sounds**

**spinning beach ball over face**

@ben @futurebird @dalias i guess radio dramas were mainly popular because radios were a thing most households had, and less because people preferred the medium

and unlike other radio programs, radio plays don’t sound like something you’d just play in the background as you did something else (which is the main place radio is still relevant today, i think)

@charlotte @dalias @futurebird radio plays are a pretty common method of video game storytelling nowadays because digital storage is cheap so they can afford to put all those voice lines in and not having to place the characters in the game world lets you avoid a lot of design problems

@futurebird wait, hip hop just got started, how can it be in decline already?

@ShadSterling

People have been saying "hip hop is dead" for 25 years!

@ShadSterling

But then I think "the fall of literature" is like at least 400 years in? or maybe 1000?

I wonder if people of the stone age shook their head at the "decline in cave drawing" and "the fall of the story by the fire"

@futurebird @ShadSterling I’ll give you the fire thing but when’s the last time you saw a good cave drawing?

@driusan @ShadSterling

Do murals at the underpass count?