Comment by theobreuerweil
16 days ago
I have a take on this. As technology makes it cheaper to distribute things (I'm thinking all the way from printing press to VHS to streaming) the target audience grows. Each revolution in distribution broadens the pool of consumers. A book in the 1500s was only available to (and therefore likely directed at) wealthy and highly-educated people. Today, many (or most?) people can afford a Netflix account. Almost any Western person can watch a Tiktok video. I'm not trying to say that richer people are somehow better than the average person but I hope it's fair to say that, as media can reach more and more people, the target audience becomes less "sophisticated".
> book in the 1500s was only available to (and therefore likely directed at) wealthy and highly-educated people
Those people also had to compete, in the long run, for their positions. Broadening scope from a selected sample to the population necessarily degrades quality as the common denominator is pursued.
On the other hand, it creates tremendous wealth which allows niche art to flourish. (On the third hand, populism hates niche art.)
Content creators too. "Democratizing" tech is almost by definition a race to the lowest common denominator.