Twenty years ago, people's ideas, good or bad, were not immediately published on a broadband medium available to virtually everyone on the planet, at once. You

Twenty years ago, people's ideas, good or bad, were not immediately published on a broadband medium available to virtually everyone on the planet, at once. You had a conversation with your peers. Maybe you got some new ideas from that conversation and modified your idea. If you were to be published, at the very least it was reviewed by a local newspaper editor before being published in the "letters" section. Or it was reviewed by a publisher, or a group of professional peers. Now everyone can publish their ideas and opinions immediately, and this is the result. We are awash in bad ideas. We are awash in misinformed reactions to good ideas. And because everyone is on a somewhat even playing field (at least as far as social media goes) people who once relied on authorities, editors and tastemakers to present them with ideas, are left with few reliable intellectual guideposts.