I've sort of felt like this has already happened in many aspects of my life. To be an American consumer feels like living in a perpetual 4.5 star limbo these da

I've sort of felt like this has already happened in many aspects of my life. To be an American consumer feels like living in a perpetual 4.5 star limbo these days (I note that nearly every Amazon product I look at now has a 4.5 star rating). Every experience seems to be optimized via algorithm (perhaps orchestrated by computer, or perhaps just via one human organization or other) to be as bland as possible. Mass entertainment seems the most obvious - AAA games have become money-printing slogs, and the latest blockbuster movies seem ever less original. It's possible this is at least partially an effect of getting older, but I do tend to find smaller works to have a bit more character and chance to be entertaining. Obviously the hard part is sorting that out as the signal to noise gets smaller.