> If you compare aggregate social media to aggregate news and magazines, the latter is shrinking This isn't even factually correct, the New York Times has done

> If you compare aggregate social media to aggregate news and magazines, the latter is shrinking This isn't even factually correct, the New York Times has done well, and grown over the last decade. In particular their move in the early 2010s towards paywalled premium subscription content, away from advertising, which was lambasted at the time, was in hindsight a very smart move. Yes, in the aggregate premium offerings don't come close to the size of the market of slop, it's always been a numbers game, but if you're talking about cultural trends, the people who run those slop factories read the Times and the Journal, they don't watch Youtube shorts themselves and probably keep their kids a mile away from it. Cultural capital and literal capital aren't the same thing. Danielle Steel has made 800 million selling 200 smut novels, but that hasn't given her a lot of cultural status or influence. The people who make decisions and set trends don't read her books.