Beats me what causes it. Whatever it is, perhaps it's similar to what causes "impostor syndrome" and various self-referential crises we see people having. I go

Beats me what causes it. Whatever it is, perhaps it's similar to what causes "impostor syndrome" and various self-referential crises we see people having. I got in before this really started. Sure, the PC was changing the world, but people tended to be a lot humbler about things. It was the domain of autodiadicts, not prizewinning blue-ribbon specialists. Perhaps the sheer amount of money going into tech ( and leaving other fields of endeavor ) both raised the stakes and "attracted the wrong element." I saw an interview - onstage - with the playwright Arthur Miller, and he thought the sheer quantity of money has destroyed the ecosystem around Broadway. It's become risk averse. I suspect the same applies to movies, music, maybe even books.