This deserves a much longer reply than this, but it'll have to do for now. There's very much a different tone and structure to content on the internet today tha

This deserves a much longer reply than this, but it'll have to do for now. There's very much a different tone and structure to content on the internet today than when it was younger. Much of that has been a transition toward more commercial content and more "bite-sized" content, a lot of which has been encouraged by the tools we've come to use to interact with the internet. Social networks, mobile devices, etc. Each of which reward or encourage a shallower level of interaction on shorter timescales. I remember using usenet and forums where a conversation would typically last for days and sometimes for weeks or months. And where it wasn't unusual for a single reply to be several paragraphs of text and perhaps have involved several hours of work and/or research on the part of the poster. And on the web there was much that was similar. Blogs and personal sites full of essays. Blogs having conversations with one another via essay, and so on. That sort of thing still exists in pockets here and there but it does seem much less common. And it doesn't feel as though the younger generations coming online have a predilection toward that mode of communicating. And too all of the communications tools we use from day to day tend to discourage such individualistic content. There's a sharper dichotomy between content producer and content consumer than there used to be. But you see people chaffing at the separation. You see people posting 20 part tweets, or posting an essay in image form to their facebook wall. I don't fear that individualistic content will disappear from the web, but I fear that it is becoming less common, and is being actively discouraged by the tools and platforms we've come to rely on. Part of it comes back to the ad supported nature of much of the web. Just as in all other ad supported media to date there's always a pressure towards shallowness and laziness. Shallow content is cheaper and easier to make, and when you're just counting eyeballs it's often seemingly just as profitable.