I checked the best books of the 21st century goodreads list.

Holy shit it is bleak. There are three Harry Potter books in there and two Hunger Games books in there in the top 10 best books.

Then you compare it to the best books of the 20th century ( still one harry potter book in there in top 10 but they are still doing way better than the 21st century.

How did the quality of the "greatest" works fall down so quickly. It is like humanity has forgotten how to write anything with any depth anymore and it is all at the level of quality of teenage story writing.

Is it simply over for the writing genre as a whole or is it that the best quality writing is actually no longer being recognized as the best because it didn't sell enough copies nor got enough appreciation from writing critics, or is it that there is a complete disconnect between what the average person considers enjoyable writing and what is considered actually good high brow writing?

I think it is a shift in medium where all the people looking for depth and high quality in their literary works moved on to movies and video games instead and all who are still hanging around the writing genre are those who will pick a random niche and the general books based on lowest common denominator which is teenage angst or teenage wonderment slop.

What this means is that the writing genre is going to keep going further down in quality over time and we need to look at the possible extinction of reading one day if everything turns out to be possible to be done by video because people are clearly getting worse at appreciating literature while getting a whole lot better at their expectations and appreciation of better video entertainment content.

Conclusion:

In terms of ease of entry into the writing department this is the easiest time period. In terms of making money from it, likely one of the harder time periods. We can expect the quality of writing meant for general audiences to have reached the lowest floor and never rise above it again this generation. The Zoom zooms are too r-slurred when it comes to quality writing in just a book.

Also if you still read Harry Potter books, READ ANOTHER BOOK!