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I think this expands on the cultural issue that I mentioned. I think there is some severe form of cultural myopia, with an additional dash of political activism that is all-but-mandatory in large creative industries, that has made writing fall apart. I will admit to avoiding talking about the political angle, due to the fact that I find it so emotionally charged that it's hard for me to actually detail what specifically is the problem without feeling like I'm just inserting comments to justify my own beliefs. That said, it is very real. One of the writers I brought up in my post had started violently talking about those critical of COVID measures. He fell in line with the specific blue tribe bias that's in the video game industry despite the fact that he'd been out of it for over 20 years at that point. This indicates that it goes beyond simply "the industry".
I've often lamented that the internet has made everyone sound the same, everywhere. The same references, patterns of speech, opinions - it feels like a Dead Internet even if I know for a fact I'm interacting with real people. Sometimes I'm interacting with people in real life and hear exact patterns of speech I've seen on left-leaning reddit communities.
My point in bringing that up is that seeing this writer whom I really respect fall into such a thought-terminating cliche (I believe he said "Just get the fucking vax") made me wonder how many potentially brilliant writers are out there right now, unknowingly stunted by the political climate and their obedience to it. Given someone who predated the time of mandatory political views for creative work failed to avoid that pitfall, how could someone raised in it fare better? How many various ways of thinking have been culled and brought into line by the mandatory participation in the culture war modern society has cultivated? And how many completely untalented writers have been propelled into prominence by adherence to the "correct" politics? The answer to both those questions is definitely over zero, and even at that level I think that's a disaster. I genuinely fear we're heading for a dark age creatively. My only hope is that it's looked back on as a very brief period of time.
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