Democratization and signal-to-noise

High production costs force selection before creation or distribution. Gatekeepers suppress weak proposals, which keeps visible average quality relatively high—but they also reject unfamiliar, risky, or unproven ideas. When tools and distribution become cheap, that filter weakens. Many more attempts enter the field, including many poor ones. Yet the larger and less constrained pool also contains rare experiments capable of exceeding what the old system would authorize. Democratization therefore creates a selection problem for audiences, not proof that the field itself is declining.

Lower barriers expand the range of possible outcomes; they do not make every new creator good or ensure that exceptional work will be noticed. The immediate experience may genuinely worsen because the additional mediocrity is visible now, while the strongest work becomes obvious only after time has filtered the flood.