I think it's mostly that popular culture has become largely derivative and there's a current trend of irreverence where everything that is old is bad and needs to be made new with modern sensibilities, but they lack the creative spark necessary to make totally new content, in the same way that someone with 10,000 cable television channels lacks something good to watch. Restrictions and limits breed creativity, the opposite breeds boredom, and the only thing they can really think of doing is taking things that already exist and break them apart. This is of course, part of the creative learning process, which is why kids right shitty fan fiction before they mature enough in their skill to make their own shit. But these days it feels like the writing staff never really moved on much past their awkward teenage phase.

This is why I'm very much looking forward to World War III. The abject terror and horrors of the nuclear holocaust will produce some of the absolute best in literature, art, and media, perhaps 30 years later. Lord of the Rings doesn't get written without WWI after all. Unfortunately almost nobody will read it due to the cataracts in the elderly and the collapse of society leading to the end of literacy in the youth. Oh well.