"The reason is simple: increasingly we aren't consuming originals, we're consuming derivatives."

It's a bit interesting that AI is what finally boiled-over this paradigm. For years before ChatGPT hit seems most articles were copy-pasta from some other source. Many a time I would see some article posted about maybe a new law or study and going out to try and find an article that actually linked to the source law or study. when you look through a dozen articles reporting on the same thing it becomes clear that many are just marginally updated copies of others in a long chain of garbage reporting.

We've been largely consuming derivatives for ages now but the field of copy-cats was wide so lots of sites were getting their crumbs.