Television and Radio are 75% advertisement.
They always have been
Most of my favorite youtubers from 2010s are gone replaced with nonstop politics, drama, reaction, and streaming content farming.
Find better youtubers? But also understand that people are going to talk about what matters to them and most people aren't privileged enough to ignore the political hellscape (or are so privileged they think they can benefit from it...). Same with the "drama" since so much of that is intrinsically tied to how the platforms they rely on for their livelihood function.
I feel it in my heart that short form content is damaging everyones attention spans especially my tablet ridden younger family members.
I very much agree. But this has been going on for decades. TV led to a decline in movies ("I only have time to maybe watch five episodes of a show. Not a full movie") and "book reading" has been on a decline for about as long.
When I go into the search bar on YouTube I see stuff literally called “brain break” and “brain rot”.
Okay? I mean, everyone always made jokes about how TV would rot our brains. It is nothing new
I switch on the news and its 90% pure political propagandano matter the station.
... the news is discussing politics? Gasp, shock, and amazement?
Even the memes suck now, say what you want about caption memes and dancing babies and troll face, Pepe, me gusta but that shit was at least comprehensible in humor. go on 67 Wikipedia and it literally says “It has no fixed meaning.”
"I'm Rick James, bitch". "Whatchu talkin' bout Willis". "Can you understand the words that are coming out of my mouth".
Kids are fucking stupid. At least this crop aren't racist? Yet...
Even the steam store just feels different now. Its full of gooner porn bait visual novels and mundane activity sims and 1 season relevant fps shooters.
Don't expect stores to curate themselves for you. Find others who like what you like and let them trawl through the steam slop. It is no different than being a PC gamer who wanted to buy KOTOR back when every store would shove WoW and Halo down your throat the second you entered.
All the stuff I enjoyed is gone,
No, it's not. Retention of media is at an all time high and you can very much sit down to watch or play the things you live
and everything they make now seems so empty and pessimistic now.
Again, curate better.
Is this just me getting old yelling at clouds, or is something wrong?
What's wrong is that you think the world must revolve around you. It doesn't. But that doesn't mean people out there aren't making content you would love to consume. You just have to put a bit of effort in. Because The Algorithm was never about giving everyone exactly what they want. It was about matching people up to personas and feeding content along those lines.