Wait a minute - I thought that party line was that we weren’t shallow and narcissistic? And this is great - YALB (yet another leaderboard) to get the chattering classes riled up. Anyway, I’m hearing Steve’s point all the time now, but mostly from the old-timers who are presumably losing (or worried about losing) audience to the up-and-coming, and who perhaps have unrealistic memories about how good things used to be, back in the day. And I guess it goes without saying that looking to Techmeme for quality (it measures popularity, after all) is a little like expecting The Brothers Karamazov from Engadget. This is simple - there are more people producing content now. Ask Andrew Keen what that means. Still and all, there is quality - it just takes more effort now to find it.