Do people complain about pop culture less now?

I don't hear as many older people complaining about current pop culture as I did in the past. Maybe i'm just not paying as much attention to it or i'm not listening to the right things, but I can distinctively remember as a kid when people on the radio and TV would bag out the '90s (especially the Late '90s) as being the decade when music went downhill and how music had been sh*t ever since. I mean, I still come across negative comments about current pop culture trends across the net and even here on our forum, but it has been quite a long time since I last heard anyone complain about it in real life.

I think streaming is the reason for it. Pop culture is so fragmented now, there's a countless number of thriving niche communities on the internet which each have thousands of followers or millions of views. BTS is one of the biggest bands in the world in terms of how large their fanbase is, but they've had very limited success on the western Top-40 charts and they've received little to no airplay on the radio. The 'mainstream' doesn't have as much cultural significance as it did in the past. "Blinding Lights" may be one of the biggest hits of 2020, but there would be millions of people who haven't even been exposed to it and it has since become quite easy to avoid current chart hits if you wish to. I could play one of my parents a song that is currently within the Top-10 on the ARIA Chart and i'm 99% certain they wouldn't have heard it or be familiar with it. In comparison, I could play them a song from 2004 such as "Take Me Out" or "Toxic" and even though they weren't due to them being in their late 30s/early 40s, there's a good chance they would recognise the song due to the fact that pop culture was less fragmented then and it was harder to avoid hearing the newest songs on the charts.

Obviously pop culture is not all about music, but it's the best example of how pop culture has become so fragmented over time. People don't tune in at 6pm every weeknight to watch the news. You can search for it anytime of the day on your smartphone or laptop, just like how you can watch a movie or TV show on Netflix or Amazon Prime whenever you want. The world has changed and so have the attitudes towards current culture.

I remember teachers in class in 1997 complaining about BSB and Spice Girls lmao these were like Young Gen Xers, personally ? I think it was needed
things got way 2 dark in the mid 90s.

me either actually, the only thing I remember is the Simpsons episode dissing Gen X culture and grunge bands, and maybe the slacker moniker but I never really heard the mid 90s getting dissed, maybe Gangsta rap being 2 extreme, but u really didn't hear it that much, it was pretty this is what it is and its pretty cool kind of vibe. I don't remember anyone dissing the mid 90s as it happened, like no one said the movies of the mid 90s sucked as they happened.

Yeah, I remember in the 2000s everybody online complained about current stuff and it seemed people mostly agreed. Now if you complain about current stuff you get responses like “Ok boomer” or “HuRr DuRr oLd sTUFf GoOD NeW bAd!” or “r/lewronggeneration”.

Yes.

And popular culture is objectively better now than in 2011 or 2016.

Plenty of people who love the 80s recognize that 80s culture was cheesy and bigoted