I'm really surprised Youtube hasn't implemented some sort of Patreon-like payment scheme. Seems like they are off making Youtube TV because no one learns anything and we must repeat the same mistakes indefinitely.

I think an interesting question is whether kids raised on this content "barely above the spam threshold" have different cognitive functions and/or appreciation of content later in life. Maybe these kids raised on mass-produced low-quality content will care less about aesthetic integrity or NPR-type content as adults?

If by aesthetic integrity, you mean the quality of production or a more traditional, even and smooth style of film cutting, then that's not what I mean by quality. You can have serious documentary style cutting with crap content or amateur-reality-TV-promo cutting with great content. But I think that on that front, yes. If you grow up on a style, you might like it later too.

What I meant by just above the spam threshold is just a mishmash of content thoughtlessly cut together to match a keyword result, game the "up next" suggestion engine and/or draw clicks through shameless clickbait.