I just realized how much SO's role has changed for me as a dev. Like most devs, I used to use it as a common reference. However, I realized just now that it's been months since I've looked as SO.

That's not because I was intentionally avoiding it, but a natural side-effect of it becoming much less useful, largely because of the thing you're citing here. The quality of answers has fallen quite a lot, and SO seems to actively avoid hard questions (and if I'm searching a site like SO, it's because I have a hard question.)