It's easy to get caught up in various discussion online about all things photographic, both technical and artistic. Some of these discussions are useful, but many are frankly nonsense. Some of the photography tropes that have become accepted in some quarters are doing active harm to the art of photography. The biggest of these is the notion that quality doesn’t matter. I see this over and over again, and while I’ve discussed this before, and why it does actually matter, I wanted to talk about the non-abstract real-world effects of this. The quality of photography used in professional settings is declining, and it's leading to a drop in quality of magazines and books and other publications of all types (not just photography related.)