basically an old fart says "it isn't cool anymore". Well, man, if you haven't still got the message - we're just not cool anymore, as young as we feel ourselves. Signed by a fellow old fart (of Gen X like jwz).
"It isn't cool anymore" would be more like "I went and still saw the same number of bands, but I'm just not feeling it... the bands just aren't as good as they were back in the old days." This was "It was a chaotic mess, and didn't used to be a chaotic mess". That's more of an objective issue than you're getting at.
(The word "more" is not extraneous, I'm not claiming some sort of "total objectivity", but I'd say that disorganization is something that can really happen beyond the realm of mere opinion.)
As a matter of perspective, it's been fun for me to watch a star/folk hero like jwz rise out of nowhere, a young, wild, productive dude. Now it's interesting to see a generation of developers to whom he's less known and who don't quite understand why he would make his webpage look like a terminal.
Just like it was interesting to suddenly see people fetishize super mario brothers about 10 years ago, e.g. Cory Doctorow. But now it seems SMB isn't the childhood reference, it's Pokemon.
