Affording someone status for being someone with an opinion on cultural artifact X no longer exists. No one is impressed, there's too many people with thoughtful opinions on important books doing absolutely nothing valuable in society.
Self publishing your opinions in a way that is cheaply (freely) accessible to anyone became a thing. Previously if you wanted a book review you had to spend a chunk of time and/or money to even find a review, and when you did there was like a handful of reviews. If the thing was more esoteric, maybe zero reviews.
