>>I have some ideas as to why is it so, but for now I've just begun compiling evidence. These lists are a start.
>
>I think you need to take into account the universe you are being exposed to. For example, I bet there are lists of quotes in Chinese but they are not being forwarded to your circle of acquaintances and hence not to you either. You will need to cast a wider net in order to make a true measure of the quotes/content that are floating around.

That is the point - and my point is that the Western, specially Angloamerican culture is better cordoned off (one way, though) than many others. Too often their own production is taken to represent the whole world, while the rest has the special designation of "foreign" (recently renamed as "international"). This other production is, I've been told many times, available to anyone who wants it, but after a short delay that it takes to find it. While the insider stuff is not just available, but just shoved, moved around, and the first to appear in any new medium...

>In respect of creating content vs. just passing around existing content – nothing new here Dragan, this is the way it has always been since the earliest story tellers sitting around the tribal fire.

...which then needs to expand its user base, and each time it does so by first recycling the same content, from the same cycle. I'm specially holding responsible the investors in the area, who have historically shown to be handsomely rewarded for many a daring move, but have still killed dozens of original projects and would rather finance a sixth sequel of something than a brave new one.

And the theory that all the stories have been told, all the possible combinations have been tried out is actually rubbish. Every now and then I get a fresh story from somewhere - but it doesn't register anywhere in the books, because the research nowadays doesn't seem to consist as much of reading books to write about them, but rather of reading what others wrote already and then recompiling that. Which was predicted by Asimov as early as in the Foundation - and was a symptom of empire's decline :).