Hey, hey guys, don't be this way.
No need to be mad at anyone. chill.
It's okay for people to have thoughts about things, even if they're new. Accurate information can be gained from a little observation and thinking. And it's okay to be opposed to the others idea. Just please express it politely.

There wasn't a golden age, it's a hobby. Was there ever a golden age of art? No, there were eras. Try to think of brickfilming in the same manner. There is no golden age. To be honest, golden age is a rare term that should be only used in broad scenarios such as a country's state. Please don't go after members either, it looks bad on you and will only cause fights. If you want to keep your reputation on here from puncturing, try to be friendly toward new people. When the old people are gone, they will be the new community.

Let's get off the topic of when brickfilms were "better" and look in on this a bit. It isn't the focus of the movie that's the only change, but the purpose the film is to serve. When people did it as a hobby, it was aimed at story because people admired the professionals of today and wanted to create their own master works. But when Youtube became an outlet for fame and money became a goal for people to aim at, people began to alter their cause to money and popularity. Don't try to tell people otherwise, it's in their nature. Films became shorter and aimed at comedy because the bigger ratio of YouTubers are pre-teenagers looking for a laugh. Because pre-teenagers have a shorter attention span and less patience, they want their laugh the minute they press the play button, so the brickfilmer decided to make the humor more sudden. People won views this way and as a result, they became YouTube partners and kept this change. New animators had to come across brickfilming to do it, so when they saw this form of brickfilm, it is what they accustomed to. If you really want to return to the story strong brickfilm age, you need to do it yourself, not just tell everyone else to, because they won't do it themselves.

Summary: You want more dedicated brickfilmers? Make some dedicated films and others will follow.

What is a "Vet"?
And anyway, he isn't that wrong. You can't say a contest is horrible for its theme: I think every contest has the potential of having great entries. My favourite contest presented on BiM so far is Avant-Garde, even though I didn't enter, because people had to be original (could have been in story or technical aspects), otherwise they wouldn't have made it to the final list. It's up to you making something good out of any theme, because that shows how good you are at making up stories. And Tales of Yore does give you chances of making good storylines. I highly doubt that just 30 seconds of a knight on a horse would make it to the final list of entrants. ToY also says that you don't have to make something on an event that happened, but you are free to have any story thta happens in a historical period. You can do almost everything, not even science fiction is impossible to do in this contest (with a good scripting, it wouldn't even look like science fiction). And, about Onion: it doesn't matter wether you are older than him or not, I'm here in the community since 2009, I'm surely older than him, but I think he is more respected than I am, and I kinda do respect him for that, because it means he did one or two years more than I did in three. So, there is a reason for the fact that Onion is respected by everyone, and it's because he shows to be a mature member (not that you aren't), and he did many things for the community (contests, podcast, Helpful reviews). Btw, everyone is respected (at least that's what I think).

I hope you don't take this post as an offence, Binding brick

It seems like the problem lies within the interpretation of the themes, not the contests themselves.

Er... but that's not what you wrote. You wrote that the recent contests themselves were the problem, because the themes didn't somehow force the filmmakers to make decent films. It's not the contest's fault if people aren't willing to be creative in executing the theme.

I like longer contests like TOY and Septemberfest. They give you enough time to come up with a good script, and you still have plenty of time to animate. The problem is that since these contests take so long, there's less of them, and shorter contests such as BRAWL and THAC fill in the gaps, and happen more frequently. I'm not bashing BRAWL or THAC, I'm simply saying that they might be part of the reason why films lack creativity right now. I mean, 24 hours or even 7 days isn't really enough time to come up with a great idea, write a script worthy of being a final draft, and deliver it well.

Yes. I am super respected by all because of my sheer awesomeness. Full stop. Period.

Binding Bricks over reacts a lot.

Well, screw reality. I'm gonna make a good film.