I think that's how I'm starting to feel about a lot of art that makes it to mass market

Yeah. A self-published novel, okay; the author may not have had an editor, or they may have willfully ignored what the editor said, with the latter having no power to do anything about it. But for all that people tend to use the word "gatekeeping" in a purely negative, when it works properly, the editorial process is supposed to filter problems out before they gets to the reader -- sometimes by rejecting it, and sometimes by editing it to be better.