That's what's missing from my fandom experience these days - those topical discussions. (Except for discussions of fandom history; those show up a lot at Dreamwidth.)

I think you're correct about all of this. I don't even see as much speculative fiction discussion as I used to--my flist is full of people talking about books they've read, but there aren't the kind of meta discussions that gave rise to, like, RaceFail 09 or anything like that.