Something's terribly wrong

They always told me you couldn't judge a story by their cover.
For the most part, I couldn't. I always love a good read, though over time, it's been harder and harder to find one, a new one, at least. The treasures of the past can't keep you entertained forever, so I decided to seek out what would be the new treasures. I called out to every young aspiring writer around my area, offering them critiques on their works, offering to give them advice on how to improve! Within the first week, I had over five dozen or so different works, really nice to see how many there were. I almost had hope for the future. Then I read them. Almost all of it was just outright garbage! Perhaps I should of held back on my criticisms, as the rules of writing don't seem very well known to the youth, but I should read some of that stuff to-no, never mind that. Most of it was nothing more than cheap pornos, absolutely bizarre fascinations which stay put, absolutely shameful self-inserts, flat characters in a character story, an overabundance of unnecessary information, pointless topics, writing that makes me think they should be screenwriters, page long monologues explaining every damn thing in the world-! I'm sorry, I'm so terribly sorry. Thankfully, there were one or two very well written stories. I think one of them even had potential to be the next Poe! But I think i'm getting a little too ahead of myself. Maybe they just seemed better, or wait, I'm going to need to read them again then. But, back on topic. I sent back all their stories with my critiques attached, and requested that they respond on how they felt. Well, I think only about twelve of them managed to get back to me. The rest of them, no clue what happened. Maybe they didn't get my mail, maybe they didn't just wanna see my critique, maybe they didn't have the time to write back, I don't know. Upsetting, I haven't heard back from one of the authors who had potential. A few of the letters were actually from the kids' parents, complaining about how "insulting" I was to their child. Again, probably a bit too harsh on them. The few that were actually from the kids themselves was stuff like "This critique doesn't help at all" or "You're a jerk" or even "Other people don't have these problems, therefore your critique is invalid!" No backbone at all! One or two authors actually did thank me for the advice, but brought up how I was a bit harsh in a few parts. Again, my fault. Now, a week later, the next wave of them came in, I want you to guess what happened. No? The exact same thing! All of it was- I'm sorry, *ahem*. Only difference was that there was no good works this time, and just about every kid fussed at me for my critiques, except for one kid in particular. Ooh, the GAUL he has! He actually was already selling his work before he sent it in to me, and it was wildly popular! The fact that people could actually tolerate his writing makes me wonder if the writers really are the problem here! But back to the works, when I said they were all the same, I wasn't kidding. I started to notice a pattern in the titles of the stories. I even put a nickel in a jar every time I could predict what outlandish topic the story was going to be about, and how it'd progress, and I could buy a fine dinner with the amount of nickles I had! When the next wave of stories came in, I was able to half the amount of time I took critiquing them because of my newly acquired skill, and then, I just stopped critiquing altogether. It's all the same every time, with only a slight chance of finding something good, and yet the good is drowned out and the bad is sold en mass!