Confused by abundance

Confused by abundance

It's getting a bit too much and at the same time too little with scientific literature. Once upon a time, we used to have just a small number of scientific journals in my area, a couple of conferences every year and a few books that established approaches. Nowadays there's an inflation of journals, conferences and even books that amount to little. Going through the latest batch of journal papers is often depressing: tiny steps taken with sound methods. Even worse are the wider effects of computerization: having all publications digitally available and websites on one's research is not enough. One also needs to have blogs, vlogs, YouTube channels, tweets, facebook and LinkedIn activity, followers and likes. Educational technologists keep reminding us how important all those things are for our careers and students (not to mention their own).
Are they really? Should I invest so much time in temporary, forgettable stuff? Should I repeat in one outlet what I've done in the others, merely in order to increase exposure? Am I a researcher or a PR person? Even if I could justify the time, I'm not convinced by the hyperactivity in this kind of dissemination and advertising. We are just wasting valuable resources by pretending that what we have to say deserves so much space. Even worse is that it becomes quite hard to find worthwhile information in the resulting mess. If only people tried to consolidate what they have to say in a definitive publication …