I'm not so sure the old wave ever left--for good, that is.  There's always been a baseline level of crap posting being done by various members of the forum, covering most sections (with the exception of perhaps Mining, Ivory Tower, and Serious Discussion).  Also, I haven't really detected an increase in shitposts, but I'm not saying you're wrong.  I've got a lot of sections on ignore, so I could be missing a wave of spam if it's happening....but I guess that's the point of having those sections on ignore, so it's a win for me if true.

Neither one of those members are "new blood" and I don't think OP would consider them what he's looking for.  Nor do I know how good a job hilariousandco and mprep are doing as global mods, since I don't know how to determine that.  I haven't seen the former make as many posts as he used to, that's for sure.  And as far as mprep goes, I never did see many of his posts at all--but that doesn't mean he or any other global mod isn't doing their job.

Yeah, but you can still see when those members post, and that's still a scrolling hassle sometimes.  I still like to report shitposters just to fuck with 'em and perhaps get their posts deleted, though I don't know how often that really happens.