I am some what of a perfectionist. I want my shots to come straight out of camera and be impressive. This mindset seems to produce pretty good results for me. I do not spend a to of time in photoshop retouching, cropping, etc.. I try to envision the shot the way I want it before I shoot it. Lighting, composition, subject matter...I want it all in place before I shoot. I do not want to have to take a shot, then crop it to make a powerful image. Now I will if I have no choice, but 9x out of 10 I have a choice. Cropping is not bad by any means, hell almost anything you shoot with a powerful SLR these days is going to have to be cropped if you ever want to frame it.
As for the trend, I think a lot of that comes from hobbyists. They just point the camera around in Auto, or maybe Apature or Shutter priority if they are a bit more skilled, and shoot whatever moves or captures their attention. You can always tell these people, they are the ones standing in the middle of time square in pure awe of it all with that look of pure ecstasy on their face and every 2" they turn there is another shot being fired off!
