Since when did "Indie" become the definition of trash games?

I don't think these trash games get much sales outside of really cheap bundles, and I doubt they make much money from that.
The thing that would work better than trying to not buy the trash, is actually buying the good games at a decent price, instead of always expecting them to be in a dollarbundle.

Since when did "Indie" become the definition of trash games?

You're the one defining it. Indie just means independent, with a small group of people who made it. I don't know why you would consider the word indie to mean trash. Just because anyone can "make a game", doesn't suddenly mean the word indie has changed in meaning. Indie isn't a genre.

EDIT: Nevermind, I just realised this was a troll post. but I'll let my comment stand.

or plenty of -PIXEL GAMES- that call themselves "roguelite" or "roguelike" which translates to "I couldn't finish the game out of lack of inspiration, money, etc

Well, one man's trash is another man's treasure. There are lots of good pixelart roguelites out there. I personally am not a big fan. But you have to admit that games like Dead Cells or Rogue Legacy are pretty good and absolutely no trash. Or my personal roguelite favorite: FTL.

Easier to make games -> more games -> more failures but more good games too :)

It didn't

Most of indies ( = not AA or AAA) are bad because made by people who often don't know what they do, and the result is often a cobbled together mess. There are still hundreds if not thousands of good indies, just majority... is what it is.

I'm still finding way more good or even great indies than I could possibly play, so I'm good with with status of their quality.

Indie games and trash games are two different things.

The number of games which abuse the term pixel, roguelike, lite and indie far outweigh the good ones.

Plenty of non indies and even AAA games are trash.
Its a consequence of turning this business more approachable for any aspiring developers
its easier to develop and distribute their titles, even on console, it has become a quantity over quality situation on steam. There are more great indies right now then there as ever been, but as a consequence there is a lot more garbage that you need to scroll by in order to reach the good stuff.
As for the AAA market, there is a trend of making accessible base products, that require either time and or money on the long run.
we see less linear games, but at the cost of a less focused and less detailed experience. Usually with a lot of unnecessary grind and pointless sidequests.

I came to this flase notion as soon as Steam Greenlight fell. That's when my Indie world became trash.

I don't know about you, but I'm finding more "indie gems" than ever, and finding myself quickly lacking the time to play them. In fact, I find myself playing more indie games than I do AAA games, simply for the fact that Indie devs tend to take more risks and try new things, as opposed to the cookie cutter sequels or copies of popular AAA games we've been getting for years.

You kinda nailed things (in not so many words) with the whole "speak with your wallet" thing, though. If you don't like a game, don't buy it. If a bundle is trash to you, don't buy it. If you happen to buy a bad game, review it negatively. That's really the only way to get through to anyone - publishers, developers, and gaming client - and it also tells other potential customers to take a pass.

Sturgeon's Law. 90% of anything is shit. Movies, literature, fast food, games of any genre/publisher status (indie and AAA alike). Honestly, I'm kind of surprised that "only buy things that are good/worth it" comes as some sort of revelation.

Since they pump out 900 platformers a year? Copy and paste

It's a simple matter of quantity; there are more of them, and so there are more that are garbage. That's not to say that the ratio of garbage to gem is higher; just that the actual pile of garbage is larger. I think most "AAA" games are overpriced trash, too, but people still worship the ground that they walk on; they're the overpaid celebrities of the video game world.

Indie never was indicator of quality. Just being different from your big publisher mass market junkfood games. See Ubisoft open world titles...

It just used to be that the selection presented on big market places was much smaller. See itchio.io and the rest. Not that it is a bad thing as we can see with Fortix and Bad Rats, though the standard has fallen even from there...

I'm not sure what your expectations are. One of the defining aspects of the term 'indie' is that there's a low barrier to entry, so there will be a lot of crap as a matter of course. It's like any other art form... a lot of people suck at it, especially when they're just starting out, but why would you argue about that? Self-published books are the same way with terrible writing and glorified fan fiction, which is exactly what one would expect. If you don't want to dredge through it, wait for word of mouth from people do do. I've rarely ever been disappointed with my early access or indie purchases, personally.

I think lower barriers are good even if they do result in a lot of trash,
You have the collective mind of the Internet to find gems in the tsunami of games, and you don't have to be trash-sifter if you don't want to,
there's a lot of people who enjoy being the first to review niche games.
Good indies will naturally get more attention than the shovelware.

Steam has already said they aren't really interested in doing curation themselves,
I think profile limited features is a good middle ground, these games are essentially hidden from people using the Steam platform until Steams metric of sales are made.
Nothing separates trash from treasure faster, than asking someone to pay for the game.

Because Valve have made it clear they don't any quality standards for what can get on steam.

My feelings exactly.

Have we lowered our standards already?

Itch.io is a major contributor to this problem of over-saturating the market, because I can't tell anymore whether it is genuine, and whether they are actually putting in any effort to be original. Steam has fallen to this too, but they do have considerably higher standards, and some of those games have ended up being removed (whether for the best or not). I feel as burned out as I have with FPS games.

When I find out about them through the giveaway/free games threads, they often come in bulk, bundled in up to hundreds at a time because they want in on it (for whatever reason), and just a glance at them just makes me wonder what the selling point is. Is it really a deal and worth having? I don't want to be picky, but at the same time, it's just beginning to look like a big joke, that I'm passing on a lot of them because of the issue with them also not making it a thing to keep them. I'm just wasting space on downloading things that'll be stuck on the backlog with that as well.

The thing about indie was that it was always lower budget games. There are both good and bad games in general and steam greenlight opened the floodgates for both lower quality numbered games. This also allowed for indie developers to introduce new games at a lower cost, some developers took advantage to make and sell good games, while others focused slowly on lower quality and higher quantity. While the number of bad games may have increased as much as 5-10x easily within those newer games released there are hundreds of hidden gems. Steam reviewers are important to seperate the trash from the treasure, and while some reviews are falsified in the long run good games mostly show up with their overwhelmingly positive scores. I personally have no problem with garbage games unless it takes away the chance of a good developer to make a good game or if a good developer just decides to pump out repeats of good games or lower their standards. In the end money talks and if we spend our money on good games it gives the developers more money to make more good games.

I think its all about Quality Control...there is no such thing anymore.
-We need to go back to proper beta testing, & I mean dedicated teams. Not making us test their games and then ignore our feedback.
-Stop Preorders completely...this is another reason quality has dropped. There is no incentive to release a quality game if we are glad to buy an unfinished product
-Set a hard limit for Early Access...1 year max or make them earn additional early access time or get shut down
-Valve needs their own QA team...and devs will play testing. If the devs know their games will be subjected to a lengthy approval process, at their expense. They will spend more time making a finished product.

They are independent. What else they'll market themselves besides being a small underdog indie dev just trying to make it.

About removing games, you could do it yourself now. No need to wait for steam support to remove it for you (if I'm understanding you correctly)
Although it's tedious to do it one by one (unless you script the process)
https://help.steampowered.com/en/wizard/HelpWithGameIssue/?appid=34900&issueid=123