"First to file" just means that if two patent applications come in at around the same time, there won't be a court case with a bunch of discovery concerning who was working on the actual invention first. Its just the first patent request into the office now. This does not affect prior art. If anything it makes it stronger by preventing the claim that a so called inventor was working on an idea prior to the disclosure of the prior art.

The fact that a two sentence blog post about using a simple 3 way switch to control a microphone is in fact prior art strong enough to bust a potential patent is just a sad, sad commentary on the quality of patents being issued today.