Unfortunately I feel like print is slowly dying especially with so many people using ad blockers etc. The other issues is some of my favorite print sites either dying or becoming a joke over the last decade.
I really really liked Tom's Hardware back in the early to mid 2000s even prior to building my first custom pc and now they are a shell of their former self imo.
Other than TPU I really only like anandtech these days although some of the headline stories here make me roll my eyes but you get that with every site unfortunately trying to get clicks.
PC building market seems big but in the grand scheme it is pretty niche. Without strong community support they just don't make it. Two pitfalls really... number one is you can't risk putting people off - point out the negatives of a certain product too transparently and you not only risk the audience that doesn't agree, but the people who make it may be unwilling to work with you... and on an increasingly strained budget, that can hurt. So they shy away from certain things and make thier communities hyper-inclusive, at total expense to overall SnR and long-term engagement. Idiots come and go, and that's enough engagement to drive them along. The other side of that is how hard it is to sincerely engage an audience to the point where they can't imagine you not being there. Honestly there are too many people in the tech journo game and not enough bread to serve the table. So we wind up with two kinds of bad situations. We have ones that go all in on just getting the draw with cheap, hollow garbage... at the expense of meaningful content and the culture surrounding the hobby. And then, we have the ones who act like nobody can do any wrong. They will make inappropriate comparisons to make a product look good, when it doesn't otherwise and generally take the stance that everything is different flavors of good - everything is 8-10 stars! Should you buy it? "If you want it the answer is always yes!" They fill the whole thing up with people that have toxic and misguided mindsets. That shapes their buying habits. And the buying habits help determine what's available and at what price.
GN is contrary to the latter, but to me is becoming the other side of the coin. They don't need free stuff and special access... they just need enough people to believe in what they are doing. And they know people will favor them over everyone else. They're banking on other people seeing the over-positive attitudes and feeding on the disdain born of it. It's smart. They have their finger on the pulse. I don't think it does a whole lot of good in the grand scheme... they're just playing the same game. But their success with it speaks to the state of things. And there are doubtless better ways to capitalize on that unrest. I used to like how they weren't afraid to put manufacturers out on their ass. But then they wore that like a badge of honor, like somehow that's how things are supposed to be. And I think that's part of a bigger problem, so I'm out.
Anywho... with the saturation of crap like that, it gives the whole thing a bad name and none of the staunchest enthusiasts, the people who would be around supporting them for years, want anything to do with the whole affair. They grab what they need and get out, because at the end of the day a lot of it is hollow and the communities that form around them kinda suck. The full adoption of adblockers is a huge blow to everyone, good and bad. But to me those ads are the only reason subpar content ever made it through to begin with. Now, everyone will have to find other ways to stick around. Half-full/half-empty. Some will take the high road, others will take the low road. You can stand out taking the high road. It's just harder to do successfully. But that doesn't mean there aren't a lot of people out there who are tired of shitshows in all manners of color and firmness.
I'm trying to be hopeful that after a falloff, when only the people that care are left, there will still be enough people willing to go out there and actually do something different. It's just a matter of who can find a model that works. Somebody's gonna know. Written media isn't going anywhere IMO. It is the cheapest, quickest thing to produce. I think all of this video stuff is a bubble waiting to pop. There is always going to be a need for people who can write compellingly and compile information effectively. Youtube still isn't exactly a safe place to make money, either. And often the things you have to do are detrimental to you, or have nothing to do with what you actually do. That can't last. People on both sides are going to tire of that eventually. It's still kind of new to everyone. Judging by general attitudes, that is indeed coming. "Youtuber" is such a dirty word now. And it's different from before, when nobody thought it was a real job. They know it's a real job. They just hate them for that job. What it is and what it actually adds to things.
Just mechanically speaking, writing has the capacity to reach the largest number of people. I say let the ones who actually care enough to do it, do it, and let everyone else jump ship for the new shit. Let em go. The quality/quantity ratio fell off a long time ago. We're hitting a point where you gotta be pretty special to stay around with text. Which on one hand is sad and scary, and likely to cause a lot of damage, but on the other hand might be exactly the distillation we need. Not sayin I'm happy about it.
At some point you've got to wonder who's to blame for it. If you ask me, we all need to change our habits in terms of what we give our time and money to. I'm guilty of being uselessly judgemental - I'm a picky bastard. I just don't like things. I don't get why people like all of these things and stuff that are objectively terrible.
But I do try to support the things I like, which is why I buy into TPU. I think that's pretty much gonna have to be how it is... for everyone. And there needs to be an understanding with audiences that this stuff was NEVER free. Advertising has made us all almost completely oblivious to that. At some point the wake-up call is going to be a real bitch.
People aren't dumb. We'll all be on the same page with it eventually.
One thing that will never change are younger audiences. But the thing about young audiences is that they don't have a lot of disposable income. And inevitably they get older, more cynical, and increasingly more fed up with everything. But they have more to give for things that do interest them. But as it stands right now, there's little out there that's really FOR them, you know? Everyone shoots for the moon going for that young gamer market. Nobody's looking much at the people who are past that point.
I dunno... can't pretend to have any answers to it. Random thoughts on the state of the internet. We're kind of in a weird place. I think things are changing again just like they did roughly 10 years ago. No telling what comes next. Big gains and big losses are a guarantee though. I'm holding out for whatever comes next. Been around long enough to know that it doesn't take long before we're looking at a totally different internet. The landscape is always going through these huge shifts because of how fast information moves.
