• brucethemoose@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    I briefly wrote articles for an oldschool PC hardware outlet (HardOCP if anyone remembers)… And I’m surprised any such sites are still alive. Mine shut down, and not because they wanted to.

    Why?

    Who reads written text over their favorite YouTube personality, or the SEO garbage that pops up first on their search, or first party articles/recs on steam, and so on? No one, except me apparently, as their journalistic integrity aside, I’m way too impatient for youtube videos, and am apparently the only person on the planet that believes influencers as far as I can throw them.

    And that was before Discord, Tiktok, and ChatGPT really started eating everything. And before a whole generation barely knew what a website is.

    They cited Eurogamer as an offender here, and thats an outstanding/upstanding site. I’m surprised they can even afford to pay that much as a business.

    And I’m not sure what anyone is supposed to do about it.

    • RightHandOfIkaros@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      This article was written by Luke Plunkett, who used to work at Kotaku. Some of his past articles include real whiz-bangers like: “Oh No, There Are Women In Battlefield”, and “There Is No Saving Cyberpunk 2077.” That pretty much tells you everything you need to know.

      Sensationalist e-begging for clicks with ragebait articles. Nothing new from a former Kotaku employee.

      • brucethemoose@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        And our site was like the opposite. Uh… let’s just say many Lemmy users wouldn’t like its editor, but he did not hold back gut punches, and refused to watch his site turn into a clickbait farm.

    • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      the only person on the planet that believes influencers as far as I can throw them.

      This phrase doesn’t work though. Unless you’re some body builder type, and can throw them really really far.

      But even that doesn’t make sense either. Because if you said

      “I only trust this guy 18 feet…”

      the other person would say

      “…18 feet? What? What does THAT mean???”

      And you would say “What??? You think you can throw a man 19 feet??? Ok. Go grab him. Go. Go grab that man, and throw him 19 feet. Show me.”

      At about this time I think they would just call the cops, assuming you have mental problems, and violent tendancies.

      Which to be fair…yeah. You’re over here talking about how far you can pick another man up against their will, and how far you can throw them.

      Although, how have we never made that an olympic event? You get a bunch of fat guys in a bar, and some body builder muscleheads, and see who wins. If the fat guy can escape, his time to escape is measured. Fastest fat guy gets the medal. Or, if he gets thrown, farthest throw distance wins the medal.

      I’d watch that.

      • Nibodhika@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        That read exactly as a footnote on a Terry Pratchett book, if you have never read Discworld you should, it has the same sense of humor that you do. For example another popular saying being bastardized:

        Give a man a fire and he’ll be warm for a night. Set a man on fire and he’ll be warm for the rest of his life."

      • Atherel@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1 month ago

        So you’d say that the answer to “how far can you throw them” and therefore also to “how much do you trust them” would be… “not at all?”

    • ampersandrew@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      From the reader’s experience, sites like IGN became completely unusable without ad blockers; I still remember the X-Men (2? Origins: Wolverine?) ad where Wolverine slashed through the page in a flash animation that prevented you from clicking on the thing you wanted to read underneath it. Then the information that you wanted could have been communicated in a headline, and it just becomes frustrating. That said, I’ll still reviews if they didn’t annoy me too much on my way there. I’ll still read Schreier when it isn’t paywalled. I read NY Times articles like the one they just did on Alexey Pajitnov. Rebekah Valentine and Jordan Middler do great work. In a lot of other cases, opinionated essays on video games benefit greatly from supporting footage in video format, and even without ad blockers, the YouTube experience is far less annoying on average.

      • brucethemoose@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        the YouTube experience is far less annoying on average.

        Are you sure about that?

        I opened YT links without premium on a new browsers and holy moly! I got 1-3 minute unskippable ads every time.

        I immediately clicked them off, of course.

        • ampersandrew@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          You can tune out and do something passive while the ad plays, and eventually the information you wanted will appear, as opposed to trying desperately to find your article as you scroll and having pop ups and other things interrupt you as you read. Perhaps this is all just a matter of perspective though.

          • brucethemoose@lemmy.world
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            1 month ago

            as opposed to trying desperately to find your article as you scroll and having pop ups and other things interrupt you as you read

            Joke’s on the websites, as I run Cromite, so no pop ups or anything.

            …But also, most of the written web is trash now.

            :(