[scrollaway]

It's a sweet world view, but the truth is that the majority of these cooking sites are filling in content for SEO and ad purposes, and the "stories" are fictions written by Tom, a 22 year old freelancer who isn't a yoga enthusiast but is just trying to make ends meet at 3¢/word.

[thorwasdfasdf]

And, the real farce is that Google mistakenly sees all that scrolling up and down the page, looking for the recipe as 'engagement' and "Dwell time".

[mandelbrotwurst]

Is that mistaken? Does no one click on ads on the page while doing this?

[thorwasdfasdf]

the algo thinks you're having a good time.

[DoreenMichele]

Tom, a 22 year old freelancer who isn't a yoga enthusiast but is just trying to make ends meet at 3¢/word.

Or Doreen, a 54 year old freelancer who isn't a yoga enthusiast but is trying to make ends meet at something under 3¢/word.

I haven't actually written for the site in question. I'm not trying to imply that I have. More like saying "Yeah, this is absolutely a thing."

And it's a thing in part because my actual original blogging that's the real deal doesn't get enough tips and Patreon supporters. If people want to see less content marketing to get ad revenue and more quality writing aimed at providing something fresh, they should be looking for independent authors to support whose writing they actually like.

I was providing original content written entirely by me for years before I began doing freelance writing. I would have likely never become a freelance writer if people had been willing to leave tips, promote my writing, engage with me so I would have a better idea of what to provide for my audience and so forth.

If you don't like what's on the internet, go "look in the mirror" so to speak. I've been on Hacker News nearly 11 years and was literally homeless for nearly six of that while people around here told me "Go get a real job. Writing doesn't pay. Your expectation that your writing should be capable of providing a living wage is just silly talk."

It's not so-called market forces at work. It's human choice and those choices are rooted in what we value and all this. If this world isn't the world folks want to see, they can make other choices more in line with what they claim they want instead of "being traffic" while complaining about it.

(Edit: For the record: Most of my freelance writing is content for small business sites and I don't feel the tiniest bit of regret. I like working for a paid service and I blog about that too and get accused of the site being content marketing when it absolutely isn't. http://writepay.blogspot.com/)

[csa]

This is so incredibly accurate.