4 ms·
I love the assumption that all the free content is 'junk' and the paid content is somehow better. In my experience, it's the free stuff from hobbyists that's of
by CM30 9y ago
I love the assumption that all the free content is 'junk' and the paid content is somehow better. In my experience, it's the free stuff from hobbyists that's often better than the stuff printed by professional publications, since they care about the topic rather than meaningless clicks and ad analytics.
Because the thing is:
> But if you actually want to learn, to improve your mind, to improve your awareness and understanding of the world, you have to shell out.
I don't need to shell out anything. I can find perfectly good content from people that care for free, and I myself write perfectly good content for people that are interested in the topic and provide it for free.
The people that want good content don't need to pay for it, they can find for it free. And the people who don't care for good content now...
Probably weren't caring much for it in the past either. Do you really think the folks that read the tabloid papers (or the Daily Mail) wanted a super deep, thought provoking piece that questions every bit of their world view?
That the people who watch cable news shows or what not were going to pay for something from a professional organisation?
That wasn't going to happen, and it didn't. Instead, the people who wanted good content found they could get good content elsewhere, the ones who wanted mediocre content found they could get the same stuff elsewhere and the old media are left in a situation where they're really not the best at either of these things.
- Slansitartop 9y ago> I don't need to shell out anything. I can find perfectly good content from people that care for free, and I myself write perfectly good content for people that are interested in the topic and provide it for free. What kind of content is this, exactly? I think you're missing the forest by focusing on a few unique trees. I agree, you're likely to find far better free stuff about tinkering around with microcontrollers (for instance) that are written by hobbyists than you will from paid publications. Taken all together, though, that kind of stuff is ultimately very limited and misses whole universes of valuable areas. For instance: news reporting, history books, etc. require a breadth of attention and effort to create that just isn't possible with a day job. If you want to "improve your mind, to improve your awareness and understanding of the world" you can't hyper-focus on hobbies.
- marnett 9y agoI think the internet-model just isn't created for in-depth, thought provoking, long form articles. I am lucky enough to live in a major city, but I consume thought provoking, free content by having a library card. Of the publications where I found thought provoking, long form articles, they are almost always a non-profit. The internet ad-based business model for content simply forbids huge ROI for real content; I totally support more-and-more non-profit content creators whose charter is quality content. If you are interested in non-hobby, free long form writing, I always recommend Aeon[1]! For non-free, I recommend Lapham's Quarterly[2]. https://aeon.co/ https://aeon.co/ https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/ https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/
- Slansitartop 9y agoI agree, for the most part. One thing though, I won't call aeon "free," exactly. They take donations and I would encourage people to donate if they like it, even as a one-off. I think an idea that underlies the OP's maxim "Enjoy content. Not too much. Mostly paid," is the economics of paid content is clearer and more pro-consumer. I think that's true whether the payment actually gates the content or not.
- njarboe 9y agoI would say "Mostly not ad supported". It would be great if Google let one search for content on only sites that don't have ads. Of course that would never happen, but duck duck go could give it a try.
- Retric 9y agoYou can find a huge range of History books written by amateurs. Separating the wheat from the chaff is not always easy, but you also need a filtering method for paid works as they also have vast quantities of junk. In terms of written content I have more or less given up on books specifically because I find free content to be far more diverse. Read a few thousand science fiction books for example and they really all blend together with minimal originality.
- 9y ago
- rdiddly 9y agoYeah it's hard not to conclude that the advent of everybody "wanting money for it" was actually what led to things being junk.