> If you've tried to google "best [anything]" in the last five years and gotten a wall of nearly identical listicles, all with the same structure ("We tested 47

> If you've tried to google "best [anything]" in the last five years and gotten a wall of nearly identical listicles, all with the same structure ("We tested 47 blenders so you don't have to!"), all making the same recommendations, all linking to the same Amazon products, you've experienced the results. This also ruined Reddit as the source for this research. Before social media growth hackers figured out how to run campaigns on Reddit (around three years ago feels right, though I'm sure it's been happening at a smaller scale for a lot longer), you could type "best $THING site:reddit.com" and be fairly sure that you'll get a discussion about really good products amongst actual people. Nowadays, you can be fairly sure that most of the discussion is astroturfing, with some of it being completely AI-generated. This is also ruining my _other_ use case for Reddit: finding good places to eat in my favorite cities recommended by locals that live there. > podcast hosts interviewing each other in an endless circle of mutual promotion where everyone claimed to make $30K/month It's always $30k/mo _revenue_. Never profit. We don't talk about profit.