Online Newsletters, Aggregate Lists, etc

[SheilaAnn]

I just shooed a bunch of kids off my lawn so I can b*tch about this. I enjoy getting newsletters and trade info and all that. I loved that it showed me what’s new and exciting, teaches me stuff…… But boy howdy, ever since my two go-to newsletters sold out, it’s the same old stuff.

Just this morning, for example:

Food and Wine: Ina Never Brings These Items to a Dinner Party
WE KNOW, YOU TOLD US LAST WEEK AND THE MONTH BEFORE THAT.

Serious Eats: Our Most Saved Recipes of All Time
YOU GUESSED, SAME DANG LIST MONTH AFTER MONTH.

Any of the Above: We Tested 47 ‘enter name here’ So You Don’t Have To
THESE REVIEWS BROUGHT TO YOU BY ‘ENTER NAME HERE’
Once again, same reviews over and over.

Scroll to the bottom of these two publications and, shocker, they are owned by the same company: People, Inc.

My country for original content!!! Or did I just nail it? That’s it….. no more original content. There’s only one way to crack an egg, pluck a chicken or slice a cucumber. Goodbye, you’ve reached the end of the internet. Go home and play outside.

Or is it because I am older, wiser, more experienced and I know everything and nothing is new except what I learn on The Pit? I dunno…..

[Duanessmokedmeats]

There are more than one way to skin a cat...

[Panhead John]

Similar to your rant SA……

This dish is so good I make it almost every day!
This recipe is so good my family demands it every day! 🙄 etc. etc.

[Richard Chrz]

I only look at things for pictures. lol

i’ve had food and wine, bon appetite for 3 years maybe more, have not made a single thing from any of them, nor read the reviews & lists in them.

[CaptainMike]

Have you ever looked at an issue of Texas Monthly? It's a dozen partial pages of content, and 100 pages of advertisements for stuff I can't afford to buy.

[jayjordan]

I subscribed to Texas Monthly for the BBQ articles and reviews, very inexpensive 1 year price. Cancelled for same reasons as you guys….mostly ads and articles that only Austinites would care to read.
Print is dying, more magazines go to digital every month it seems. Over the last six months I’ve dropped magazine subscriptions down to the free one I get as NRA Life member. Need to end it cause I usually just drop it in the recycle bin without opening it.

[CaptainMike]

jayjordan About 3 years ago I received my regular Via magazine from AAA. As I was tossing it in the trash the cover photo caught my eye. I retrieved it and front and center was one of my closest friends and coworker with his wife. The article was about adventure travelling and they were featured in their pimped out Westie on a beach in Baja California.

[Panhead John]

I had a TM issue right in front of me. Just for grins, here’s what I saw…..the first 15 pages were all full page ads before you even got to the table of contents! Every other page had a full page ad through the first half of the magazine. 😳 I gave up after that.

[Michael_in_TX]

You're not wrong, especially the "infomercial" review emails. And while the established outlets and trades aren't getting this bad, the proliferation of AI content is really getting bad out there. In fact, if I find that a link in an email takes me to a site that somewhat prominently features the phrase "Amazon affiliate links" I tend to click away.

I think the original content is still going to be out there, but it is going to be much harder to find. We may start finding it less and less in traditional corporate brands, but more in individual entrepreneurs that are using the "Patreon" or some form of subscription model.

One thing that works in the favor of the food world is that AI can't cook. It can't taste. It doesn't know what cilantro is. AI/LLM is a stochastic parrot; it is a plagiarism toaster.

The best analogy for AI is that it is the modern successor to that stupid thing we used to do in middle school: remember going to a soda dispenser and mixing all of the sodas together? Nothing new or novel or good ever came out of that. All we got was this undrinkable dreck that had utterly lost any of the unique aspects of the individual drinks.

Unfortunately, the ease and inexpensive of AI is going to make finding, for example, the new Kenji's of the world much harder.

[SheilaAnn]

I had to look up stochastic parrot. Wow! Waiting for a band to hit the scene with that name!

Related: I just received an email about some “vendor” wanting my culinary clubs electronic payment methods, the email was “sent from” our president and mentioned our treasurer by first and last name. The “voice” of the email most certainly not the “voice” of our president. Our membership chair thought it legit and sent it to me because I’m more tech savvy. Thank goodness…. Dodged that bullet!

[CaptainMike]

Great analogy on mixing the sodas. For reasons unknown we called that a Suicide way back in the long ago.

[Michael_in_TX]

Have you ever looked at an issue of Texas Monthly? It's a dozen partial pages of articles, and 100 pages of advertisements for stuff I can't afford to buy.

Same. I've moved my reading to their website.

I don't mind paying a digital subscription for something that I truly value, but I do have two asks:

• The price needs to be less than the print version.
• No ads.

(One recent trend that I absolutely detest is subscription sites insisting I view the ads by blocking my access to the site if I am using an adblocker. Yes, there is the argument that in the print version -- which I would have paid for -- I would see ads, but it is not the same. The risk of a print magazine ad installing malware on my computer is fairly close to zero.)

[jayjordan]

Agreed, if I’m paying for access to digital media products there better not be any ads.

Way too many of the “cooking/recipes/influencer” websites have so many ads all over them that I won’t go to them anymore.

I watch a lot of YouTube videos, had a paid subscription for a while but dropped it when they jacked up the price to $30/month. Yeah, the interruption by ads is annoying but less annoying than paying $30/month to avoid them.

[RichieB]

I don't subscribe to anything. Certainly not paying and the adds oh the effing adds.

[klflowers]

I think you have been around us too long Sheila Ann. And now you are a grouchy young cuss.

On a slightly different subject rant is the demise of newspapers. I used to subscribe to the local paper and read it every day at lunch. Or over breakfast on the weekends. The newspaper and some scattered and smothered hash browns was a treat. I even took the Wall Street Journal for awhile. But alas, they started printing on just Wednesdays and Sundays, then it was Sunday only. I tried the digital version, but omlettes and the phone screen are just not the same.