business models

How Google and AI are Killing Travel Blogs Like Mine

I just finished reading this blog post by Amanda Williams, a travel blogger of 15 years, on the impact of Google's "helpful content" algo changes and AI on her ability to financial sustain herself.

And man- I might sound dumb here, but I totally had not connected the dots re: how AI will absolutely destroy ad revenue for creators-- specifically creators that produce written content. 

Ad placement is driven by site visitors, and AI totally bypasses the need for a site visit. Instead, it harvests the information from blogs like Amanda's and puts it in a neat list along with the content of 10 other bloggers so a person trying to find the top sites to visit in Paris never needs to even visit the site. 

This is a problem in that, bloggers like Amanda have to switch strategies-- she now needs a new means of making money to continue producing trustworthy travel content. That might be creating a substack with individual subscribers, creating courses, etc. But her content likely won't be publicly available in the future, non-harvestable by AI... and that's a problem too in that AI's knowledge sources are going to get worse and worse. 

Also, I just can't imagine that the 1:1 subscriber model won't be a losing game for soooo many great writers/creators. It's very different to be a person creating content that people are willing to pay for month over month, especially in niche fields like travel, instead of being paid by relevant brands through ads. 

What do y'all think?

How Google and AI are Killing Travel Blogs Like Mine

I just finished reading this blog post by Amanda Williams, a travel blogger of 15 years, on the impact of Google's "helpful content" algo changes and AI on her ability to financial sustain herself.

And man- I might sound dumb here, but I totally had not connected the dots re: how AI will absolutely destroy ad revenue for creators-- specifically creators that produce written content. 

Ad placement is driven by site visitors, and AI totally bypasses the need for a site visit. Instead, it harvests the information from blogs like Amanda's and puts it in a neat list along with the content of 10 other bloggers so a person trying to find the top sites to visit in Paris never needs to even visit the site. 

This is a problem in that, bloggers like Amanda have to switch strategies-- she now needs a new means of making money to continue producing trustworthy travel content. That might be creating a substack with individual subscribers, creating courses, etc. But her content likely won't be publicly available in the future, non-harvestable by AI... and that's a problem too in that AI's knowledge sources are going to get worse and worse. 

Also, I just can't imagine that the 1:1 subscriber model won't be a losing game for soooo many great writers/creators. It's very different to be a person creating content that people are willing to pay for month over month, especially in niche fields like travel, instead of being paid by relevant brands through ads. 

What do y'all think?

IP is a boomer concept in the age of abundance. This is a hot take that really has me thinking. 

I generally feel negatively toward Kyle for a myriad of reasons, but this is a really interesting proposal. 

I’m still noodling on it. Thought I’d share so others can join me in the noodling. 

We need new gender categories, while preserving the distinctness of "man" and "woman". I don’t mind using different pronouns—I’m happy to love someone with whatever language they prefer.

But I’d like to propose that deconstructing traditional genders is not only unnecessary, it’s harmful.

Not necessary

• It’s not necessary because we’re free to create as many new genders as we’d like, while preserving the standard ones.

• This is the transcend and include approach, as far as I can tell. The current approaches I’ve seen are either all transcend (reject the historical categories) or all include (reject the creativity and proof-by-existence of new genders).

• I believe this will better honor the person who was misassigned a gender at birth, because their life experience is very different from someone who was assigned the gender they identify with. Eg: if I’m a trans-woman, I didn’t grow up with all the social pressures of being a woman, or going through a menstrual cycle, or whatever; I grew up feeling like a woman but getting the social pressures of being a man, going through the hormonal changes associated with male-body-ness. Which is a totally unique experience, that I will find more belonging and support from other people like me, not from trad-females.

Harmful

• It’s harmful because the people who want acceptance into the traditional category are never going to get it. Eg: If i’m a trans-woman, I was assigned male at birth, and I probably have some male parts and hormones and stuff, so when I try to identify as a woman and join in those discussions and groups that are for women I’m likely to always feel outside, different, and to a certain group of cis-women, threatening.

• This further divides society and polarizes certain populations against including the reality of the trans-experience, which then polarizes the trans-supporters, which begets the vicious cycle.

• Sex differentiation started around 1.2 billion years, so the male-female experience has ancient roots that are in our bodies and impacting us every single second. Denying this altogether is destroying massive chesterotn fences— denies tons of wisdom that is passed down not only culturally over the past 200,000 years, but instinctually for a billion.

What about bathrooms and sports?

Instead we can just have single stall bathrooms and locker-rooms. Or trad-male, trad-female, and a third for whoever of whatever gender, which is much larger than the trad lockerrooms and bathrooms. We can have a third category of sports—all gender. We’re creative, we’re growing, we have plenty of people to populate them and who will want to win, why stick with a binary?

I’m sure I’m missing something, and I apologize to the new-gendered people who I’m sure I’ve insulted or missed somehow. But, leaning in to potentially contentious convo…