The same tired trick - monetise the readers
I noticed a recent curious change in the tone of one of the WordPress blogs I follow - "Subscribe to keep reading. Become a paid subscriber". That's every paywalled post now from this blog.
It's all too common, isn't it? Monetise fucking everything once you hit a certain critical mass of readers/followers/subscribers. Your readers become your means of profit - notes of concern and commiseration in blog comments transformed to dull transactions.
And it's not as though it's wrong - there may indeed be a good personal reason. It's just tiresome and irksome and, well, done to death in the context of a web that's mostly about commodifying experiences and monetising relationships - brand yourself, market your shit, treat your audience like cash machines.
Needless to say, I unsubscribed.
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