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Comment by brookst | Hacker News Reader

So what? As an enthusiast am I supposed to be motivated by the page counter on my site?

Besides, good writers are good writers. Would you rather read Matt Levine or some AI summary of his latest piece?

I'm just not seeing the problem. IMO the whole obsession with driving clicks was silly from the get-go and destructive now. If AI does away with that, great. And if people whose sole motivation for writing was to get clicks decide to stop writing... well, OK.

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“As an enthusiast am I supposed to be motivated by the page counter on my site?”

If you bothered to put a counter on your website, wanted to attract like minded individuals, or get enough people to sponsor you to continue work you otherwise couldn’t do, yeah probably. Or we can go with the unrealistic idea that enthusiasts as a whole don’t have egos or motives beyond shouting into the void to express their pure love of <insert thing>.

You have a cynical view of "clicks". I'd argue that others reading the content you write is fairly important.

Because if it isn't, keep it in notepad I'd say.

In this future there is no Matt Levine because he can't make a living getting viewers and no replacement.

Why are viewers the only way to make a living? It wasn't always that way.

It was always this way. If no one buys your paper you shutdown writers have no jobs and stop writing. If no one buys your book same deal.

What era are you referring to?

If that were true there would be no new writers, because nobody paid them to write their first book. In fact, most first books don't sell at all. And yet... people write.

Not everyone is 100% motivated by money. And those that are do not all need full time employment doing that work. And those that need money and employment can often generate revenue with complementary goods. And those that can't can source subscription and other revenue sources.

The idea that the current model of commercialization of writing is the only one that has ever or could ever work is really narrow thinking. Writing has two main values: 1) the ideas, and 2) the expression. Both of those have put food on the table for good writers forever, and will continue to do so. The AI panic is just from people who can't imagine the world being any different than it is at this very instant.

Those positions become gated for the already rich. Only those who can afford to publish do. It's been this way throughout history. The internet changed this briefly but that may change. People are worried it will go back to what it was or worse.

Well there were eras before mass publication when some people still wrote, about science or history or whatever, either because they were funded by their religion or by personal money or by a rich benefactor. Of course it was a tiny % of people doing that, but then again it was only a tiny % who could learn to read and write or afford to spend time on hobbies.

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