About two weeks ago, I decided to go online. Big mistake right there. I mean, online? Whadda rube! But you can forgive me; I’m a big Superman fan, was over the moon about Superman, and I wanted to experience and express that sensation in a way that didn’t entail talking it up to various family members. And in this passion, I made an even greater mistake. I decided to go to a site I haven’t been to in nearly twenty years: Comic Book Resources. Not that I was expecting much, as they were never great even when I was reading them, but this was still the site that gave an editorial column to the late Rocket Raccoon / Lobo / Justice League International co-creator Keith Giffen! It was the quintessential “small, devoted site that got way too big.” And they’ve surely brought out the big guns for this one, right? Right???

This was on me, of course. I was well aware that CBR was purchased years ago by Valnet, the digital “sweatshop” that has been dominating the internet. Valnet is perhaps the most notorious symbol of the modern trends of online journalism: endless slop, worthless clickbait, horrible labor treatment, and SEO exploitation done in the name of constant, constant clicks. Every person here has seen this. It’s certainly everywhere in the sites they’ve gobbled in the name of digital empire; ScreenRant, GameRant, The Gamer, and many more. It appears to be a likely future of the wonderful Polygon, a site I’ve kind of always aspired to write for but has just been put under their thumb. Even as it continues to release compelling articles, you can see the hints of this change with cheap headlines, some sloppier output, and an honest to god “sponsored post” made by a games publisher. And at CBR, it’s everywhere. Seemingly every other article has an asinine “exciting” headline that tries to pull you in, often obscuring anything about the subject. Just looks at the ones I picked for this thread. Alongside my sudden depression over seeing the decline of a place I never even liked in the first place, my main thought was this: “Christ, this is that ProZD sketch.”

But to put this all on Valnet and their sites would not do justice to other companies, market forces, and the infrastructure of the internet. We – and by this I mean us as consumers, greedy and incurious executives, publicly traded news companies, the pivots to video and “content creation,” and plenty more – have created a world in which art and pop culture journalism feels increasingly like a tar pit. There is genuinely good work by good writers; I don’t want to deny that. I still make my daily rounds from Nintendo Life to Kotaku to IGN to Polygon to Aftermath for a reason (honestly, IGN‘s kinda worlds better than they were when I was reading back in the late Aughts. For people in their twenties, god, they could be bad back then). Games journalism is flush with smart, kind, thoughtful, and imaginative people, many of whom are doing their best while slaving away at content farms under Valnet or Fandom or Ziff Davis. Even still, it’s impossible not to see that the wheels are not only falling off, but fell off years ago. Other than the fully worker-owned Aftermath, even the sites I like the most are still stuck going through these things. I mean, I feel like I have to do at least some of them, and I don’t get paid!

As someone who has always been inspired by comprehensive news writing and thoughtful criticism, as someone with a bone-deep love of pop culture and the ways it can give us meaning, as someone who believes in the power of journalism, this is crushing. It has been crushing for years. And while I’m someone whose mind trends towards trying to find solutions and fixes and powerful realignments, I can’t help but come up empty every time it moves towards the news. This stupid misadventure wasn’t the only time this sense of mild despair flared up; it arguably happens every time I see a sponsored promotion dolled up as a “story” or read about AI-penned articles. I don’t know why this particular time hurt more. But it did, seeing this mammoth idol to… nothing, and knowing that my favorite medium and my biggest creative field is under such a cavern of cruelty. It’s not like games media is necessarily more imperiled than other parts of the entertainment industry, but it’s never not felt precarious.