Sure, I buy books all the time. That is very different to the bubblegum content I read online which would fall under the micro-payments model though.

Bubblegum content appeared in direct response to the death of the traditional revenue streams.

I disagree. Newspapers were always terrible and full of heavily biased content. Same for most magazines.

I have payed nothing for PGs essays or slate star codex epically detailed tear-downs of published studies. They are among the best writing I have read.

I have payed nothing to the people on youtube who shown me how to fold a shirt, do my hair, make pasta easily, chop food like a chef or whatever else I needed help with; granted those aren't writing per-say, but a decade ago I would have found that information in a blog.

I won't pay for writing, I will pay for a fact-checker, but so far that only seems necessary on highly-technical books.

It's a shame folks have downvoted this. It's a very useful and good point. Much of the free content is vastly better than paid content, and most of the free content also does not contain ads. There are remarkably few sources of paid content that justify their cost, even when that cost is as low as simply paying some of my attention to an ad.

Same here but I've purchased pg'a book and most books of writers I like follow on the web.

Your quality bar is extraordinarily, painfully low.