The tech / startup world is filled with lots of people who are interested "building something people want" but with no clue about monetization. (Twitter, or just about any company with no revenue/profit model...) Articles like this provide contrast -- people who've figured out how to monetize the web (but aren't necessarily adding a ton of value). Affiliate marketers have at least figured out that "unique visitors" or "active users" doesn't pay the bills like it did in the late '90s. It does seem shady / etc, but I think there's lessons to be learned.

I think many in this community are hoping that there's a middle ground, with both value creation ("building something people want") and extracting that value via monetization.