ALL THE TIME when I'm researching topics, I'll think about how there is probably someone out there for whom it's their one true passion, and they have probably put up a little website on some corner of the Internet with more research and depth than 1000 well SEOd blog sites, but it's completely impossible to find.
Edit: I found the pizza website, it was halfway down the second page of google's search results. I only clicked it because it was the only one without a picture http://www.varasanos.com/pizzarecipe.htm
You can argue that this article is a case of the system working fairly well at surfacing high quality content. When I searched for "New York Pizza Recipe" this result came half way down page one.
Sure, there are other "high domain authority" listings on that page too, but this is an example of Google listing a well researched, in depth original post from a little known site on the basis of the strength of its content, even with quite minimal on page SEO.
You can argue about whether that's the right term to be optimizing for, but it's the term the writer chose to optimize for as it's the title of the page.
If you just want a blog or simple personal website, a hundred different services will host that for you for free, including Github, Wordpress, Tumblr, and others.
And also it doesn't happen. Turns out people who want to write/paint will write/paint.
The internet was around before advertising. We had free sites back in the day. We've got free sites now. And we can fight for taxes to pay for public libraries, access points, community groups, or even philanthropists to set up free servers.
It was actually a pretty cool place (i thought). I mean, I use adblockers to try to simulate it, and am horrified every time I use the web at work without one, but even my ad blocker can't remove the influence and draw of content and material pumped out by money hungry people vs people actually interested in writing/painting/expressing its opinion for its own sake, and the way that profit motive subtly influences the ratio of content produced, and the content and style of that material as well.
Its much more liberating as an author to just say "fuck them", rather than continually go "well, it slows down the page load/breaks up the article, but it will result in 0.01% more views/might piss off my sponsors/industry".
Not so naive as to say that isn't always an issue, but its pretty clear to me what side of the line advertising is on...
I'd be very interested in reading about the life of exactly not that kind of person.