Even before the ad blocker wars tanked online advertising generally, the HN crowd used ad blockers more aggressively than most other traffic to my sites. People on HN also routinely post some means to get past paywalls for articles posted here.
I wrote this piece in January: https://raisingfutureadults.blogspot.com/2019/01/the-hand-li...
It took me about two weeks to write it. I have about six years college and years of experience pertinent to the topic, plus years of experience writing for pay.
It has gotten more than 60k page views. It did fairly well on the front page of HN.
It did not make me one thin dime.
I've talked about this on HN for years. I was actually homeless when I began doing product descriptions et al for pay. Every time I comment on this problem space, I get told "quit you're whining and get a real job."
This is not just about me. Local papers are folding left and right, etc. It's an industry wide problem.
The world seems to want high quality writing completely for free with zero means for the creators to pay their bills.
I generally like the writing I do for pay. But even if I didn't, I would have zero moral qualms about it. It isn't like anyone gave a damn about me being homeless and unable to afford a meal at times while they read my writing for free and sometimes cooed about it being good writing while simultaneously telling me to STFU about my problems, which were not their problem.
I would love to have my Patreon well funded so I can write fewer product descriptions and write more stuff like the above piece. But the world simply doesn't want to pay me for that.
I do have clients who love my product reviews. That's how I'm currently keeping food on the table.
People who de facto expect good writing to be done by unpaid slave labor are not people in any position to make me feel bad about writing product descriptions. That's a laugh.
Homeless men (granted, an extreme example) aren't seeing a lot of action. From what I gather, not owning a car as a man in the US is a serious barrier to having a romantic life. Etc.
Sure, some things are pretty ridiculous. But lifestyle enhancements that impact your love life are not simply imaginary. They can be quite real and tangible.
That's part of why it is tricky. If studies show owning a nice car helps a man's love life, is it outright lying to imply the connection by having some gorgeous woman lay across the hood of the car you are promoting?
That connection is not purely made up, though it may well be an exaggeration in some sense.