“Traffic Sensitivity.”

That’s Business Insider’s rationale for firing 21% of their staff—cuts that will span almost all departments but will most likely land squarely on journalists doing the difficult work of reporting on the very AI businesses that are ostensibly replacing them. This includes the commerce section—that click farm of posts like “What is the best air fryer to buy for Midwestern Evangelical Christians aged 35 to 55 born in May?” These poor sods were tasked with the worst job in journalism: producing SEO-larded marketing content masquerading as service journalism—and even they got their walking papers.

What “traffic sensitivity” means in this era is that audiences no longer go to websites. They perform a search, scroll, and take in niblets produced by Gemini or highly ranked SEO content that’s mechanically generated and constantly updated by bots. They don’t click through. They don’t buy based on trusted reviews. They don’t listen to the people still trying to tell the truth.

We’ve seen this before. In the early 2000s, blogs attacked print media head-on and destroyed an entire industry. Journalists used to five-month lead times had to adjust to two-minute lead times. PR firms grew and morphed by forcing companies to pay for coverage while the old publishers stood still, secure in the knowledge that their ad revenue would remain flat but not so low that they couldn’t afford a house in the Hamptons or Gstaad. Ironically, the only safe place for a journalist during that period was one of those “old” brands that were born in the wake of the destruction of print—places like Business Insider or TechCrunch. Now those brands are dying, being bought up by private equity and gutted.

And they’re dying because of our inattention and our love of AI slop.

From that endless, sticky film that covers everything—SEO junk, AI generated video, inhumane writing—we get people like Trump. We get business monsters like Sam Bankman-Fried and Elizabeth Holmes. We get grifters and crooks, and we learn less and less every day thanks to our diet of social media. We learn from headlines, not paragraphs. From 30-second videos, not documentaries. From tweets, not books.

And I’m guilty too—because it’s the only way to get through. When I produce a 30-minute video of two people talking about interesting, important stuff, I have to stick some AI-generated garbage at the front just to get the algorithm to rank me—let alone surface me anywhere near the top. I shouldn’t have to care about this. But thanks to the media’s race to the bottom, this is where we all are now.

I know this sounds like “Old Man Yells at Cloud,” but you and I both know we’re suffering. Everything is changing. Our communities are breaking down. Trust in every institution we once believed in is eroding—trained scientists, experienced journalists, beloved public figures, even spiritual mentors. Instead of heartfelt, we get hash. Instead of truth, we get flash.

There was a great essay I read the other day. It’s about the Who Cares Era. Here’s a little of it. Read the whole thing, though.

Earlier this week, it was discovered that the Chicago Sun-Times and the Philadelphia Inquirer had both published an externally-produced "special supplement" that contained facts, experts, and book titles entirely made up by an AI chatbot. There's been a lot written about this (former Chicago Reader editor Martha Bayne's is the best), and I don't need to rehash it all. But the thing that is most disheartening to me is how at every step along the way, nobody cared.

The writer didn't care. The supplement's editors didn't care. The biz people on both sides of the sale of the supplement didn't care. The production people didn't care. And, the fact that it took two days for anyone to discover this epic fuckup in print means that, ultimately, the reader didn't care either.

It's so emblematic of the moment we're in, the Who Cares Era, where completely disposable things are shoddily produced for people to mostly ignore.

Why did nobody care? Because the audience doesn’t seem to care. We’ll spend hours scrolling Instagram—I do it too—but we won’t spend $25 on a hardback book. We’ll skim the “news” for two minutes, but we won’t dig deep enough to understand what any of it means. We’ll check out a list of the top 50 books of 2025 and not even blink if 25 of them are fake, made up by AI—because we’re too busy worrying about our job, the economy, gun violence, trafficking, climate collapse, and the million other things larding our already-fried nervous systems.

In short, we honestly don’t care.

But we have to. Truth is vital. Information is vital. Art, creativity, and research are vital. Human relationships are vital. They’re going to be even more vital in this age of AI—when a robot could have written this entire article in under a minute and you’d have read it knowing, deep down, that something was off. That Uncanny Valley feeling? That’s your brain telling you it wasn’t quite human.

And yes, of course I have “traffic sensitivity.” I’m a former journalist trying to howl into the wilderness while attempting to recreate some of the entrepreneurial magic I once lived through at TechCrunch. I want people building cool things to succeed. I want their stories told. And I’m not alone—there are thousands of people like me. Ex-journalists who were pushed out by clueless bosses. Artists who can’t afford to make art. Writers endlessly throwing work into the commerce void, waiting for something to stick. You’re out there too, trying to tell your story.

And nobody seems to be listening.

So here’s a favor: subscribe to a Substack. Pay that person for their work. Thank them once—for making you laugh, cry, or think. Not into reading? Buy some art. Go see a local band. Sit in a theater. Live.

Because in 10 years, I guarantee you’ll be able to recreate real life with holodeck-level detail using AI and VR. You’ll simulate your childhood bedroom. A cozy bar. A perfect forest full of elves and orcs. That’s all coming. You’ll be immersed in the false from the moment you open your eyes to moment you go to bed.

But while we still have the real thing, let’s not lose the people who make it. And as things change, let’s keep supporting work we love.

Let’s not lose the light.

Let’s not destroy what matters because of goddamn traffic sensitivity.