Dotdash Meredith: Special Sauce, Same Old Shit Sandwich

Jan. 19, 2025

Alright, you goddamn code-monkeys and pixel-pushers, gather ‘round the digital dumpster fire. It’s Sunday afternoon, my head feels like a dropped server rack, and the only thing keeping me going is the faint hope that I can warn at least one of you before the AI overlords turn us all into data points in their quest for world domination. Or, you know, ad revenue.

So, picture this: Dotdash Meredith, these media big shots who own everything from People to Better Homes & Gardens, decide they’re gonna hop into bed with OpenAI. Yeah, the ChatGPT folks. They call it a “strategic partnership.” I call it a goddamn fire sale on human talent. And here’s the punchline: they lay off 143 people. Because, who needs actual writers and editors when you’ve got a soulless algorithm that can churn out content faster than a chain smoker goes through a pack of Luckies?

And let’s not forget the 53 poor bastards they kicked to the curb back in November. All told, that’s 176 souls traded for a few lines of code. I’ve seen less brutal breakups at a dive bar at 3 AM.

Now, these Dotdash suits, they’re not stupid. They know the media landscape is a goddamn wasteland. So, they cut a deal with OpenAI. Sixteen million bucks a year, at least. That’s a lot of cheap whiskey, even for me. In return, OpenAI gets to suck up all that “trusted content” from Dotdash’s stable of publications. You know, the stuff written by those pesky humans they just fired.

They say this is all about bringing the “best, most relevant content” to ChatGPT. Yeah, right. It’s about turning every search query into a goddamn ad for Dotdash. It’s about making sure that when you ask ChatGPT for a recipe for meatloaf, you end up on some Dotdash site, staring at a pop-up ad for hemorrhoid cream.

And what do we, the poor saps who actually use the internet, get out of this? More AI-generated slop. More “content” that’s about as flavorful as a week-old glass of tap water. And, of course, fewer actual jobs for actual human beings who know how to string a sentence together without sounding like a goddamn robot.

But hey, at least the shareholders are happy, right? IAC, the corporate overlords pulling Dotdash’s strings, they’re swimming in cash. Their licensing revenue is up, thanks to that sweet, sweet OpenAI money. It’s like they found a money tree in their backyard, and that tree just happens to shit out the livelihoods of working-class journalists.

They’ve got this thing called D/Cipher, their “targeted ad-platform.” Sounds fancy, doesn’t it? Well, it’s basically a fancy way to say they’re gonna blast you with even more ads, only now they’ll be “personalized” by our AI overlords. Because nothing says “personal touch” like an algorithm deciding you need a new pair of shoes based on that one time you googled “foot fungus.”

And when you ask the Dotdash Chief Innovation Officer, some guy named Jon Roberts, what all this means for us, the users, he just says, “That’s our special sauce. We’re not ready to talk about it yet.” Special sauce? Sounds more like bullshit to me. Or maybe it’s just the hangover talking.

But here’s the real kicker, folks. What happens when the AI bubble bursts? What happens when the novelty wears off and people realize that ChatGPT is about as insightful as a drunk at a poetry slam? Who’s gonna be left holding the bag? The writers, editors, and other media workers who built these companies? Or the C-suite vampires who sucked them dry and sold their bones to the highest bidder?

I’ll tell you who. It’s gonna be us. The people who actually read, who actually care about quality, who actually believe that words have meaning beyond just filling up space between ads. We’re the ones who are gonna be left sifting through the wreckage of the internet, trying to find a goddamn shred of truth in a sea of AI-generated garbage.

So, raise a glass, you bastards. To the end of an era. To the death of human creativity. To the dawn of the machine. And to the goddamn special sauce that’s gonna choke us all.

Cheers, or whatever.


Source: Large Publisher Lays Off More Than 100 Employees After Striking Deal With OpenAI

Tags: ai jobdisplacement chatbots automation technologicalunemployment