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# The Audience Neglect Era
- URL: https://www.cjchilvers.com/blog/the-audience-neglect-era/
- Published: 2026-08-20T15:32:07.000Z
- Updated: 2026-08-20T15:32:07.000Z
- Author: CJ Chilvers
- Tags: ai, newsletters, writing

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/93/30/933059b9-0a90-40a6-8ecc-04cdf152178d/content/images/2026/08/IMG_1286.jpeg)

Sometimes it's hard to let go of the good stuff, like a beautiful summer...and the old web.

I don’t think we talk enough about how much online publishing has shifted over the years. At a very high level, the biggest shifts I’ve seen went something like this:

**The Audience Deficiency Era**  
People weren’t online enough. It was the mid-90s — a fun period of design exploration, long- and short-form content creation, and community-building through the greatest invention of my lifetime: the hyperlink. The email newsletter was born, but rarely considered its own form of media. Creators started dreaming of making a living online, but not much happened until after the dot-com bubble. Then, the biggest bloggers finally started making a full-time income from content alone.

**The Audience Abundance Era**  
People started showing up in larger numbers. This was the golden age of the blog and the beginning of podcasting. The link played a major role in trustworthiness. RSS made reading and listening to content easier, with an experience every reader could customize to their liking. No need for algorithms. No need for notifications. Creators upped their game from the previous era with captivating essays, intriguing points of view, innovative designs, and hyper-focused communities. Email newsletters became popular and highly effective.

**The Audience Capture Era**  
People became too online. The world woke up to the value of creator-built communities, and non-creators saw the potential for profit in distribution and administration. The loudest people in every community began to dictate the preferred subject matter, formatting, and platforms used. The majority of creators complied. Social media took over. RSS was largely forgotten by non-nerds. Algorithms took over. Video became popular after years of trying. The link became restricted technology for average users. Burnout became a common trait among creators. The ad model dominated for revenue, but not necessarily for profit. Influencers discovered what grocery stores knew in the 1960s: white-label products work when backed by established communities. Email newsletters remained popular and highly effective.

**The Audience Neglect Era**  
AI companies scraped decades of creators’ work. Some companies received a slap on the wrist. Most didn’t. Big tech joined in, often forcing creators to use the tools that were built on the creator’s content. Courts ruled that stealing isn’t OK, but presenting the stolen material in a chatbot makes it all cool again. Creators started becoming invisible to the world, unless they submitted to the preferences of AI models, which often conflict with their audience’s preferences. Subject matter, formatting, and length are dictated by what AI thinks it needs this month. The link is now subversive technology. The open web is increasingly perceived as dangerous and antiquated by governments and social media addicts. Audiences are further driven to social media to discover new creators, who become discoverable by providing the appropriate content for AI models. Content that is no longer useful to AI is no longer visible in searches, unless it can be presented outside the creator’s domain and interrupted with ads.

**We’ve come a long way.**  
Instead of focusing on how far astray we’ve gone, I’ve found comfort in focusing on what has remained the same.

1. Creating is a practice. If you’re not in it for the love of the game, you’ll end up broke, hospitalized, or both. Compete with yourself. Stay independent. Stay honest.
2. The best way to make interesting content is to live an interesting life while documenting it. I learned this rule from National Geographic photographers in the 90s. They were the most respected creatives in their field, at the height of their importance in our culture. None of them sweated strategy. They put their bodies in places where very interesting things were happening and captured that energy as best they could. That’s the pinnacle of content creation. Successful YouTubers have caught on to this in a big way the last five years or so.
3. Consistency is the foundation for everything that matters to your audience. Don’t worry about changes in technology or audience trends. If you suck at something, but keep practicing it consistently, you will climb to the top 1% quicker than you realize.
4. There will always be another bubble. There will always be a new trend. Prepare by not taking part. My favorite blogs (some that I’ve been reading for over two decades) would make a Content Strategist cringe. They don’t follow any of the new rules. There’s no way they will ever be popular again, and their creators are fine with that. There’s a certain freedom they seem to enjoy when they get to make things every day, without being under a microscope.
5. It’s never worth sacrificing your health over any of this. If done right, a daily creation practice will improve your health.
6. Connect with people, and the bots will take care of themselves. Or, maybe they won’t. But who cares? You still get to connect with people.

Maybe that’s the real miracle of the last 30+ years. Connecting with real people has never been this easy or this valuable.

— [CJ](https://cjchilvers.com/?ref=cjchilvers.com)

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