Niche hobbies still a thing, shock (+AI bullshit)

Back in the early 2000s when I worked at a publishing company, we used to have this conversation all the time. That people actually care about their hobbies - so if you make something good for them, they’ll come back. If you make a generalist website maybe they’ll come back, maybe they’ll just find somewhere else after a while. (And of course, if you build a product that competes with your other products directly, you’re just being an idiot.) Anyway.This is a good post from Kate Davies about AI generated knitting podcasts.“…Jamie asks Anne about the editorial oversight of the content which she produces. Does she, or any of her colleagues, actually listen to any of these 3000 weekly episodes? With only 8 employees, who on earth has time to check the accuracy or quality of these podcasts? The answer, is, of course, that no one checks or edits the podcast content– but, Anne tells Jamie blithely, this really doesn’t matter because the topics under discussion are so low stakes:“most of our…