Since the beginning of my career, I’ve been a creature of the net. That is, my “real life” exists on the Internet. It may be a generational thing or a just a niche geek thing. Probably the latter. 
Many years ago, I created the blog, Joeuser.com explicitly so that I and anyone else could freely post our thoughts. It didn’t matter what my day job was because, there was a clear separation in people’s minds between a person’s personal opinions and what they produced as part of their job.
In the past few years, one of the worst kept secrets of the tech media has been the discovery that stories about people instead of tech drive more page views. Thus, if you use archive.org and go and look at some of your favorite tech (or game) sites home pages you’ll find a very slow but consistent trend away from reporting on products/techs to the people behind products/techs.
As “The Social Network” has shown, the trend has become mainstream. People are hungry to know about the people behind these things. The rules have changed and many of us, who operated for years as “creatures of the net” find ourselves getting a level of scrutiny that has put a real damper on participating online.
I got my first real taste of this about a year ago when I snarked on Facebook that I’d have Stardock ship via Fed Ex instead of UPS because UPS had started boycotting networks based on their political leanings. Since the network in question was Fox, the not impartial media quickly took my non-public FB comment as a rally to Glenn Beck (who, I’ve never watched nor care about). It was not newsworthy but it did drive page views to those who decided to sensationalize it.
Once that happened, suddenly all my blog posts got a level of scrutiny usually reserved for political figures which has continued to this day. It’s really sucked the fun out participating online. But there’s nothing that can be done. This is how things are now. People snicker about “Well, if you write it online it’s public for all to see” thinking that this has always been the case. It hasn’t. It’s hard to believe that Usenet flame wars used to be considered something of an art form. There used to be understood gradations.
As on UK editor told me after his magazine trashed our latest game, “My job is to maximize page views to our site, so don’t give us ammunition.” While I don’t agree that that is what an editor’s job is to do, I do concur that tabloid stories get a lot more hits than hard news stories. People are drawn to stories with a narrative. And make no mistake, tech sites are there to make money.
Many of the best tech journalists have abruptly disappeared in the past 2 years. The ones who were experts at covering tech and products aren’t necessarily the ones best suited for reporting on the latest scandal or gossip or statement by a person. I don’t say this lightly, take a look for yourself using archive.org. Pick your favorite gaming or tech site and look for yourself. You’ll see the same top talent people at these sites year after year and then suddenly, about two years ago, pow, they started disappearing abruptly. You want to talk about a scandal, there’s one: the systematic termination of the high quality journalists in the tech media. The ones who are left have had to become freelancers or independents or have been hired by the companies that produce tech.
One only has to look at the amount of nonsense written about Activision’s CEO or some of the vile crap written about Valve’s CEO or that Steve Jobs personally designed the antenna on the iPhone 4 (if ever an issue was overblown it was that) and so on to see that it’s increasingly about the people making the things we use rather than the things themselves.
It’s a shame because in the long run, it separates the producers of things from the consumer of things.