Condescension Goes Both Ways

From one of today's items:

But color me skeptical.

That is why Megan is fortunate she didn't go the novel-writing route.

Then there's this:

Internet advertising is still sufficiently problematic that anyone who can charge for a web subscription will probably be better off than getting a lot of low-quality eyeballs from search engines. Low-quality, that is, in terms of ad rates--no apersions [sic] on my googling readers.

No, she wouldn't want to cast any aspersions on her Googling readers. It might force her to do some Googling herself. Doesn't virtually everyone using the internet use Google, or another search engine? Or do most of her readers not search anything?

And could we declare a moratorium on use of the word "problematic?" The definitions in my Webster's Ninth New Collegiate don't fit too well w/ the word's use above. Google (It Seems To Me) is doing alright, no matter how "problematic" Megan seems to feel internet advertising is.

On to the next example:

That's why classifieds and personal ads from people looking to meet other poor people tend to dominate the revenue stream of free weeklies.

Huh? Poor people? Before I decided to waste the rest of my life reading the internet, I used to waste my life reading free weeklies, including the personals (good for a laugh, & I was hoping to get some renewing, revitalizing schadenfreude from the sad, lonely, desperate losers looking for love). But poor? Besides the "college girls" hoping to pay their way through college w/ help from a "sugar daddy," & the "former Playboy/Penthouse models" looking for a free ride, the one constant in personal ads (here in Southern California, at least) besides "no smokers" is "financially secure." Not everyone is looking for a zillionaire, but it's not poor people looking for "other poor people."

And commenter Peter refutes (or at least disagrees w/) Megan's claim:

Free weeklies (allegedly) get the bulk of their advertising revenues from ads for escort services and massage parlors.

I am not an economist, nor an accountant, but It Seems To Me that Peter is correct. There has to be more money in the prostitution ads than the inexpensive personal ads in the backs of all those free weeklies. Note also that Peter can turn a phrase: "...(allegedly) get the bulk of their advertising revenues..." Compare that to Megan's "...tend to dominate the revenue stream..." I still have no idea why The Atlantic needs an "econoblogger," but if they must have one, can she type in English, rather than the sadly devalued language of the business world?