Kind of wanted to jump on the bandwagon in the spirit of recent threads. Plus I’m waiting for my daughter to come home from her Senior Prom wearing what would have been my next AR.
Anyways, recently I thought, ‘Hey my father-in-law in getting older and doesn’t get out nearly as much, I bet he’d like a subscription to Popular Mechanics.’ I relayed this tidbit to my wife and she said she’d order it for him. Several weeks later, I get an issue of PM in the mail. Upon interrogation my wife assured me she did not by two, but thought I could look at it first and then give it to him.
The magazine sucks. It in no way shape or form resembles the PM of my youth and young adulthood. It was so bad my wife told me that her dad said, thanks, but no thanks, no need to bring them over anymore.
For instance, you would think an article titled This Hand-Built Slot Car Setup Is the Cheapest Way Into Amateur Racing might be a how to make your own slot car track. Nope, where to buy one. And trust me you can buy a pretty nice Scalextric 1/32nd race set for what the one they listed cost.
So my complaint is it isn’t for handymen, it is for metromen.
And, last year the NRA got to me. I re-upped for several years and they offered to let me buy additional magazines. I was already taking American Rifleman and decided to take Shooting Illustrated.
I should have figured out the first thing that pissed me off - both magazines have the same editorials, which is most of the content. Once again, the content is nowhere near that of the Shooting Illustrated I had perused on the newsstands, or maybe I’m confusing it with Shooting Times.
Print is dead and you are getting opinion. And not even interesting opinion but the 13 year old girl kinds of opinion in the vein of “Bugs are gross, war is bad and junk. #Hashtags”.
The internet killed a lot of periodicals.
The last magazine I read was Small Arms Review and even that was getting preachy.
PM, however, did an article on the AR-15 in the 60s that I used to have scans of.
Life deliberately altered POW images to remove hidden signals that they were being tortured in Vietnam so this is nothing new.
My wife got National Geographic before she met me and we have had it since then close to 30 years. I used to read it cover to cover, and go back and reread them. Maybe it’s me but in the last 5 years I rarely read an article let alone the entire magazine. I just don’t find the topics as compelling as I used too.
I really miss the old monthly print Small Arms Review. I was a subscriber from about 1998 until 2011 or whenever it was that they stopped monthly publication. This is not to say that SAR sucks, only that I miss the monthly paper magazine.
Used to be that guy magazines were about doing stuff out in the garage. That’s a long, long time ago. Now it’s “Hey, this is a cool thing–run out right now and buy it”.
Remember when car and truck brochures had interesting cutaways of the engines and chassis? With actual specs? Now you get pictures of the upholstery and the “sound system”.
For culture shock, compare a current copy of the American Rifleman with one from the '50s. Somewhere I have a copy from the '30s showing how to make a powder measure out of a Model T carburetor.
I bought a Popular Science special edition on space at the grocery store once. Never again. The first article I read had so many ridiculously easy to spot mistakes and editing errors that I wrote the editor. Of course, I never heard anything back. Nobody cares about attention to detail when they can just crank out content on the cheap. But then people see it in the magazine and think that there really were only seven Apollo astronauts, or that large rocket fuel tanks contain Nitrogen. :suicide:
Two space magazines I still read are Discover and Sky & Telescope. They’re still decent, although Discover has slid downhill the last couple of years. I’ll pick up a gun rag and flip through it when I’m at the Navy exchange, or at my father-in-law’s place. Discussing new firearm hotness is kind of a ritual we have. A lot of articles are mall-ninja ridiculous though- a spot on 5.11’s “tactical kilt” comes to mind. :rolleyes:
Not shooting related, but ‘Flying’ used to be a great read - writers from all over the aviation industry covering a variety of topics, from weekend warriors in their Cessna to airline drivers dealing with that nonsense. About 6 of 7 years ago it was bought out by a conglomerate and within a couple of issues was completely different. I picked one up at the airport waiting on passengers a couple days ago and it’s sad - two good articles buried in a mound of self serving crap and stacks of ads.
Plane & Pilot seems to be holding on. I don’t even bother with gun or car magazines anymore; just a waste of money.
I don’t read magazines or the newspaper anymore. I used to subscribe to several gun magazines. It got to a point where I wasn’t learning anything reading them and itmwas all about selling the newest gadgets. I can get better information here and other good websites with fairly quick feedback.
I hate to admit it but when I go to the Dentist I read his Sierra Clubs. I wouldnt get a subscription but them hippies seem to be living it up. One article was about a guy who triked from CA to Chile.
I can’t speak to most other publications other than National Geographic and several gun rags. First off, National Geographic last I looked sucked pretty badly compared to the good old days when i read it.
As far as gun magazines go, however, I think I am down to American Rifleman as the only one I am getting, I do pick up Recoil as well when i see it in the stores. Other than that, the at one time 6 or so subscriptions that I had I have let or am letting lapse because I am tired of the crap, bullshit, outright lies in some cases, bad facts, and general excuse making that most of them will do. Now, I will say this, with the exception of American Rifleman most gun magazines, including Recoil I can catch at least one error in wording, spelling, or punctuation. Not usually too much of an issue, but not helping the case much. But, when you have magazines like Guns and Ammo that has had articles saying 10 round groups as test of a rifle’s accuracy is pointless and proves nothing and that 3 and 5 round groups are king, supposing they do any sort of accuracy testing at all(that was popular a few years ago since I figure the writers couldn’t ****ing shoot, which is at least more honest then just shooting groups closer and closer, up to 25 FEET to get the groups that they wanted) making excuses for a firearm that they are sent to T&E malfing due to the need for a break in period even after saying they were just now reviewing it because the T&E gun was out for review at another publication. Also the lovely pay for good reviews which is the only ****ing way some of these guns get any good said about them, anyone remember the R51? Generally promoting bad designs as the latest and greatest even when they aren’t, dumb **** tactical preaching, and just the general circle wank of bullshit in an article that you can tell damn right well was written to appeal to whatever ****ing demographic they think the gun is for, .45acp because 9mm is for wimps, then the next article is how the .380 is the greatest carry round ever and no one needs to EDC a 9mm or .40, or the mighty .45acp because that too much recoil, “wait a goddamn minute here, pick a ****ing position and stick with it”. Let us not also forget the fact that I have read articles that if they weren’t copy pasted with a few words and the gun name changed, then it wasn’t far off from it because I know I’ve read that shit before.
Honestly, part of the issues I think the print magazines are falling off is lack of desire to innovate or just ignoring trends. Shilling their advertisers even when the gun or gear is junk and then refusing to admit it when they get caught, doesn’t help. With the internet and youtube there are guys who are going a lot more in depth and dare I say honest objective testing then most print magazines could every hope for simply due to them not being beholden to the manufacturer for their revenue and can be honest. And just like with the gun rags, if you do want someone to stroke your cock about your purchase I promise you can from someone telling you that the BSA optic you have on your hi-point carbine with that $40 no name laser is the greatest thing ever made and that the Delta Team 6 Ranger Echelon Sigma guys are running it but it Classified Three Top Secret Emperor’s Eyes only to stop people from grabbing the deadliest death ray guns out there. You just might have to dig a bit to find them.
I could go on, but it nearly beer O’clock and I have to be somewhere at whiskey thirty.
The Web killed magazines not by supplanting content, but by destroying peoples’ attention spans. No one wants to read anything longer than a page and a half, let alone pore over detailed diagrams or how-to instructions. So magazines are now all Top 11 lists and super short blurbs with a photo or two.
I havent read Guns and Ammo in years. It’s usuallyba bunch of old bastards wbo are mad cause they are old going on about their Security Sixes and Ruger 77s
I think I can relate to that somewhat. Last week I went to dentist and then referred to a periodontist then a endodontics and discovered that I have 2 cyst growing under my teeth which require 6 root canals, 4 teeth pulled and replaced with implants and bone grafts. The $50k I will be spending could have been a nice down payment on a house.
The magazines that were once worth reading that have over the years lost there value and are not recognizable to what they once were are:
Architectural Digest
Popular Mechanics
Smithsonian
Forza (Ferrari magazine)
The Magazines that are worth reading are:
Oceanview (architecture - owned by Jennifer Aniston/Jack Nicolson)
I don’t know, most of the writers they got now look young, unless they photoshoped the pics. Kyle Lamb also writing for them, his articles are usually decent, though some of his things I don’t care for. Neither here nor there. But the bullshit, “Oh 3 and 5 shot groups are perfectly fine. 10 shot groups? Please, they do nothing, anything more than 3 or 5 proves nothing.” Ambi slide release don’t work? “Well its a slide stop and should never release the slide that way anyway.”
And yes, I usually know more about the firearms they are talking about then they do simply by watching a few channels on Youtube regularly. Hell, G &A had a little blurb on a firearm that sold at auction that Forgotten weapons did a whole video on, I knew what it sold for just because I was everything Ian posts and honestly will give to the guy’s Patreon account before subscribing to G&A or Shotgun News, or whatever it is called again.
Sorry for the rants, I just get pissed with some of the thinly veils shills that are a majority of the gun magazines these days.
Serious thought, my father was 22 when he had all his teeth pulled and complete upper and lower dentures. As mom told me, he’d had a couple knocked out playing sports and generally roughhousing, got a toothache, went to the dentist and said ‘eff it, I’m tired of wearing bridges, pull them all.’
Don’t know if a dentist would do that today, but they did then.
My daughter had a great time, I was not worried, her crowd runs around as a group, have for years, all good kids. But dayum it surprised me how wide the wife opened the purse for the dress and shoes.
I have to do it one more time, then hopefully I can get them both to elope AFTER they are done with college.