About

TL:DR: This week the trend is the publication and The Buying Game is a weekly post helping people figure out how best to spend their leisure money.

👋 my name is Tyler and I'm a technology journalist, mostly focused on consumer electronics. I've been writing about gadgets and industry trends professionally since 2013. Before that, I primarily wrote about music.

I've written thousands of stories for publications like The New York Times, WIRED, Newsweek, Fast Company, and more. You can find some highlights on my portfolio site: tylerh.work

More about The Buying Game

Google Search and AI services have condensed the space around commerce and product deals, and now hardly any publisher sees value in playing that game. For even a chance at visibility in Google Search, everything needs to be labeled “the best” and have the right keywords. It's been a narrowing and stupid funnel. Worse, AI services like ChatGPT are now grabbing those best-of lists and paring them down even more into simplified, anonymous summaries.

I spend a lot of time going hands-on with new products, evaluating them against prior products and other buying options, only for that to be slurped up by an algorithm and my expertise gaslit.

My solution to those problems is to turn deals and product recommendations into a game. I'm betting that even if you're not searching for a deal or something to buy this week, it's still fun to play along and ask the question: What would I buy for this amount of money?

Ethical disclosure

I don't make money from these recommendations. To be clear, the goal is to earn money from this newsletter eventually. I just won't do it by taking money in exchange for product recommendations. If an item is sponsored or paid for in any way, it will be made clear and won't be one of the three general recommendations. It will have its own special section.

In terms of past disclosures, I have never been paid by a company in exchange for a product review or recommendation. I don't own any individual stocks and don't profit from recommending products from any company or individual. I do receive some review products for free to evaluate. That has no bearing on how I feel about them. After a review, I either return the product, keep it for long-term evaluation, or donate it. I don't sell, and have never sold, review units.