Too Many Reviews...?

For those who keep themselves aware of what I do in the form of the blog, it was likely a bit of a shock when instead of writing a review on Succession, which was already coded into the site as being released last Sunday, to instead write about video games and modding mockups. Of course it isn't always 100% likely for me to stay on track with my supposed schedule, but to do a reveral away from reviews wasn't expected.

But to be fair, I've written probably a few too many reviews and am getting exhausted of the medium.

Now, before I go into it. It's important to note that it was not any particular review or show, movie, or etc that particularly did it in for me. This was more the matter of many smaller details slowly accumulating into this blob of dissatisfaction that I now slightly habor towards the genre.

You may be asking yourself, how many review posts could I possibly have written? Well, let me break it down into neat little statistics:

As of October 19, 2025 (aka. this post being the last one being published), there have been 207 posts released over the past 5 years. Of these posts, they can be divided into these categories:

Of course there are a few stragglers that do not really fit into either camp, but that's not here nor there. This is what we are working with.

Within the reviews, in particular, we have the following breakdown:, simplified to only include the majjor subcategories:

And so on and so forth.

Now, traveling is something I love writing about. I can probably go on and on about Waterville Valley or other majestic New England locales, but in the scheme of a review, it becomes dull.

You may have noticed the new "Locales" category that has popped up here, and I'll get into that in a moment.

But based on this very generalized data — since god knows I want to go through post by post on a Friday afternoon, we can see that I've written a lot of reviews, have self-published them, and gone through the motions.

Of course my reviews are not like others. I write with a formulaic structure in mind. A background summary, pros, cons, and etc.

But there is now a problem with that structure, AI. My specific format is unfortunately what artificial intelligence often uses for lists, and I don't want to do that.

Now any loyal reader would know that I have had these quasi-meta moments over the years, beginning way back when in December of 2020. However, we must continue moving onwards, which also includes what I write about. Reviews are still nice, and I hope to write reviews on things as they come up, but in the current capacity, it isn't worth it.

Just look at the original content calendar for Q3 2025! It was full of reviews, which is my own doing, but that's what the people want. Not that the people really view it.

I have to mention that WordPress does not believe in the visual creation of tables, and they all had to be hard-coded in. Add that with Divi, and figuring how exactly where the post categories are on the minute level, and you are looking at spending two-and-a-half hours on a Friday night figuring this out.

One thing that I wish to do is write a sort of hybrid between blog posts and essays. After all, the name of the blog is ZachsThoughts, so it is fitting that that I should use this to discuss my thoughts and matters on things that otherwise wouldn't be a big deal — so no politics.

I've been looking at doing moderate research into friend circles and the gentrification of the Internet via social media and artificial intelligence. Both completely different topics, but may be useful in learning more about in the 21st century. For the former topic, many people don't often realize that what people may know in terms of popular culture is possibly limited to their friend group, and how the Internet looks quite literally the same no matter where you're on... except for the dark web. But we don't talk about that.

I mentioned above how there is a new "Locales" category that I slid in here. I wanted to write about places I've been in a less-reviewy way, more so for emotion, imagery, and etc. I think of it as a proto-proto version to Thoreau's Walden and other classical literature that attempts to emulate specific destinations, or locales.

I'm not quite sure how it will all play out, but I'm interested to see the results. Hence we're going through this like a bulldozer.

My point is, I want to begin doing some more focused posts on things that are not entertainment/travel reviews. Both because there are only so many things I could review, but also the formula is dull.

Is that to say that I won't ever do a review again? No, but it would likely look different. More so like a review piece that would be published in a journalistic outlet and/or The New Yorker. Not that I like their model that much, but that's beside the point.

We'll just keep moving onwards. As we have done in the past and will continue to do so.

Thanks for reading, see you soon.