Yeah I’m not bashing anybody, my wife did that for a couple years I know how it is. There was a kind of golden period where it would even pay enough to let you do some quality stuff but when VC money stopped raining the market slumped almost immediately.
Most SEO is done by freelancers (at least in my industry). When i talk about content marketing i mean anybody who writes blog posts and LinkedIn posts for companies. It was already shit long before AI arrived.