In my mind, 'tinkering for fun and knowledge' was never meant to be profitable - if you're tinkering with the express aim of making a profit i'm not sure you're really 'tinkering' so much as you're trying to create a product/service/output for someone else to pay for?

There's absolutely nothing wrong with doing that - I'm just not sure the 'ethos' of tinkering has anything to do with trying to make money and is usually reserved for describing someone playing about with something for their own enjoyment/fun with no desire to make money.

Now, of course some people did find that their tinkerings were able to make them money, but I think at its base it's a term I'd tend to say implies doing something for fun/for themselves, rather than doing it for profit?

In my experience there's still plenty of people out there tinkering just for their own personal satisfaction, but of course there's almost certain a whole load more people out there 'tinkering' to try make a profit.

Agreed, I'd say tinkering for profit has become the defacto optimization and tinkering for its own sake is less fashionable because it commands no attention. and everyone is obsessed with the modern currency: attention.

To be clear, I'm seeing this as an observed phenomenon, not that everyone made up their mind that they hate tinkering and love money. I just think it's getting really really hard to exist in the world as a normal person when the entire human collective is getting pumped commercialized hyper-media from all angles at all times now 100X'd by genAI bots. It's really exhausting and so you either opt-in to the game, monetize your now AI side-hustle to pay the rent, or opt-out and live in the woods. and get packages delivered by Amazon. heh.