I think it is fair to be critical of treasury spending, and admit that the budget has not always led to the best dollar for dollar return.
However, there are differences between hiring “contractors” to do one off jobs, akin to a Superbowl Ad, and building a community which lasts, akin to hiring an employee for a job or supporting specific groups like Wagmedia + Kusamarian.
Yes, the costs are greater up front. For the first months of hiring a new employee, you are basically paying them to be trained. But the goal is that this upfront cost will pay dividends.
You have presented data which suggests a not incredible growth for Wagmedia / Kusamarian (W/K). I think this is not fair given the market conditions of the broader crypto ecosystem. A fair comparison would be to see how W/K has grown in comparison to other ecosystem specific media outlets. Here is an example just after a quick google search which seems to place Jay’s work as doing better than that for another community.
Unfortunately, the crypto community loves to watch pump / dump videos rather than engaging technical and philosophical content. I can say as someone who is super ingrained into this community, that even I learn and take away new ideas from W/K. This speaks to a value which is beyond naive popularity metrics, and instead is a measure of quality and content.
I view this thread as attacking a specific member in the community, not constructive, and likely against the guidelines of the forum. You have not, as far as I have seen, actually proposed any solution. I too have made suggestions on improving how much and how to measure funding for social media groups in Polkadot, but I do so as a generality, not with the goal of attacking any specific group, especially one that seems to have done good work.
Funding for W/K will now take place through the open governance process. You should use your DOT tokens to vote up or down proposals, as other have done. I think we are already seeing a trend to be more conservative for spending.
This is not the first time @rich has been warned about such rants / attacks on this forum, and I would suggest you take a step back from the keyboard, and reflect on why your posts are not being well received on this platform.