You are making a lot of assumptions about what people are disliking them for. I am not jealous of anyone's success, but that doesn't mean I like hodinkee and how they do business.
As for the comparison to auto media, well I've never considered any "watch journalism" to be "actual" journalism, and I don't see "automotive journalism" as being any different. I know people who turned their "journalism" jobs into jobs with car companies...just like mods on TZ from back in the day turned their positions on that forum into jobs with watch companies.
It's all very "don't bite the hand that feeds you" and in the end sometimes that's the hand that hires you if you play your cards right...or in the case of hondikee the brand that partners with you so you can make a lot of money.
I still go back to the "glowing" VC review done by JF calling their chronograph the most significant collector piece in long time or some such nonsense. It's a nice watch and all, but him posting that a few months before the hondinkee LE of the same watch came out (which would have already been in the works with VC) tells me that this was a calculated long game to pump that watch up and help sales of their LE. Nothing illegal certainly, but puts virtually anything they say in question for me, and I will be waiting for the other shoe (or LE partnership) to drop. I actually think they overplayed their hand on that one, because their LE's seem to sell well enough without having to do what they did...
I don't like hodinkee, but I'm not prejudiced in this regard - I share my disdain for them all equally.
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