In the movie Tapeheads — perhaps the last film featuring Tim Robbins in which the actor’s entertainment value outweighed his self-regard — a disreputable record producer named “Mo Fuzz” induced aspiring video producers played by Robbins and John Cusack to make music videos “on spec.” In case you didn’t know, “on spec” means “do this for free and maybe you’ll impress me so much that you’ll make some money in the undefined future.” If you’re a writer these days, everybody seems to be Mo Fuzz. And plenty of folks taking the Fuzzes of the world up on their speculative offers seem unconcerned as to whether the effort ever pays off.

It’s not that nobody is getting paid for writing these days — if you grok the intricacies of higher finance, technology, or medicine, the writing jobs remain plentiful and well paid. But those jobs continue to draw paychecks because … well … they’re still jobs. You have to pay people to scribble about capital markets or IT because the sight of a number followed by several zeros is the only thing that could induce anybody to spend time mastering those subjects.

But most other writing gigs — the kind of stuff that used to be bread and butter for the sort of smart people who don’t play well with others and have trouble keeping regular hours — seem to be in the process of morphing from paid jobs into … well … a social activity. People flock to blogs and into discussion boards to write about fashion, politics, parenting and any other topic you can imagine in a grassroots way that seems to be replacing professional (and paid) takes on those subjects. Classic Style magazine may have sputtered out after five issues, but fans of hats, suits and the natty looks sported by Bogart and Cagney crowd into the magazine’s still-thriving discussion rooms to express their enthusiasm.

Beyond much-discussed and oft-maligned blogs, even when pay is supposedly part of the deal, it’s an “on spec” proposition. Associated Content, eHow, and The Examiner are all for-profit operations that pay their writers — but the pay is purely speculative, and dependent on however much traffic any given piece might draw. Even Gawker uses that model — with ever-declining rates.

But most of the new breed of writers don’t seem to resent working on spec. Writing a civil liberties column for The Examiner, I’ve seen writers on internal lists tear into colleagues deemed too attached to the idea that their work is a commercial venture worthy of assured monetary reward. The prevailing ethos seems to be that love of the topic and of reaching an audience should be compensation enough.

That’s actually kind of a cool development, if you don’t dwell too much on the aggregate advertising revenue amassed by the publishing companies courtesy of all of those un- or barely compensated columns and posts. What was once a profession (or, honestly, maybe just a trade) shows every sign of evolving into a democratized social activity — or a hobby with small commercial possibilities, like selling quilts on Etsy. Forget negotiating rates — plenty of people are plenty happy to share their thoughts about Sarah Palin, Project Runway and Attachment Parenting just because it’s fun.

Pros will probably never be completely side-lined — there’s always a market for somebody with insider contacts or a wicked way with words. But it’s fascinating to watch a once-marketable skill become a wildly popular hobby.

The world may well be a better place now that publicly sharing information is growing democratized and popular. But those of us who once paid the bills that way are having to make some difficult adjustments — and maybe fall back on other skills.

I hope I only have to do this once. I’ll be damned if I’m ever going to build a patio “on spec.”

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