You’re probably not as slow as you think.
How long does it take you to chop an onion? Well, let me put it this way—an instructional video of someone demonstrating how to chop an onion, moving slowly and pausing to explain the technique, will run about 90 seconds, possibly less. If it takes you more than about a minute to cut an onion, you are slow.
Most people have dull knives, hold the knife incorrectly so it is unstable, make the wrong cuts in the onion so it falls apart, hold the onion incorrectly and move slowly because they are worried about cutting their fingers. If you sharpen your knife, hold it correctly, make the correct cuts, and hold the onion correctly, you’ll find that it’s very fast to cut an onion.
Fact is—the difference between someone who is skilled and someone who is unskilled is big enough that they teach entire classes on knife technique. This is not about some esoteric subject like teaching you how to butcher small game in your kitchen—in a knife skills class, they’ll teach you basic stuff like how to cut onions. And I’ll say that being good at cutting onions does require a decent amount of skill—onions are round and slippery, after all.
Don't feel bad, most people are not actually good at cooking. But if you care, being good is pretty simple. It just takes actual training, which most people are surprisingly resistant to.
Of course, this is usually true for publications which have an editorial processes (eg - Cook's Illustrated), and not more casual blogs/YT videos
It isn’t really a shady practice, but for whatever reason over several years I had never known it.