The click-bait mental virus that infected our world
It’s not all about the Benjamins, baby (or is it?)
We all know the digital swindle: a hyperbolic headline, “movie critics appalled by X Film’s depiction of Y” leads us to click on the link, but instead of finding Roger Ebert lambasting a movie with a well-pondered article full of cinematic references, we’re treated to a parade of ridiculous tweets from a bunch of randos.
Welcome to the new media landscape of the XXIst century: a group of monkeys with opposable thumbs who stumble about recording all their irrelevant experiences on their phones and spend their days giving their unoriginal takes on social media. A caveat: I’m narcicist numero uno, taking pictures of stray dogs and whatnot. But I’m pretty clear I’m not doing “journalism” and I don’t expect any serious media to go through my instagram (which is dormant - influencers killed the instagram star).
We used to have two large groups of content, distinct and separate, on the internet. “Traditional” media doing investigative reporting and long, well researched pieces, and trash pop culture rags focusing on celebrities fighting or drunken people claiming they saw a UFO. You knew what you got: you could read a 15-page gargantuan exposé on Vladimir Putin in The New Yorker or visit a Tumblr-esque website full of rumors and questionable health and life tips.
You’ve probably heard of Tristan Harris, exFacebook employee heavily featured in The Social Dilemma and other pieces on social media. Harris, along with people like Social Psychologist Jonathan Haidt, argue this debacle began circa 2012, when Twitter and Facebook introduced the “Like” and “Share” buttons. This radically changed the nature of the social media landscape, transforming data-processing into “engagement” statistics: the more time people spent interacting with the social network, the more money to be made in data mining and ads. However, social media experts quickly found that the most efficient driver of interactions is anger and hate. We tend to click on things that get us riled up, so our media overlords started churning out stories aimed at triggering the reader.
This media “business model” is threatening the very existence of traditional media. I know people are skeptical nowadays of media giants, especially since ideology seems to fuel every publication. But old-school journalism, the boots-on-the-ground kind that has a budget and chases down leads to create breaking stories, is still very necessary.
The problem is that 15-page exposés on Vladimir Putin are expensive and generate very little interaction and clicks. So what has traditional media done? It has started to include click-batey content in order to finance their real reporting.
Case-in-point: National Public Radio, or NPR’s, web page.
I confess I rarely read their news section because it just woke’s me to death. I can only take so much social justice outrage from rich college kids preaching about inclusion while NPR continues to hire… rich college elites.
Nonetheless, you have to be a click-bait gold-digging whore to come up with the headline, “Climate Change Is Not Our Fault”, and then write EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE in the article. Or what about this one: “In Peru, Folk Remedies Like Frog Smoothies Are Comfort Food” (??? Comfort food? What on earth are you talking about? That’s NOT TRUE).
NPR is far from being the only guilty party out there, unfortunately. This “sellout in order to finance serious journalism” seems to be the modus operandi taking over the whole media landscape. Even worse, according to journalist Katie Herzog, NPR Directors send ideas, taken from tweets, about the “hot subjects” that drive engagement, to their content team, suggesting they write an article on said topic. The text ends up being a collection of tweets, something about how the Queen of England was addicted to whippets, or the “some people say” kind of news: “Eating a pound of turmeric a day will make you live to 150, some people say”.
Real journalists inside NPR are not at all happy with this state of affairs. What journalist could be? However, the capitulation to the influencer-click-bait world is in full throttle. What started as kids trolling us with exaggerated headlines on 4-Chan and Reddit has now infected all our media, and it’s jumping into the real world through the creation of bullshit content jobs and narcissistic, crass and uneducated “influencers”.
We’re sinking, people, faster than we know it… Meanwhile, here’s my humble effort to drive “engagement” in this Substack (com’mon, Google bots, do your magic):
How much sex is too much? Copulation might KILL YOU, experts say
Magical frog venom with telepathic powers found in Peru!
Conclusive evidence confirms the pyramids were built by aliens
200% of women who go to college get raped, study shows
Who are the illuminati? Leaders IDENTIFIED
Bring me them CLICKCLICKCLICKS!