buzzfeed.com/the_end_of_content
I have this feeling that nowadays 80% of content is just crap. Today I was reading some facebook updates, and I saw two posts from a “respected” newspaper with two crappy headlines infected by the buzzfeed virus. You all know what I’m talking about. I’m not even gonna try to replicate it here as an example. But at the same time, I understand that is an organic evolution on the online writing/reading. Optimization is everywhere, and its worship is close to fanaticism. Optimization can be good, really good. But optimization too can be bad, really, really bad. Cultural contents are one example. Another example is food optimization. The silent big cancer of America. Yes, we can always do better, but at which point is this an attack against human nature? Against morality towards animals and environment? Occident is slowly switching from the Cross to the Spreadsheet. And I like it, it’s the best thing that can happen to our civilization. But we have to be more careful about it. Anyway, this is a little bit out of subject today, we were talking about bullshit headlines and empty content.
Yes, buzzfeed found the formula. How to increase clicks, how to attract people and sell these metrics to really hungry advertisers that saw how TV is dying and other media were not effective enough. Optimization found a cheap way, nothing new, just a reinterpretation of yellow tabloids with false “true news” costume. Clicks pumped and the Holy Grail was born. (And articles like this helping to sanctify its methods). Once the formula has been adopted by other media (like the amateurs on medium.com, for example), everyone is trying to emulate the successful formula to attract visitors no matter what. Meanwhile people who are clicking on this crap they are not visiting other websites with real news, real journalists, real stories. And this media platforms need clicks to continue feeding their employees. Then the president of whatever newspaper has an urgent meeting crisis. Numbers are awful, critical, but someone in the meeting knows the formula. He or she explains how buzzfeed and all these media work, and they give it a try. Their last chance to survive. After that, they see how conventional news have worse metrics than stupid rhetorical questions that need a click to, at least, read the whole sentence. The Virus is spread, content has its days counted.
Yes, we still can find good content somewhere, but it’s a difficult moment for journalism, for true information. And it’s kind of sad. But I can’t complain, as I already know this is one of the courses of Darwinian technology: what works, prevails. And usually, too often maybe, methodologies are not ethically tested. So this is a perfect example of what happens when technology goes first and humans go last.
