Last week’s New Yorker had a fascinating (and troublesome) profile of the king of clickbait.
We all like a catchy headline, of course. Even the New York Times gets cute with their headlines every now and then, and it reduces me to utter glee. Like when Anderson Cooper lets down his newsman facade on New Years Eve. That is all my favorite.
And then there’s Emerson Spartz, whose digital media empire of 30 websites analyzes which memes are getting hits from around the web, makes minor edits to them, then repackages and propagates them as their own. The websites get 60 million hits per month.
The article is a look at how memes are created and regurgitated around the web. It is a serious business. The author of the piece often just quotes Mr. Spartz and his compatriots on end, letting their own words speak for themselves. A lot of talk of disrupting and changing the world and how dumb old media is. When Mr. Spartz criticizes “straight news” coverage of Joseph Kony and is asked how he’d do it differently, he says, without a hint of irony, “well, first I would look it up.”
Reading through the article, though, I began to feel complicit.
Here are some sample article headlines from the New Yorker profile:
“This Dad Decided to Embarrass His Son in the Most Elaborate Way Possible. LOL”
“The 21 Most Unusual Horses That Make Even Unicorns Seem Basic”
“You Won’t Believe What This Guy Did with an Abandoned Factory”
“At First It Looks Like an Old Empty Factory. But Go Inside and… WHOA”
“33 Photos of People Taken Seconds Before They Die. #10 Is from My Nightmares.”
“No Matter How Much You Stare, You Won’t Be Able to Guess What These Photos Really Are Of.”
It’s a sad commentary on our viewing habits. I know I’ve clicked on links that might as well have looked like that. Seeing them all together is eye-opening and disturbing. You get the feeling that what we think of as harmless, brainless amusement is merely just brainless.
It certainly makes me want to change how I consume the internet.
You can find the profile here: The Virologist, How a young entrepreneur built an empire repackaging memes.
