Deceit! Lies!! Fear mongering!!! LOUD NOISES!!!!
Apparently popular blog writers everywhere are taking a dump in a bag, handing it to us, and calling it critical social commentary, and sometimes, journalism. Why? Page views! [read: money] People want to turn a profit by igniting our pavlovian response to click away like jackrabbits. How? By making relatively mundane events or total non-issues into irrational, conspiratorially crafted pieces of yellow journalism, stoking the rage of the people like hot coals.
This piece of sage-like wisdom comes to us from none other than Emily Gould on Slate.com, in which said blogger rips a blog she has recently written for about skewing it's pro-feminist content to both annoying and needlessly reactionary effect to get more hits. In her post, Gould responds to Irin Carmon's Jezebel piece on The Daily Show and it's evil he-man woman haters club. In full discretion, I actually agree with Ms. Gould that the argument of the post was sloppily strung together and it's point poorly (and stupidly) made. But Gould goes further than that. She tears into Jezebel for amping up the tenor of their posts to get a rise out of readers, and in doing so, scrape the profit barrel with more page views, as Jezebel writers' jobs depend on readership. And all the while, Jezebel touts itself as a subversive force against corporate media- it's apparent basis for existing is a penchant for analyzing the practices of TV, mags, and movies in the way they portray and deal with women and their lady issues. Besides the fact that Emily Gould may have her own reasons to burn bridges at Jezebel, she fails to see the connection between Jezebel and nearly every blog out there, including all of the ones she will ever write for; they all have an audience and will invariably garner their content to it.
Has Jezebel gone too far? Have they muscled past the pseudo-journalistic ethical boundaries of a high-traffic site to manipulate the unassuming masses? To argue the journalistic ethics of pop culture commentary via blogs is as useless as making Lindsay Lohan wear an alcohol detection bracelet. If bloggers want to get boozey and wonk-eyed, they're going to do it. Who's to stop them?! And if Gould wants to criticize one site, she is, in effect, criticizing all. Whether considered a news aggregate or not, blogs can appear to hold themselves to a journalistic standard, but in the internet age, almost nothing is sacrosanct. Consider the recent slew of pieces on The Daily Beast letting you know that everything you eat will kill you, even salads! (Burgers will also kill you.) You're welcome.
It seems as if Gould may just be pissed about how much attention Irin Carmon's basically useless, half-baked post got. Jon Stewart got so jazzed up he mentioned it on air, and the female staff members wrote a scathingly funny response. Dear god it's in the Times!
If anything, I call this luck rather than a hostile takeover of media attention. Lots of stupid things get noticed on the internet and end up on the news. Welcome to the way we live now. But the main thing that's being overlooked here is not merely the fact the Gould is feeding off of and perpetuating chatter about Carmon's post, but that she neglects the reality that there are people capable of rational thought clicking on the other side of the screen.
Yellow journalism is not a new concept in American media, nor will accusations of it fail to plague "serious news outlets" trying to stay afloat in the "digital age." But just as Jon Stewart serves up fake news, blogs are free to bust out fake journalism, or as most would designate it, opinion and editorial content, with abandon. The true editors of online content will be the readers. If they get fed up with the content of Jezebel, or any site, that overreaches into the abyss of stupid and irritating content too often, it will eventually fade into irrelevancy. Sometimes this may be difficult to believe, maybe because Perezhilton.com is, inconceivably, still a "relevant" website. But everyone's day will come. The loudest voices may turn heads, but they are the first to burn out. The female Daily Show staffers' response to the Jezebel post makes Carmon's viewpoint look fairly idiotic. Thus, the ship seems to have righted itself from it's listing course on this one. But when the 24 hour news cycle or other newsmedia picks up a bag of turd like this and calls it news, it's on them, and we should hold those outlets accountable for that. Yay internet democracy! [Drew Curtis of Fark.com would fight me on that one]
In the meantime, everyone has to make a living, even people writing on blogs...even Emily Gould! So we're free to keep trying to make inane points and silly conversations matter to someone, anyone, anywhere, at any time. Like right now. Too bad I don't get paid for it...
No comments:
Post a Comment