Do you know the latest thing the internet is freaking out over? In the wake of the Super Bowl there seem to be a whole host of things that apparently everyone is up in arms about, threatening boycotts and otherwise making a stink about. Everyone can’t believe someone used the term “boy” when talking about Cam Newton. The right wing of the web is outraged at Beyonce’s new video and Half Time performance. Poor quality delivery pizza become a thing on Twitter. A Dorito’s ad became the subject of controversy for allegedly endorsing late-term abortions. People jumped down Tim Cook’s throat for posting a blurry photo from the post-game field.
In the midst of a tirade on my being sooo over this latest trend I was pointed to a piece by Parker Molloy from a few months ago on this very topic. in the context of how she inadvertently became the spark for just such an “outrage narrative.”
https://twitter.com/ParkerMolloy/status/696684077974478848
Scott Smith this morning was humming the same tune and posted the following:
https://twitter.com/ourmaninchicago/status/696711743171649536
Smith hits the nail on the head of why this latest media trend, which further erodes the trust readership places in media, is so infuriating: It lacks both context and data. There’s no rigor to the story, no search for anything deeper than “someone said something” because these outrage narratives are easy to write and hey, pageviews are pageviews.
I’ll leave it to you to read Molloy’s piece. But what’s even more notable is that the life cycle of these headlines trends has shrunk to about three or four months. We’ve gone through explanatory, aspirational, disbelief and a few others, all in the space of the last two years. Every time you turn around there’s a new headline format being used by everyone from Fusion and Vice to Upworthy to Time, CNN and other longer-lived outlets. The short lives of these headline formats proves Smith’s point, that media are eroding user trust faster than ever. As soon as they catch on to the false promise of one and stop clicking on the headlines from within their Facebook feeds something new evolves and takes its place. It will keep the click wagon rolling for another three months before it starts to die off and the next one comes in.
That’s bad for everyone…except Facebook, which gets to keep riding whatever wave is prevalent at the moment.
