The mainstream and social media’s relentless appetite for “palace intrigue” stories about Washington bureaucrats and politicians warring with each other is absolute misery for all of us at this point. Stop doing this to us.
No one really wants this. Some people are just addicted to it. And I can’t understand why, because it’s just awful. It’s boring. It’s stupid. It’s always clickbait. It just sucks.
The mainstream media should definitely take some responsibility for this. Just because people are clicking on your headlines, doesn’t mean it’s good for them. Or for our society.
I know Milton Friedman or some heartless conservative economist at one point said corporations have only one responsibility, and that is to deliver profits back to their shareholders, but that seriously is a heartless point of view, so why are these supposedly liberal institutions of journalism heartlessly shaking a penny out of each of us each day by polluting the Internet with this garbage?
Since Donald Trump got elected, it’s been a relentless barrage of clickbait headlines making us think the biggest scandal since Watergate is about to be revealed, like we’re watching some riveting game of chess that might end in the spectacle of Donald Trump being impeached. But the media’s been teasing this possibility for too long and has cried wolf a few too many times.
Like months ago already.
Fans who feel like Game of Thrones drags on in places have no idea unless they’re also fans of partisan political media, which have got to be some of the seriously most disturbed people on planet earth.
How long do people actually spend reading these clickbait articles anymore?
You know the ones that suggest we might see someone close to Donald Trump get in big trouble for some crime?
The liberal mainstream media has been harping on about it with nothing to show for all the hype for over a year now.
Conservatives are responding in kind with hyped-up clickbait stories of their own, with the tantalizing possibility that Hillary Clinton, or even Barack Obama could go to prison after some earth-shattering memos and documents are published!
Do people actually click these and read all the way to the bottom?
I stopped clicking them months ago after I found I could barely get past the first paragraph of them anymore, without my crywolf B.S. detectors going off and my eyes glazing over. These stories are so tedious, and boring, and never anything as salacious as what they suggest.
It’s just clickbait tabloids masquerading as the institutions of journalism that use free speech to safeguard our society against tyranny, which is pretty reprehensible if you ask me.
(Just one more reason to cancel political parties. This article first appeared on The Independent Voter Network on March 6, 2018.)
