Kit Had a Problem With Buzzfeed and You Won't Believe What He Did About It!

by Kit

Buzzfeed and the similar site Upworthy has recently become rather famous (or infamous) for its over-the-top style and content. It also gained some press for being Pew’s “Least Trusted Name in News” as it was the only news source every group, whether liberal or conservative or centrist, listed it as “More distrust than trusted” —and that was only among people who knew about it as many had never even heard of it. Other examples of its infamy include The Onion setting up a parody site, Clickbait, and College Humor doing a series of sketches mocking them.

But what is it about sites like these that annoy me so much? Well, they have two particular aspects which on their own can be only barely tolerable but fused make these sites absolutely intolerable:

(1) Click-bait Headlines with Sentimental Stories.

Buzzfeed and its darker cousin Upworthy are largely famous the way their headlines are written. This is probably the most famous complaint.

You see, whereas traditional headlines often attempt to give you a fair deal of information about the story, for example, “Motorcyclists Arrive at Funeral of Gay Soldier to Thwart Westboro Protestors”, their headlines are more obtuse, giving very little information about what exactly happened except what in writing classes would be called the “inciting incident” promptly followed with an exclamation that you would have difficulty comprehending what happened next, for example, “These Anti-Gay Protestors Showed Up at a Gay Soldier’s Funeral and You Won’t Believe What Happened Next!”

A more honest version of that headline would be “CLICK ME! CLICKE ME!”

And the stories are almost always sentimental, with the heroes standing up to the evil meanies or a shocking exposé of some “evil” injustice that everyone with access to the larger world was aware of. This leads us to our next topic:

(2) Shameless Pandering to Liberal Demographics.

The demographic they seek, especially Upworthy, is a specific type of person; the urban left-of-center millennial who is very nostalgic for the 1990s (for some reason) and obsessive about pop culture but who fancies himself or herself as a progressive nerdy outsider and thus cares deeply about issues like women’s rights, gay rights, and animal rights. Also, an occasional fear of being seen as racist by one’s ethnic minority acquaintances. Not necessarily bad people, in fact a number of them are rather good, nor would I describe all of them as unintelligent but they do view themselves as very enlightened in their understanding of the world around them; a self-assessment that is actually highly debatable.

The result of the fusion of the aforementioned overly-sentimental click bait-style and their attempt to appeal to this particular demographic is what can only be described as a left-wing version of a pop culture-obsessed Drudge Report with more lists than an anal-retentive . Stories about somebody starting off a “monologue on acceptance” or standing up to mean old bigots or charts that reveal how backwards the United States is, such as this headline: “The Chart That Will Make You Laugh At Anyone Who Says Pakistan is ‘Less Developed’ Than The US” (the chart is one on mandatory maternity leave).

Such stories and articles are solely about making the readers feel good about themselves for being on the right side of history. For, on these sites, history is a great epic where the heroes of progressivism and liberalism do battle with the villains of bigotry and intolerance. And they will win because the heroes are wise and good while the villains are wicked, insane, or mentally deficient or some combination of the three and the battles largely consist in staging peaceful counter-protests in a free country or simply giving a lecture on tolerance to some old unenlightened bigot. Not terrible or bad acts, sometimes quite good, but they are put on a pedestal of “heroic” when very few risks to the physical body were taken aside from a bad cold due due to staging a protest in the winter at a time when a teenager in Pakistan can be shot in the head for trying to promote a girl’s right to an education.

Of course, that is not to say the sites are not solely political. There are lists such as “36 Things That Are Going To Make You Feel Ancient” and “25 Things All Basic White Girls Do During The Fall”. These sites also have a pop culture-savviness and ingrained celebrity-worship, with articles covering such topics as “The Hard Truths Maisie Williams Growing Up on Game of Thrones” (Ms. Williams plays Arya Stark) and “These Pictures of Jon Hamm’s Little Hamm Will Restore Your Faith in Humanity” (It’s just a bulge in his pants). These, especially the celeb-focused articles, add a sense of superficiality to the sites, attempting to give the most trivial things to a feeling of deep significance. The simple facts of life one learns while growing up as a teen are recast as “hard truths” and a photo of the bulge of a famous man’s little man in his pants is capable of restoring one’s faith in humanity.

Like the stories of people “standing up” to bigotry through a long-winded lecture or Facebook profile picture these articles carry a sense of hyperbole that raises the trivial to a level equal to the historic. “Bravery” is telling an room full of voters in San Francisco’s Castro District that Gay Marriage is good. There are exceptions, of course, but this seems to be the rule, with the occasional in-depth article being the exception and frivolous political propaganda and celeb-worship being the rule. Its emotional manipulation plain and simple.