THE GREATEST POST EVER?!?! (Gone Sexual) - The Death of Intellectual Media
‘Clickbait’ is the art of giving a piece of content a deliberately inaccurate title or appearance in order to ‘bait’ people into ‘clicking’ on it. A fairly simple concept but it often leads to irrelevant, phoney or obtuse content, or as I like to call it "bullshit content".
Over the last few years clickbait has shifted its way from the internet to become ever-present in daily media; from magazines and newspapers to YouTube videos and TV programs. This is an important anthropological factor that is intriguing and beguiling, let me explain.
Over the last few years clickbait has shifted its way from the internet to become ever-present in daily media; from magazines and newspapers to YouTube videos and TV programs. This is an important anthropological factor that is intriguing and beguiling, let me explain.
Fifty years ago one of the bestselling books was Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? by Martin Luther King, Jr. This was a book that advocated human rights and inspired a sense of hope in readers. The best sellers of 2016 were all colouring books.
Also, does anyone else remember when TV shows actually set out to teach you something about the world or at the very least spark a fleeting glimmer of interest inside you? Nowadays television schedules are saturated with vacuous drivel that is designed to entertain those unable to entertain themselves.
Newspapers and magazines used to tell us things that we genuinely needed to know, not what flavour of yoghurt Kim Kardashian is buying or "how to get the perfect beach bod in 12 seconds".
Does this mean that "intellectual" media is dead in the water? This is a question that is not new, it has been discussed and critiqued for many years. But what is new is the subtle shift in culture where simplicity has become the key to everything. The problem with simplicity is that it stops us from questioning the norm and a "non-curiosity culture" is established as the new standard.
I'm not saying I'm anti-anti-intellectual, I just don't feel as though every media outlet has to give in to using emojis and clever hashtags to seduce people into viewing their content.
The economics of the situation are that quick clicks, easily digestible content and lack of nuance generates money, and that's all that matters. A dumbed-down media frenzy where quality of content serves no purpose - anti-intellectualism is king.
The media responds to what people want and people then respond by going even further, thus the cycle continues. A new basis is created where people read only the articles with pictures and not many words, if a word contains more than 2 syllables then it may as well not exist. People will do anything to not have to think.
This is all wrong! Ask difficult questions, engage in logical reasoning, exist to contribute not just to consume. We need to find the way back to curiosity, it may have killed the cat but it means that you're actively taking part in evolution where we must aim to learn as much as we can about as much as we can.
0 comments:
Post a Comment