BuzzFeed and the death of Content

Warning: this is a sickeningly meta post. I apologize. My one disclaimer is I had the following thoughts long before I became a Content creator. I will also credit BuzzFeed with not using slides (looking at you, Bleacher Report).

BuzzFeed is killing the generation of Meaningful Content on the internet. An easy way to measure the value, importance, and influence of content is by the number of page views it receives, ie, its exposure. BuzzFeed figured out people love nostalgia-inducing lists and managed to turn that discovery into an Alexa rank of 110.

I told myself I was going to dedicate 10 minutes of research to post. Research here is defined as reading stuff on BuzzFeed despite my better judgement of giving it clicks. I lasted maybe 30 seconds.

Here's the problem with these lists: the author, in most cases, is not any sort of authority on the subject. If we're ranking things, I could write an article called "15 Best Lighthouses In New England", rank these lighthouses on one criterion without telling the reader what the criterion is (since I don't think I've seen 15 NE LHs, it'd probably be based on the quality of its Wikipedia picture), and then pass it off as fact. I could post a link to the story on Facebook and probably get a good amount of play from it. I didn't add anything to the world though. A good list would have broken down each lighthouse based on importance in shipping routes, age, construction quality, original materials still used, etc., and we would have an article with original research and insights. Unfortunately, readers have been taught to only care about pictures and rankings, so those insights won't even be read.

Interpolation: An example of a bad BF list
"25 Signs You Ran Track And Field In High School" (Google it, I'm not giving them a link)

• I have never stabbed myself or had a teammate stab herself while attaching a bib. To further state a safety pin would cause scarring is absurd.
• Most high school athletes had practice after school preventing them from going to the mall or whatever (ie, this is not a trait unique to T&F).
• Football players wear tights
• Steeplechase is an uncommon event at the high school level.
• Missed classes are not unique to T&F and I didn't miss many in HS
• Point 20: the picture is of the 1500m at USATF National Championships in 2010 (as is clearly stated on the scoreboard). Someone drew OMFG with an arrow pointing to the time over the picture. I'm guessing the idea here was to draw attention to the 3:50.83 and say it was a fast time. Unfortunately, the author seems to think the race is a full mile rather than an atrociously slow 1500.

I could go on, but I wont.

BuzzFeed's list form has polluted other content hosts. The Huffington Post has started pumping out lists ("15 Hacks That Make Instant Ramen Taste Fancy) and sites such as Upworthy have been popping up left and right without actually contributing anything.

As someone who struggles to create content, the amount of crap floating around really gets to me. The major reason this blog gets updated in bursts is because I want everything I write to be worth reading. If I can't come up with something worthwhile to say, I would rather say nothing at all (eg I'm not writing "17 NFL Players With Shocking Skeletons In Their Closets"...cue the Facebook post of "I never expected #12!!!"). Unfortunately, this kills my exposure, so when I do have something to see, no one notices. Luckily for me, I'm not trying to pay the bills as a writer, so I can afford to take a moral high ground and avoid posting clickbait.

But take this a step further. Readers have become so accustomed to list with no content form that a nascent commentator trying to make his break is going to have a tough time gaining readership without stooping to BuzzFeed et al.'s level. This is actually what BuzzFeed is trying to do: they gained huge readership by pumping crap and are now trying to generate content (not quite Content) with a legitimate news section. Though for me, it's hard to take an organization that has an article titled "24 Best Moments From Taylor Swift's New 'Shake It Off' Video" on its front page seriously.

One of the great things about the Internet is the availability of information and opinions. I urge users to exercise judgment with what they choose to click and read. The fewer pageviews a meaningless article receives, the lower the likelihood a similar article gets written in the future. You have the power: use it appropriately.