Thursday, June 24, 2010

Sally Likes This

I wish this new trend would go away. The trend of capitalizing on the sheeple mentality of the people. Why is it that every so-called legitimate online news organization now rates their articles based on--"most popular", "most read", "most emailed...?" Besides the curiosity factor (like why are so many people interested in that dumb story?) It is useless and actually harmful information.
I fear it will simply dumb down all the media, as you can tell the "most popular" article is usually something like: "suburban mom gives child to grizzly bear", or "stupid celebrity is having another affair", This is not helping the information quality that we receive. And the rush to get these trivial stories to the internet press results in articles written at a third grade level. I can't even believe the grammar and spelling errors--using spell check , but not understanding the meaning of the word, has disastrous results.
Even worse, Facebook has normalized the trend to write : "Becky likes this" or whatever on every comment ever written. Good grief!! Who cares?? Becky could be a psychopath for all I know.
I thought we adults eventually grow out of the high school phase, interested in only what the popular kids are doing and thinking--apparently not. What happened to caring about what is actually best?

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