Otherways- Fiction Fanatics

Today, I’d like to take a few minutes to rant. Please bear with me, but I cannot be the only person out there that feels this way. It’s okay, I promise this will have very little to do with anyone’s gender choices, political agenda, or what flag they are or are not flying.

Content.

It’s the endangered species we don’t talk about, the elephant that’s left the room, but we still pretend is there because everyone else is and we don’t want to be socially awkward.

I realize that content costs money, and that if shallow and sensationalist sells, it is going to exist. That’s even fine with me. Let’s face it, some people want a life-long commitment, and others just want a prostitute for the night. Judging by the amount of time that prostitutes have been in existence (forever), and the amount of times people have tried to eradicate the industry (several) vesus the number of times they’ve succeeded in eradicating prostitution (zero), I’d say the instant gratification aspect of society will probably continue.

Blog posts about the 51 worst Wal Mart shoppers of all time, 27 Images You Won’t Be Able To View, and 13 Celebrity Makeup Fails seem to be filling our newsfeeds. Think about that word for a minute. News and feed. I don’t think half of what is in there is actually news, and it definitely isn’t feeding anyone.

I probably won’t make a six figure income from blogging this year, as promised by the online classes that teach you to blog. In fact, I know I won’t. That’s perfectly fine with me. I’ll write about what I want, and I’ll do it how I want to do it, but you can rest assured the posts will actually be about something.

Even the actual “news” agencies produce sound bites now rather than actual articles. I’ve been told that to get anything read you need to keep it under 300 words, use a provocative picture, and don’t use vocabulary or ideas that a third grader doesn’t easily understand. I’ve taught third grade, and while I do think the Captain Underpants series was a triumph in getting kids reading, I’d like to think the rest of us have moved on to bigger and better things.

In researching one news event to possibly do a blog about, I pulled up twelve different posts, at least theoretically by different authors, and from different sites to try to get an accurate picture of what happened. Each one of them used the same format, the same two photos, and not one of them had any clear data. Sure, sometimes you need to leave out people’s names, especially if a minor is involved, but give us something to go on. The gist of the piece was something bad happened to a kid here, but we really don’t know what, so we’re going to mention a couple of people that also think something bad happened, but didn’t see anything and leave you hanging.

This is not news. It is tugging at your emotions to get you to click a button. Click the button, and someone gets paid, because there’s an advertisement lurking somewhere on the page. More disturbingly, all twelve pieces read like a school kid making a few changes to his friend’s paper to try to pass it off as his own, and doing a poor job of it.

Sorry about the rant, but some things are kind of important. Like being able to trust your news to be complete and unbiased, it’s one of those things that makes making informed decisions possible. I don’t care if you’ve had a bad day and want to see celebrity makeup fails. If it cheers you up, it was worth whatever that blogger got paid. I just want to see more things that aren’t necessarily shallow and sensationalist. I’d like the freedom to choose between a rib eye steak and a Twinkie, not to exist in a world where Twinkies are the only option.

Cheers,

Michelle