Keeping the Content Machine Whirring

Maybe people want to post something on Facebook about a movie they watched. Instead of writing it themselves, they find someone else who said something they agree with and share that instead. In most cases, the professionally-written article is better than whatever they'd have written themselves, and it's certainly saved them some time.

This doesn't seem all that worse than the old days when people who were illiterate hired professional writers when they really needed a letter written, except that we're all able to use this service for free.

I do the same thing, but for science articles. Perhaps I could do as a better job than a professional science writer if I did some research, but why not share the original instead, when it's not my area of expertise?

Since everything is always getting worse, at some point in the future we will look back at the clickbait nonsense of 2015 with genuine nostalgia.

"Those were the days of real content. Before it all turned to crap"

Shudder.

This is astonishing ly poignant and revealing and describes accurately why facebook is such a scorched earth landscape.

1. people like to point out when others are wrong on the internet. It much harder to do so for in-depth writings. Relevant: https://xkcd.com/386/

2. my newsfeed is never ending. Am I going to spend 5-10 min reading an in-depth article? and I know nobody else on Facebook will like/comment/discuss the long article with me.