The Eternal Return of BuzzFeed

> ...among it's stories and videos

its*

sorry it's bugging me...

> In any other context people would champion this sort of strategy.

Context is important. A middle-school teacher who finds their kids aren't paying attention during a presentation might attract more interest by including a few porn slides. Imagine the virility through the school. There might be an increase in "user acquisition" using this "psychological approach".

At the end of the day, it's horseshit. Fucking horseshit.

"an extremely effective way to entice readers"

... you might even say they found one weird trick. Traditional news media hates them. You won't believe what they'll do next.

I don't directly hate Buzzfeed, but I do hate that due to being so successful much of the rest of the industry has emulated them to the point of near saturation. It is getting nearly impossible to consume web content without constantly being subjected to clickbaity garbage (I realize that Buzzfeed actually produces some decent content, but most of those who clumsily emulate them do not).

Of course at the end of the day this is all our fault for being so easily clickbaited by inane stuff.

Let's say you were trying to rationalize why a company's "extreme growth hacking coupled with a psychological approach to user acquisition" was actually good for the world. It's usually not that hard if you want it. Company X provides something that is (arguably) important (to someone), and the marketing means help it reach people.

So I tried to put on this hat for a minute, but I cannot for the life of me even intentionally come up with a justification for BuzzFeed.

Even if you believe whole-heartedly in general that the end (company getting its service out there) justifies the means (marketing, manipulation)... with BuzzFeed the end and the means are exactly the same thing.

It's got all of the societal value of the Jerry Springer show: It's garbage for the sake of providing space to sell garbage.

They are disrupting the yellow journalism industry and provide little to no value in any other segment of news. The reason why people are upset here is because they understand exactly how Buzzfeed, Farmville, and other such companies have inserted themselves using these exploits into our lives providing little to no value (but perhaps to some of those around us).