We don't want quality. We want dopamine. Dopamine mattered less in the paper age, with the exception of the frontpage headline, but not even that mattered as m

We don't want quality. We want dopamine. Dopamine mattered less in the paper age, with the exception of the frontpage headline, but not even that mattered as most people had a subscription. Once this paper is in your possession, it frankly doesn't matter much which articles you decide to read, it's a package deal. Interestingly, and this behavior is important, you'd probably read a few articles you weren't super enticed to read, but you'll read them anyway since you paid for them. And thus your world view expands across topics, organically and almost accidentally. That package deal is now cut up into tweet-like snacks, where each snack needs to entice you to read it. Unfortunately those playing on our weaknesses work best. A cute cat performs better than a breakthrough paper on climate science. Updates on the Kardashians outperform...anything. Opinions outperform dry facts, both agreeable and disagreeable opinions. Bad news outperforms good news. Naturally, news adjusts to whatever people read the most. Which wasn't needed before (to this extreme degree), but it is now. Even very competent journalists that write excellent articles need to go on Twitter and with screenshots package the most triggering paragraph of the article, otherwise nobody will read it. The other tragedy is the demise of truth or accuracy. As this doesn't matter on social media. The unreasonables always win and things move fast.