"Quiet Quitting" and Editorial Mistrust

"Quiet quitting", "Return to work", other weird topics lately seem to pop up out of nowhere expecting to be welcomed into the lexicon. These issues get talked about as if they're a bigger thing than what they actually are. "My benefactors are not impressed by your inobedience". It's writing in a way that seems like it's not the news being reported, it's the news seeking an anger-click by using an inflammatory title. Things appear to be only getting more sensational, more antagonistic, more like a thinly veiled attempt to convey a message of "party's over, you'll go back to your cube or you'll starve". My hypothesis: I think new media is in a negative feedback loop. The misbehavior and editorial indiscretion we see now maybe is a result of pressure from near-instant social reporting of events and the push to regain the reader's attention. We see more and more rushed articles with factual inaccuracies, simple typos, often the body is 1-2 sentences long, barely more expressive than the title. Headlines are also embellished to the point of being inaccurate, or rely on double-entendre to garner attention. Consider this flow chart: 0. internet and social media reporting starts 1. viewership/readership drops 2. post sensationalist stories to gain readers 3. viewership/readership drops, mistrust created 4. lower the time to publish by lowering editorial standards 5. viewership/readership drops, writer quality suffers 6. readers are gone, but a passerby's bar is much lower, and can be attracted through positive AND negative means.. 7. viewership/readership drops, writers are now guest-contributors, readers are drivebys seeking only to use your article's title to validate their own whims in online arguments 8. more ad spend, more 'listicles' with one item per pageload, more modal dialogs, more paywall 9. viewership/readership is mostly bots, scrapers, and facebook users at this point. 10. Speculation: This is the stage where all your readers are people who rage-clicked your stock-art thumbnail on a Taboola ad block, or the Firefox new-tab screen. You pray to be lucky enough to be the subject of a viral Reddit ragepost. You use titles and subject matter like "This Mitch McConnell Dildo Is (Actually) Here for a Good Cause" [0] There's a distinct feeling that we, or popular news media, have pivoted the business model to an org that is 49% ads, 50% ad tracking, and 1% content in that you still accept money from college grads to publish their "opinion column" ostensibly through what's left of the brand you once had. In the quest to get clicks and readers, in a world where nobody reads past the headline, where does this guide us? What is the bottom of this barrel that we're racing to? Ask yourself: - When do we just give up on the story-body and just post the headline? - At what point is it more profitable for news outlets to be acquired by corporations seeking to sell more goods? - When does the news become the advertisement? [o] - This Mitch McConnell Dildo Is (Actually) Here for a Good Cause - https://www.vice.com/en/article/jgpvyx/mitch-mcconnell-dame-dildo -