The Chive made some internet waves this week with, what it boils down to, was a lie. As someone that occasionally dabbles with internet truth shennanegins, I found this to be interesting if somewhat repellent. But rather than write at length about how saying something online, and then 24 hours later saying “just kidding, we lied” is about the lowest form of hoax you can perpetrate, I found myself delving into the seamy underworld of online “comedy” content sites.
There’s a billion of them out there; enough so that they must all do enough business to keep the lights on and their posters plied with free snacks. So here’s five crummy things these content farms generate in order to build an audience.
1) Link out extensively: Linking out is just good internet manners, and attribution is key to keeping this behavior above board, but why bother hiring writers to come up with original content when you can piggy back on the hard work of others?
See also: not crediting photos.
Key offender: The Chive.
2) Links to pictures of user submitted hot girls: Far be it from me to go all prudish. As a red-blooded American male I like boobs as much as the next guy.
See also: using sexy pictures to link to articles that are decidedly not sexy.
LGT article on weightloss and lactose intolerance: HOT!
Key Offender: College Humor, which spends so much time and effort creating things that are generally pretty awesome that it feels nit-picky to go after them for this. How ’bout every site that links to college humors “Cute College Girl of the day” posts.
3) Pop-Unders that lead to other content-aggregator blogs: “In case you missed our “Forty stars without make-up” post, here’s another site that linked to it”
Key offender: Manofest,
4) Giving your audience a cutesy nickname in the hopes that it builds community. Blame Star Trek for this one. Ever since Trekkers (not Trekkies, mind you) coined themselves as such, having a single nickname by which you can identify others that enjoy passively consuming the same media as you has been taken as a given for building an audience.
Offenders: The Chive (Chivers), Fark (farkers), Klick.com.au (The Klick Communications Awesome Sexy Rock-me-Amadeus-a-teers).
5) Shameless Geek Pandering: I’ve got a whole rant lined up about everyone self-identifying as a geek these days (if only hipsters had the same gumption). For the moment, it’s still seen as link-bait to have a picture from Star Wars, or the “hottest cosplay girls from Comic Con”. This trick may work for the moment but…hang on…damn that is some hot cosplay.
5) Lists: Internet reading is a lazy browsy affair. Dividing a subject, no matter how difficult or subjective into a “definitive” list, is sure to start an argument amongst your readers about whether or not Slave Leia truly is sexier than Selina Kyle. (Which, for th record, she most certainly is not).
Key Offenders: *gulp*
