Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/08/16/huxleyed-into-the-full-orwell-2.html
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Media companies big and small are feeling the impact, and editors are starting to pressure their reporters to emphasize “lifestyle” stories over political news
Is that why I’m seeing so many “lolzy tweet goes viral” stories presented as “news” in (generally, formerly?) reputable news outlets lately? I’d assumed it was just budget cuts and pressure to come up with new content 24/7.
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Bread and circuses.
Also it’s stupid to think a story will get fewer clicks just because of its sentiment. A lot more likely to determine whether or not your ads get clicks is that like 30% of people use adblocking now.
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Then there’s also the terrible “uplifting” stories that serve to highlight the collapse of society.
Kid can’t afford wheelchair, so home depot gardening team builds one for him.
C-list celebrity pays off class lunch debt.
Cancer treatment gofubdme gets a million dollars.
None of these are uplifting stories to me. They’re all stories that show how the US is failed.
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Newspeak.
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It’s doubleplusgood!
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Fuck that noise; if we’re going full dystopian nightmare, then let it be V for Vendetta…
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Just got hungry all of a sudden 
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I get your point, but if we go with, say, Brave New World than at least we’d get to have a lot more sex.
Or Snow Crash, in which case I would definitely get a citizenship in Mr.Lee’s Greater Hong Kong.
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It’s probably not so much how many clicks the story gets, but associations with the product they want to avoid. No body wants you to feel disgust, rage, or despair when the Coca-Cola logo is in eyesight (except maybe Pepsi Cola). It doesn’t matter that the news story has nothing to do with the product one way or the other, they’re going to be worried that your negative feelings about the story will also generalize to the product at an implicit level. I’m not sure if that has a real impact or not, but from a behavioral psychology standpoint, if A and B are paired, and A leads to negative response C, then after enough presentations B will lead to C without the presence of A. Does it work on an advertising scale? No idea. But a lot of early behaviorist psychologists helped popularize a lot of advertising methods, so it’s not surprising they’d think this way.
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My Facebook and Twitter filters have all these words and 10x more. I get plenty of bad news without the force feeding by bots and trolls.
It keeps me from signing off or putting bleach in my eyes daily.
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I’d love Mr. Lee’s, but more likely I’d be sharing a storage unit with a large family from Eastern Europe.
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Yeah. I’m pretty sure I’d end up being a prime citizen. As the sun sets I’ll head back to my prime house to watch amazon prime video.
What sorts of products would welcome the chance to have their ads appear next to controversial or distressing news? Alarm systems, mood-lifting chemicals, hug machines?
Maybe a bidding war could start expressly for the news stories other advertisers are fleeing…
The type of products in the BoingBoing Store or pushed as affiliate or Kickstarter links on this site. O
And yes, I’m serious. Their banality doesn’t lead to brand building. They don’t want to be a part of your life, forever in your memory, they just want to close one sale.
People may wonder why Coke would advertise next to a story about opioid or meth users beaten up by police. People recognize that brand even if they are not thirsty. This goes so far that brands can be used in entertainment media to make a statement about a character. (Heavily intertwined with actual advertising, true)
But a robotic jar opener or 10 indispensable edc gadgets? Those are so obviously just about getting noticed at least once (and then hopefully bought), that there’s no emotional association with the actual content.
Sure, the grossest imaginary next to an ad will likely be wasted money even for the pusher of robotic jar opener developer certification, but it won’t hurt them.
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