Comment by rTX5CMRXIfFG
2 years ago
This is why I am just as skeptical of criticism of the media.
Everyone wants to consume their work, but they need people to pay for it so that they can keep working, but people won’t consume their work unless it’s sensational.
> but people won’t consume their work unless it’s sensational.
I think this is only true because we allow unlimited sensationalism. It's just like any other junk intake (candy, social media, gamification, etc) - it's easy, it has an immediate reward, and it's not valuable. But out bodies and brains were conditioned by evolution to only care about the first 2, so junk news is just hacking our brains (or exploiting our vulnerabilities).
To be blunt, we've turned something that should serve us into a parasite. We need to have awareness of this and put create standards and/or regulations. When the playing field is level and (almost) nobody is writing clickbait, our brains will return to normal.