Yes, an incredibly underacknowledged reality is that social media, with its boom-bust viral dynamics and its instant performance feedback on ideas, has created an extremely demand-driven media ecosystem. Outlets and individuals alike rapidly iterate towards whatever explodes fastest on social
It’s not even being judged by that. It’s being judged by “whatever makes my content popular on TikTok or gets me attention from the NYT”. It’s why we’re getting armchair dementia diagnoses from people whose last hard science class was the gentleman’s C they rocked in 10th grade biology.
I believe that you have an account of any size on a social site you know this is true: you have a pretty sharp intuitive what kinds of posts will do numbers and you feel the pressure to write those kinds of posts, whether you admit it or otherwise
News organizations face a version of the same pressure, they need to do numbers and the way to do that is write stuff that’s viral and they’re getting constant feedback on the tenor and focus of stories and coverage that does numbers and goes viral. They’re drawn magnetically towards it
Right, so feeding frenzies feed on themselves and crowd everything else out - like discussions of everything at stake in this election, from the climate to women’s health to immigration. Every day focused on the freakout of the moment is an opportunity lost to educate voters on real issues.
