I saw the same thing happen twice already.
Once with Lugi and the other with Tesla. Websites see the traffic that their news bring, so they dedicate 55% and more of their website to cover them in the most dumb way possible.
How many articles do we need about Tesla cars being destroyed or vandalized? At a certain stage it becomes silly and more importantly, the websites covering them is a capitalist websites who would not give a shit about this topics if it did not bring them money.
My question is not about the websites, my question is about the people who read and share their articles, why do they do that? How do they fell for this over and over?
Just to be clear, I am not talking about the articles who deliver new info about the event, I am specifically talking about the article that keep recycling the same info without adding anything new or even offer a new analysis. (The Verge for example)
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Well, you are correct: Websites do this because it makes them money. It’s all about the clicks, baby. And they know that if they change the graphic or reword the title a little bit, people will click again and again. Isn’t Capitalism great? sarcasm
People fall for it because by and large, everybody loves to gossip.
The only way to win is to not play the game.
I imagine people share these for 3 reasons.
- People encounter information at different times. Sure you’ve seen the article but someone else hasn’t (although for popular topics, this likely become near zero quickly enough)
- People want to signal to their group that they are in the group. Why do people share anything with their little opinions attached. In part it’s so that they can cement their place in their tribe. Democrats or republicans or anything else, you are supposed to be angry about the things that anger your tribe and happy about the things that please your tribe.
- Anxiety. Our brains are sorta wired for “stress -> action -> relief” cycles. We survive because we encounter a stressor, take some action to address it, and are then relieved of that stressor. Feel hunger, eat food, feel better. The current world has many stressors that can’t be meaningfully impacted in an individual level. You can read an article about something that outrages you or highlights an injustice you believe is occurring, but then there is no action to take. So sharing becomes an effective action substitute. Did it solve anything? Nope, but your brain doesn’t care, it’s just happy you took some sort of action.
It’s pretty basic, it comes down to three simple tricks…
…subscribe to access the full article
You know much of the news outlet world is owned by people with affiliations with other people that are wealthy, powerful, and have political agendas they want to push on everyone right?
If the same event has multiple versions of the same story on the same site, that would be lazy but most likely intended to draw in different readers by being presented in different formats.
Are the articles recycling the same wording for the body but with different titles?
Are you sure they aren’t about different incidents with similar events?
Are they expanding on a prior story with new information, but reusing prior article text to show the ongoing trend?
Articles that I can think of from major news sites tend to put out new articles involving ongoing events with the new stuff at the top and then cut and paste from the previous article for context. Kind of lazy, but also providing consistency for a developing story.
