Feeling Irrelevant?

ILLUSTRATION BY SAM ISLAND

Russell Smith over at The Walrus has a story about How Algorithms Are Changing What We Read Online

My increasing feelings of irrelevance also came with a corresponding pressure to cover what, for me, were the less and less interesting topics that my editors felt would be better at maintaining my impact—general-interest arts stories and mainstream popular culture. That pressure, I felt, came largely from the huge moving electronic graph that now hangs over most newsrooms, tracking the articles causing the most reader interest in real time.

Well, that kind of explains why the only news we get these days is useless bullshit. The news organizations have thrown in the towel and are catering to lowest common denominator, i.e. the giant herd of unwashed idiots who make up 99% of the population.

I feel your pain Russell. I called bullshit on the COVID-19 panic months ago, but has government policy changed? No, it has not. Frigging morons.

Via Detroit Steve