The era of rageclicking

Walking the Beat

Please pardon my unexpected absence from this space last week. I had felt that if I had written anything from my own perspective at that time, in the frame of mind I was in, it would have produced far more heat than light, and that's not what I'm about. Or at least that's what I try to not be about, even if it doesn't always turn out that way. 

What is it that's gotten me so heated up lately? I could give the famous Marlon Brando reply from The Wild One, "Whaddaya got?" and it would be fairly accurate. The anger of our times, much of it quite justifiable, has filtered down to the individual level and that has had a deleterious effect on people's day-to-day interactions. 

Thankfully we aren't quite yet at the point where people are saying to each other's faces the kinds of garbage they say to each other over their devices, oftentimes completely out in the open for anyone to read on public Facebook pages. If people were, well, there's another tough guy quote for that, too, as I recall, something like "social media made y'all way too comfortable with disrespecting people and not getting punched in the face for it." 

I mean that's its entire business model, right? Why is it that these companies give away their products for free? Because their platforms aren't their products: you, the users, are. And all that rageclicking, doomscrolling and, in parlance my generation of internet trolls coined, flaming and flame-baiting adds up to a whole lot of data for them to mine and then turn around and sell – and not just what the algorithms think will get you to spend your money on, but more importantly what kinds of content to show you that will move the needle of public opinion, one interaction at a time.

In such a media environment, where Big Tech generally and Big Data specifically garner so much value by instrumentalizing the human psyche, it's little wonder that people would demand to have their information for free. Unfortunately, or rather fortunately, we aren't underwritten by Big Tech so we aren't able to operate a content farm here. Nor do we publish "automated journalism," which I was stunned to read now accounts for half of all new articles published online, according to Axios. We're just a small handful of people who wish to serve our community by continuing to operate, entirely in-house, that most old-school of media "platforms" – a newspaper. 

Now, to find a more constructive outlet for my own rageclicking. The World Series starts tonight, I guess I could hate on the Jays for beating my M's? Nah, then I'd have to root for an LA team and that's something no self-respecting Seattleite could ever do. Well I'm sure I'll find something else, or someone else, to blame for my own frustrations. That, after all, seems to be our real national pastime anymore.