BuzzFeed’s viral journalism drew fierce condemnation as a threat to the profession

Evidence

Naked plays for attention always draw scorn, and as BuzzFeed’s fortunes rose in the 2010s, it was no exception. As Ben Cohen, founder of the journalism site The Daily Banter, wrote: “I loathe BuzzFeed and pretty much everything they do….It could well trump Fox News as the single biggest threat to journalism ever created.” When BuzzFeed presented the Egyptian democratic revolution as a series of GIFs from the film Jurassic Park, Cohen fulminated: “To say this is childish, puerile bullshit would be a massive understatement….Doing funny GIF posts about cats and hangovers is one thing, but reducing a highly complex political crisis into 2 second moving screen shots of a children’s dinosaur movie is something completely different. If BuzzFeed really is the future of journalism, we’re completely and utterly fucked.” — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 1071

Categorization

• CANDY: The Jurassic Park GIF treatment of the Egyptian revolution is a vivid, memorable anecdote for light conversation.
• XREF: connects to: Overcommercialized attention harvesting provokes strong social backlash — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 69

Broader Connections

• Overcommercialized attention harvesting provokes strong social backlash #complicates (0.70) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 69