Originally posted 2014-12-23 22:14:51
After taking some time off of being an internet content provider, I took a long hard look in the mirror to examine my motives, goals, and strategy. I obviously wanted to be a successful blogger, and my motive was that I wanted to explain the Christian world view and give advice on how to respond to the events going on around the world. The issue was that the web traffic has just never been there.
I decided to research the way the media works so I could become a better blogger…I’m disgusted with what I learned. I read a book called Trust me, I’m lying. It was about a professional Media Manipulator. His job was to feed blog sites phony stories that would eventually trade their way up the chain and turn into national news controversies. In his book, he explained how online news media works. It is funded by advertising money. Ad’s are payed by the page view. Usually $1 per every 1,000 hits. The way that websites stay open, and “journalists” make any money is generating web-traffic. Because the market works this way, the truth has become a non-important issue. For the writer, the only thing important is getting people to click on their link…and they will do anything to get that. This is why there are so many titles to news articles like:
- New Evidence Confirms Michael Brown Was Combative.
- Obama Just Did Something That Will Leave Homeschool Parents OUTRAGED.
- This 90 Year Old Woman Will Have To Go a Whole Winter Without Food Or Water. FIND OUT WHY.
This explains why Fox only reports on the horrors of the Democratic Party, and CNN only reports on wars and plane crashes.
This is why the media used their leverage to provoke nationwide racial tension surrounding a grand jury decision in Ferguson Missouri, then later showed up with their cameras to film the riots that destroyed that same city.
It doesn’t matter what the article is about. All that matters is that you clicked through to their page, and that their advertisers recorded and paid for that traffic.
I did an experiment last week to see if this was legitimate or not. I was disappointed again. I made a phony news article, with a title about Obama, ISIS, and the flu vaccine. There was nothing inside the post, except for a note that says “get your flu shot.” I posted it to my facebook friends twice in a couple hours, and it generated a ton of hits to our site. It was also shared by a couple of my brainless conservative friends. This proved to me that the title of a post is everything, and that some people will circulate garbage without even reading it.
As Christians, (or at least decent human beings) We need to be smart about the way we handle this stuff. We reaaalllly need to stop empowering the media machine to lie to us constantly. More importantly, we need to stop blindly accepting and reposting everything we read because it lines up with what we already thought. When we read news, we need to be vigilant, realizing that the enemy is constantly exploiting our weaknesses to deceive us. Nothing makes the enemy happier than Christians angry about trivial junk. These Tips Will Help you Be Smart About The Way You Consume Internet News Media:
If it is On the Internet, Consider it Untrue
Blogs and “news sites” crank out hundreds of articles an hour, and get paid pennies for each. They are motivated by nothing but traffic and ad revenue, they will tell you ANYTHING to get you to click on and circulate their internet garbage.
Do Not Let the Media Control You
If you read something and it makes you angry, close it. In another post on another day, I will explain how Americans are anger addicts. For now, google the words anger, sympathetic response, and addiction and do your research. The media needs to piss you off. If you are angry, you will comment, share, like, and tweet their garbage, generate traffic for them, and you will keep coming back for more. Need proof? Turn on Fox News. They live streamed the people of Ferguson destroying their city every night for a week straight. It was a hit.
Be Informed, Not Just Right
For the sake of my own sanity, I assume that every news source is lying. From my observations, Conservative news starts with a nugget of truth, and then builds a straw man out of it. That is how they get you. Liberal media usually just flat out lies to your face. However, if you have a need to know what is going on, you need to find your news somewhere. For this reason, I generally only read conservative media now because it at least starts with the tiny truth nugget. I then dig around for the sources, fact check it, get the rest of the story, and THEN DRAW A CONCLUSION. (This will come as a shock because most of my readers know I lean as far left as a Christian libertarian can. I believe that in America, a married gay couple should legally be able to defend their nontaxed pot plants with guns, and I believe a Pastor should be able to tell them they are going to hell for it.) To get back on topic:
Don’t Believe or Recirculate Internet Trash
Fact check, dig deeper, find sources, get the whole story. Then if you reaaalllly still feel strongly about a topic, don’t do the usual Like-Share-Comment routine….GO OUT AND DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT. Remember that your click, though it seems harmless, is a very powerful thing. Clicking through a site puts money in their pocket so the author can live to lie again. Clicking the Like or Share button puts that content in front of thousands of other people that may also fall for the click bait. If you share an article that you haven’t fact checked, you may be lying to thousands of people, and lining the pockets of the author that deceived you. In other words… Click no Evil, Like no Evil, Share no Evil …unless of course you have fact checked it.
Check out Trust me I’m lying here (Non-affiliate link): http://www.amazon.com/Trust-Me-Lying-Confessions-Manipulator/dp/1591846285
Pray for Sinners Media Network as we enter the new year. We are planning on getting back into the flow of releasing weekly content, but praying about the wisest way to do so. We want to pursue the truth, and serve our followers. We are still praying and thinking about how to do that effectively.
Thank you for your support
-Marc
