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I see a lot of content online. I especially notice content that appears on Upworthy, a formerly awesome place that “boosts” (curates) noteworthy posts from other sources.
What I notice there, and elsewhere, is the declining quality (professionalism) of the content which they consider boost-worthy. Much of it is becoming so colloquially lame that it’s downright puerile.I find myself critiquing its content instead of enjoying it–which is how Upworthy first captured me: it curated and boosted pieces that were informational, enjoyable and top quality.
These days, I see too much content that appears to be written with such juvenile know-nothing enthusiasm and sensibilities that it’s nauseating. Certainly there’s a place for this kind of content on the ‘net, but when it starts to invade sites that I considered (past tense) stellar, something is amiss…
The Death of Quality Content
I don’t consider myself much of a curmudgeon. When it comes to the stuff I read, most of it gets by me without so much as a sideways glance. It’s usually adequate; not stellar–certainly not journalism award quality–but it doesn’t draw unwelcome, unwanted attention to itself by being proactively primitive.
Content that draws attention to itself is off-putting. A good piece doesn’t eject readers from their riveting reverie by drawing attention to its construction or to its author–unless, of course, the topic of the article is about the author–i.e., a first person account. And even then the job can be done without the author coming across like a self-absorbed, EQ-delayed12 year old.
The more I see stuff like this, the more I wonder if time-tested professional content writers are on the way to extinction. Either schools aren’t teaching students (including future editors) to think/ponder, read and write to higher standards so that what gets published is actually praise-worthy/boost-worthy, or the lessons aren’t being sufficiently absorbed.
This worries me, and anyone else who wonders what students are being taught these days. If it’s just how to pass SAT tests, I hold out little hope that journalism can be redeemed and returned to its former glory as an honorable profession. (And what else is going into the toilet alongside journalism if kids aren’t given the instruction they need at home and in school to survive and thrive in the challenging world they’ll inherit from us?)
If sub-standard fodder (including its frequent homophones, malapropisms, and other unintended errors) can compete and win the content-curation battle, those of us who have spent decades writing riveting copy and content may as well pack it in.
If no one is carefully trained to separate the wheat from the chaff, very soon everyone will be consuming fluff and filler. But what’s worlds worse is that they won’t even know they’re slowly starving to death from the non-nutritious crap they’re ingesting.
What scares me most is that these same folks will become voters, decision-makers, legislators, teachers, doctors, judges and lawyers. Gadzooks! It’s a living nightmare in the making!
