Beyond Post-Truth

The phrase ‘post-truth’, a word of the year in 2016 (dearly departed and much missed), is already looking a bit clapped out. It’s a little on the nose, even obvious; it’s not all that insightful; and the thing is already entirely ubiquitous, on the lips of every lazy pundit and within easy reach of every angry guy on the internet. They all want to use it, as it conveys a kind of easily attained semi-intellectualism, just about enough for TV and Twitter.

Facebook and Censorship: A Paradox

It provides, whether we like it or not, the backdrop to much of our lives. In the age of social media, Facebook, the ageing titan, the weary juggernaut, still retains its prominence. Its policies matter, just as they affect the lives of its billions of users – in both big and small ways. And something which may seem small, but is actually rather significant, is Facebook’s policy towards news and images. Some websites – many of them irritatingly modern and faddish – derive most of their traffic from Facebook shares, using it to generate millions of clicks.

Online Media and the New Boredom

We’re all bored, we’re all so tired of everything
We wait for trains that just aren’t coming
We show off our different scarlet letters –
Trust me, mine is better

Taylor Swift, “New Romantics”

We are all bored. Well, not exactly all of us – but boredom is everywhere; being bored, which, so our mothers told us, used to mean that we ourselves were boring, seems to be more ubiquitous, more pervasive, than ever.

I Was BuzzFeed for a Couple of Days (and It Was Perfect)

I have always had an instinctive dislike of BuzzFeed, the new, sparky website seemingly entirely powered by faddish political opinions and years-old posts on Instagram which is more or less eviscerating traditional publishing and giving jobs to almost every journalist I can name.

Because this dislike was instinctive – because it was automatic – I decided I had better investigate the whole thing a little more.