Comic Strip of the Day

CSotD: Some of the people all of the time

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Mike Peterson Published: May 16, 2013 1 minute 0 comments

I always like Tom the Dancing Bug's Super-Fun-Pak Comix, but I particularly like the sidebar of garbage served up with this installment.

Fact is, I was hoping that somebody would post a cartoon today that was light and breezy and funny and would get me off the political kick for a bit. 

In part because, when I start to find it tiresome, I can only imagine the effect on readers.

And in part because the past 24 hours have been a painful, ongoing example of how freaking gullible people can be and it depresses me. It's been building up longer than that, but the toxicity of stupidity — the "and then they voted" aspect of it all — comes particularly to the fore when the topic is not "Bill Gates will give you $5,000 if you share this" but more pointedly important credulous claims like "worst scandal since Watergate" or "the mainstream press is suppressing the news."

Yes, people still share this:

And this:

But they also share this sort of delusional populist faux-martyrdom, which is just as fraudulent and absurd and counterfactual, but politically inspired as well:

And so here we have a light, breezy, funny comic with a whole section devoted to how freaking gullible people can be, and we're right back to yesterday's rant.

Here's the deal: If somebody passes on the Bill Gates nonsense, or a three-year-old notice about a missing child who was actually back home safe and sound a day after the original message anyway, well, yeah, I wish they had the sense to check things out first.

And if they click on some "OMG! You Won't Believe This Naked Teen Chick!" link and end up taking a bogus survey instead, heh, tough luck, sucker.

But when they fall for some political myth intended to promote fear, hate and division in the country and help spread it around, I get annoyed that they didn't check it out, but, really, that's displaced anger: I should be angry with the disloyal, manipulative liars who post those things in the first place. And I am.

But, stepping aside from politics, what depresses me as a still-working journalist in a struggling industry is the click-bait that Bolling mocks in today's TTDB: The bogus links inserted by scummy advertisers on otherwise reputable news sites.

Yes, I'm old. I remember working for newspapers back when ads for X-rated movie theaters and strip joints were carefully examined and often rejected as inappropriate for our readership and when fraudulent ads were turned away completely.

And I remember talking to an editor from the flagship paper in the Ottaway chain, and laughing over the notion that, while our paper could screw up and it might never come to the attention of corporate, his paper landed on the doorstep of the CEO and all major officers each morning. He admitted it did tend to focus the mind.

So my question is, do the suits at HQ see this crap they're posting on their websites?

Are they proud to be promoting cheesy, soft-porn gossip and outright consumer fraud alongside the work of their newsrooms?

Or do they simply think it's clever marketing and a good way to monetize content, and never even think about what it does to the company's reputation and credibility?

Well, first of all, I've been close enough to the top in local management to know that the most blatantly half-assed ideas you'll see on the local web site were probably put there on orders from corporate.

I remember when Knight-Ridder ordered all their local sites taken down and converted to a generic piece of unnavigable crap that drove readers away in hordes, and I worked for a paper that had a decent start on on-line revenue but was ordered to stop and impose an HQ brainstorm that didn't work at all.

And I've certainly sat around enough conference tables to know that, if the ad director says the links are bringing in money, the person who says, "But do we really want to be involved in this stuff?" will not have a bright future in the organization.

Peter Drucker was hardly a bleeding heart socialist, but he did have the business sense to recommend that a company focus on its identity, on what it was about, what customers wanted from it, in setting its objectives.

And he didn't mean to sit around writing airy-fairy cotton candy mission statements.

Though, if you want something even funnier than that mission-statement generator, this site quotes Drucker in saying that a mission statement should fit on a T-shirt, and then lays out the lengthy, meeting-filled bureaucratic process for coming up with said "mission statement."

Focus, people: If you don't know why your business exists, you can't possibly succeed. And if you need to form a committee and schedule meetings and reviews to find out what the hell you're all there for, you're so lost it doesn't matter.

You might just as well promote a little fraud, insult the intelligence of your readers and generate as much revenue as you can however you can, and then duck out the door and cash out your stock options before the whole house of cards comes down.

Yeah, I knew something light and breezy and funny would cheer me up. Thanks, Ruben!