I have now officially removed The Huffington Post from my news feed and have stopped following it on Twitter. Not because it’s too left or too right. But because it’s too vapid.
Theoretically, an exclusive online news source which competes directly with the traditional players is a great idea. And I applaud its ability to leverage the distributive resources of cyberia. As this Associated Press article states, in addition to their 70 paid reporters and editors, they’ve got 6,000 bloggers writing for them for free. The site hit 13 million unique users in March and broke the top 10 current events and global news sites.
Even so, I won’t be wasting any of my time there.
I’m not interested in Stephen Hawking’s opinion on aliens.
I’m not interested in the 11 funniest unintentionally-sexual books of all time.
I could care less about which 9 countries have the worst beer in the world.
Ditto for celebrity detoxes and diets: whose is craziest.
There’s nothing I’d rather watch less than a cherry spitting challenge between Adam Samberg and Gabourey Sidibe. (Besides which, video feeds from Hulu and Comedy Central don’t play in Canada. Thanks alot, dicks.)
This is not news. This is entertainment. This is distraction. This is pushing advertising revenue into Ariana Huffington’s bank account at the expense of our political engagement. This is press-for-profit through an internet business model based entirely upon consumption. Huffpo aspires to become one more morally bankrupt participant in a devolving process that Chris Hedges has described here with brutal honesty.