ColumnDisgusted by overwhelming portions of salacious fare served up on the Internet? In today’s “click, monitor, push” information-marketing world, what we “see” is about more than algorithms—it’s about who we are.

I looked at a leaked photo and saw a naked celebrity. To be honest, while I didn’t realize what was on the other end of the hyperlink, there was probably enough information surrounding it that I should have known better. It was an impulse move (part curious, part prurient, part lazy) and I’m a little disgusted with myself for not thinking through my click. It’s not something I’m continuing to beat myself up about, but nevertheless, the event was indeed criminal and my choice was complicit. I’m sorry I did it.

I’m usually better than that when it comes to sensationalism and/or potential privacy breaches (of celebs or otherwise). I didn’t watch the Ray Rice wife-beating elevator video or the ISIL beheadings, I avoid “Read this Fucking Story!” headlines like the plague and I try to train a hypercritical eye on anything dubbed “trending.” I do this because at the end of the day, I know that in many ways I am what I click, and I do my best to exert at least a modicum of control over my intentions and actions when it comes to media consumption.

The consumption-equals-self concept (I think it began with “you are what you eat”) is not a new phenomenon, particularly in the media marketplace. I’m one of those before-and-after folk who, unlike the digital natives, came of age without an Internet, reading paper-based things and taking in what I could through a mere four or six channels on a rabbit-eared television set. Even then, though, I knew that my media interactions had implications beyond the ink stains on my fingers and my Sonny & Cher-strained eyeballs. I knew that my choices percolated up to sinister marketing meetings where decisions were made as to who I was (i.e., my demographic) and what I would be sold going forward.

In some ways, it seemed like a fair deal. I spoke with my choices. The powers that be listened and responded. Quid pro quo, right? (I confess that I secretly wished we were a Nielsen family.) But, still, there was something safely delayed about these transactions. It took time for Madison Avenue, the networks and the rest to understand my habits, construct customized offerings and deliver what I seemed to be willing to view. I assumed I’d eventually get more of what I thought I wanted, but the Mad Men and Media Merchants were somehow remote; there was some solace in the lack of immediacy.

Today’s media is a different beast. Think the above mindspace-commerce formula on steroids. Better still, on crack. As I busily click away, information is instantaneously gathered, crunched and fed back to me in the form of related content. If I click on naked celebs, violent videos, popular tripe and crap like that, then boom!—more naked celebs, violent videos, popular tripe and crap like that. Simple, even for us nerds who know nothing about how the intertubes do the voodoo they do.

Today, we are each in the business of creating sophisticated DIY echo chambers of information. There’s a one-to-one relationship between our surfing and its feedback, with virtually no play in the wheel. Liberal information for liberals. Conservative for conservatives. Shopping for shoppers. Not slowly but surely, but here and now, again and again, in real time until you buy or, as the case may be, buy in.

Smile for the Clickbait

Okay, so it’s no secret, nor is it surprising, that countless soulless algorithms are digesting my info and creating a customized and finely tuned online media environment just for me. And this isn’t always a bad thing. Aside from my Nielsen aspirations, I’m okay when options for that end table I’ve been valiantly surfing for or the first-edition Hemingway I’ve been staring at for months on eBay magically appear in my Facebook feed. And who needs to see those inane (not-my-bent) political ravings or overzealous (not-my-belief-system) religious messages. Not me. And through tech wizardry, I don’t have to, right? Huzzah!

But there’s more to it than that, isn’t there? If we stare a little cross-eyed at our newsfeeds (wherever they reside), we can see what amounts to a selfie—a homemade portrait that depicts something between an accurate view of who we are and some distorted caricature of our likeness. Beyond the algorithmic give and take, the scrolling image reflects something about us and our desires. It’s been said that, if nothing else, we can decide what we pay attention to. In the end, such choices amount to no small thing.

This is not to say that these choices are always easy ones. When the video surfaced of NFL running back Ray Rice assaulting his wife in an elevator, for example, I faced a decision: To click or not to click? No? Maybe, but consider that its going viral led to a much-needed culture storm that continues to reverberate beyond the football league; the phenomenon of millions of people watching that recorded crime translated into critical knowledge and a subsequent national uproar.

But managing my relationship with information is also critical. Can I understand an issue without joining an ugly horde of voyeurs? Can I develop an internal brain-muscle memory that tells me that when I look at something I’ll be participating in a media marketing measurement system that will not only blow back to my own info trough but to the world’s as well?

Consider the birth of widespread disintermediated information flow, which in large part came in the form of the website known as Digg. The site (and its once-ubiquitous share buttons) was a prototype for grander social media to come (Facebook, Twitter and the like) and a crucial turning point in the democratization of editorial decision-making. (Full disclosure: My brother was CEO at the time.) In its 2009 heyday, Digg boasted 45 million users.

It more or less worked like this: When you came across something on the Web that interested you, you could Digg it by clicking a button associated with the story. This acted essentially as a thumbs-up vote, which would then determine its rise or fall on the Digg homepage. This meant users chose what was top-priority news and what wasn’t. The upside was enormous: Events previously buried by jaded, ignorant or bought editorial gatekeepers could jump to the top of the pops.

As with most big ideas, however, there’s a double edge to this otherwise gallant swordplay. If the world is watching, say, the Arab Spring or a maybe an important political debate, and that activity is instantly measured and widely promoted based on its popularity, that’s a good thing. But what about mob rule? I remember when naked Paris Hilton photos rose to the top of the Web world (with Digg’s help, by the way). What else was happening on that day? I wonder.

Mirror, Mirror

In a world (go ahead, say it like the guy on the movie trailers—there’s a dubious air about all of this) where we clickers increasingly decide what’s news, what’s worth looking at and what’s not, we more or less get exactly what we deserve. We can debate all millennium about the advantages or disadvantages of such people power (mob rule?) or algorithm-based marketing (stalking?), but the truth is, in one form or another, these formulas have been in play since well before the penny press—and they’re here to stay. Bitching about it is kind of like cooking dinner and then complaining that the chef is a talentless hack who’s serving up a bunch of slop.

What’s important, then, is how what we see on our screens is up to us as a culture of users—which, of course, means it’s ultimately up to us as individuals. There’s black and white—I should not have opened the naked celeb link. It shouldn’t have taken much thought to know what I was doing and thus supporting. And then there’s nuance—I can follow certain stories (domestic violence vis-à-vis Ray Rice or Middle East policy vis-à-vis the ISIL insanity) without voting for the dissemination of grotesque and sometimes even criminal bits and bytes on the Web.

What’s required for navigating this, on a personal level, is taking a moment to reflect before we open a link. Why do we blindly click? Do we think about the blowback that will be mainlined not only into our own info-intake valves, but into our culture as a whole? All told, our impulses are too often sadly unmediated: Curious. (What’s everyone going on about?) Prurient. (“She’s kind of hot. What’s behind this curtain?”) Lazy. (Cool! Click!) Going forward, I’m going to try to do a better job of casting my brain-space ballot. And the next time I feel the urge to get all indignant about “information” that comes my way, I’ll keep this in mind: Often, we get just what we ask for.

Scott Adelson is EcoSalon’s Senior Editor of HyperKulture, a monthly column that explores opening cultural doors to initiate personal change. He is also the author of InPRINT, which reviews and discusses books, new and old. You can reach him at scott at adelson dot org and follow him @scottadelson on Twitter.

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Images: Chris Gilmore (top), SamahR (middle) and Eiti Kimura. 

The post Beyond the Algorithms – Don’t Look Now, But You Are What You Click: HyperKulture appeared first on EcoSalon.

ColumnDear headline writers. This is not Spinal Tap.

Made you click! Quite a task, it seems, in today’s hyper-competitive online media marketplace. After all, this story is just one of dozens, maybe even hundreds, that will compete for your attention today. And the truth is that some of us will use any trick in the book to get at your precious eyeballs, including cry-wolf, volume-to-11 headlines.

We all get snagged this way from time to time. Evidently, some—let’s say quantifiable lots—more than others. In many ways, we seem to have come full circle back to the days of the penny press and its yellow journalism, with an omnipresent din of hawkers on every digital street corner: Extra! Extra! Every single word guaranteed to be over the top!

But really, is everything an extra? Is there nothing interesting that remains appropriately under the top? Apparently not much.

The noise starts early in the day, for some even before we get out of bed, our smartphones serving up morning copy that promises to be “truly unbelievable!” and photo stories that are nothing short of cap-S “stunning!” and cap B-“breathtaking!” Yes, the a.m. rush isn’t complete without being informed that today—every day, in fact—is the best of times and the worst of times, the end of something as we know it, and the magnificent start of something new. Do we dare miss out?

Here’s one from Upworthy, a good site with a lot of compelling material: “This Is Not A Joke. You May Laugh, But You Shouldn’t. It’s Quite Horrifying—It has to be seen to be believed. But you still won’t believe it.” Really? This is about a bizarre napkin designed to cover the mouths of Japanese women while they eat hamburgers. Insanely weird and sexist? Yes. Warranting a headline that would make a civil defense air-raid siren blush? Maybe not.

Moving on, how does (did?) this grab you: “Antibiotic resistance will mean the end of just about everything as we know it.” Right. That’s from Salon, a way-too-frequent flyer on click-me-now air, and purveyor of other gems such as “Psychopaths: Some are just like us!” (Are they?!) and “Embrace your small penis, men: Everyone else is lying anyway!” Mmhmm. Thanks.

Of course, nothing screams like good sex—or rather, porn. Lots of porn. “Food porn.” “Ruin porn.” “Nature porn.” And, for the more bookish, here is a related, sexualizing the unsexualizable trend that won’t seem to go away: I call it “A Million Shades of 50 Shades.” Politics: “Israel’s 50 shades of dismay over Iran nuke deal.” (GlobalPost). Science: “50 Shades of Grey (Matter): How Science is Defying BDSM Stereotypes.” (Huffington Post) Literature: “You Want Erotic? The Countless Shades of Anaïs Nin.” (Yeah, well, that last one was mine. At least I went for book on book.)

Of course, there are easy pickings on both our Left and Right. Obamacare: “Worse Than Slavery.” Debt ceiling: “How to prepare for the… apocalypse.” The cacophony in this category is truly beyond the pale. Even down-the-middle CNN (I know, if CNN represents the middle, we’re in real trouble) recently offered us this, just in case tornadic destruction wasn’t enough to grab our attention: “Grandma’s Last Words: ‘Get Me Out.’” Thank you, CNN.

Want more? Just Google something. Anything. You’ll find a headline to suit your most highly caffeinated, info-active mood about all things est—biggest, baddest, worst, best. The hunt for something incredible (in the strictest sense of the word) is like shooting fish in barrel. In fact, you don’t even have to search. It will come to you. (To avoid piling on, let’s pass for now on deliberately misleading headlines, a story unto itself: accuracy as collateral damage.)

Yet strangely, it doesn’t seem too long ago in Webville when superlatives more or less meant something, and an Onion headline was an Onion headline, and not mistaken (at second blush, at least) for real information.

Step Right Up

In a past lifetime, when I was a first-year Journalism grad student in Chicago, headline writing was part of a fearsome, nuts-and-bolts J-school boot camp. (One prof was a formidable ex-marine, in fact, boasting a handlebar mustache and a hair-trigger red pen.) The effort was like puzzle-solving—and not everyone was good at it. Limited space, limited words, a story to represent and (just as with the lead) a promise to be fulfilled if a reader should take the time to engage. And, yes, eyeballs to grab, too. All told, creating a headline is like wrestling with a mini Rubik’s cube.

The idea of selling your story often taps into a different side of the brain than actually covering it. Indeed, in most editorial worlds, headlines are not written by the writer of the piece itself, but by talented copy editors and, increasingly (online), by editors themselves. Writers who have been around will tell you of the countless times they opened their paper (or magazine, or laptop) and saw their copy under some weird words that made them think hmmm—or, more likely, “oh god, no.”

In any case, no matter who’s behind what’s on top of a story, there’s nothing wrong with selling copy with snappy headlines. They can be fun and creative and (hopefully) expository—an art form unto themselves. And no one, myself included, wants you to pass over his or her work for want of intrigue. (Kudos, by the way, to someone in these pages who recently walked the line and came out shining with “The Universe is So Weird! There’s Plastic on Saturn’s Moon?”)

Moreover, facts (and there so many of them) are facts: In the not-too-distant past, each day we were confronted with a limited number of “stories”—a newspaper or two, maybe a magazine or three, some TV to choose from. But today, we’re hit with thousands of them during our waking hours, most of which come to us online, as for-profit media outlets scratch away and beg so very hard for our mindpsace. Let’s be honest: no one should expect a publishing effort to be okay with simply fading into the background.

But as readers, many of us need to do a better job considering the cry-wolf factor as we scan our screens. (Face it, there’s not going to be an uprising anytime soon that says to HuffPo, Salon and all the others, “keep pulling that crap with the headlines and you’ll lose market share.” It sure would be nice though, huh?) Maybe it is just one breath of awareness before we offer up our prized click. That nanosecond when we can say: “Wait. Really? Am I really going to reach for that bright shiny thing?”

Finally, consider that subtlety isn’t dead—it’s just, well, subtle. Noise isn’t the key to good copy or truthful news. In fact, it might serve to tell you that what follows is not as advertised. Discernment is what it’s cracked up to be. The more game you bring, the better gems you are going to find.

I guess it’s like anything else in the days of the horrifying, unbelievable, incredible Information Age—it’s our job to consume wisely and be on lookout for what is real and true under the sea of hype. That said, headline writers, please stop screaming at me! On a scale of 1 to 10, even for the sensational, 10 is enough. This is not Spinal Tap.

(As I write, this just in: “Man who stripped naked and stuck a fire extinguisher hose up his bottom in a hotel corridor walks free.”—The Independent. Seriously?)

Scott Adelson is EcoSalon’s Senior Editor of HyperKulture, a monthly column that explores opening cultural doors to initiate personal change. He is also the author of InPRINT, which reviews and discusses books, new and old. You can reach him at scott at adelson dot org and follow him @scottadelson on Twitter.

Related Reading:

HyperKulture: Dear Oprah, Please Tell Us Who We Are — Atheists, Feminists And Other ‘Others’ Need To Know

HyperCulture: From The Sanbox to Syria – Tribe, Ego and Decision Making

HyperKulture: In Swoon’s Way – Time traveling and Staring Down Florence Syndrome

InPRINT: You Want Erotic? The Countless Shades of Anaïs Nin

InPRINT: Albert Camus and the Biggest Question of All

Images: Cory Doctorow (top) and The Library of Congress

The post Read this F*&%ing Story! — Spinal Tap Headlines and You: HyperKulture appeared first on EcoSalon.