....and.....

You WON'T BELIEVE what happens next!

I was starting to notice that most of the links I click on are actually lists of links to other lists, and that getting to the bottom of the stack was an exhausting process. Then, as usual, a N'Yawker article, The Virologist, 1/5/2015, cleared up the mystery. (It has also generated a sub-trending slew of ClickerBait sub-re-postings, e.g....)

The story follows the founder of a set of internet startups, re-branded, most recently, under the name dose.com/?&redirectfrom=dose.com, which repackages online content with catchy headlines of their own invention on their own sites with ad revenue just a quick-click away. The founder of the company got his start in 1999 with Muggles.net and is summed up, in summary, as saying:

The more awesome you are, the more emotion you create, the more viral it is.

The company's main functions are:

1. Content selection using trend numbers form reddit/twitter/etal;
2. Catchy title writing;
3. Advertising sales.

The (curmudgeonly old media) author of the article on (the excessively awesome) new media success traced one posting down six levels of repackaging to the lowly book's authors, who received no compensation for the making of any content, viral or otherwise.

So. No actual useful information was generated in the making of this multi-million$$ opportunity -- recent round of funding, $8M -- but one of the chief investors enthuses:

I think his stuff is indicative of where digital media is headed.

I call it:

Strip Mining the Zeitgeist

So. What happens next? We believe!