One of the problems with the current advertising model of the web and even on certain magazines is that it registers only a number of eyeballs. You can generate fake news, even make the most trollish accusations, drive up hits, and you get the profit. It is a model that breeds Yellow Journalism and sensationalism. This exists in widespread in the gaming community. There are blogs that love posting rumors, especially the most unrealistic, because that brings hits. What is most popular in the gaming community is to pit fanboys against one another. You will see a major blog do a story to say this console is on verge of collapse, just to enflame people, or that console is about to skyrocket, just to enflame other people. There is one major gaming forum that pits the console fans against one another and the environment is carefully balanced to keep this fire raging. Joke characters are made to stir up the fire when it dies down. If you want to know why the game media is a never ending drum-beat of ‘Console War!!!’ is because of the above. The purpose is hits, not journalism or discussion. The side effect is that while they are getting hits, the audience has a very, very low opinion of such ‘journalists’. Unfortuantely for everyone, the bad is outweighing the good. For example, one can write a column on Wii, no matter how outlandish or insane, and get tons of hits as it is linked to everywhere.
This also occurs in the Tech World. Many publications will intentionally bait Linux fans, Apple fans, among others to generate hits. Here is an example of one columnist by the name of Dvorak. In the video, he admits baiting Apple fans to generate hits.
Someone emailed me one of Dvorak’s columns which was about disruption. If you wonder why the column reads like a gaming blog post, they have the same motivations. It is standard Dvorak practice. Start off sounding competent on the subject (so the reader is baited in) and then unload with wild and whirling sayings. Who ever said Disruption was all about technology? Christensen sure didn’t. It is about business models. The examples he cites of course looks at it from that technological way. Laughably, he says a PBS show has ‘better’ explanations. He goes so far to label the nuclear bomb as ‘disruptive’ (where-as it would be accurately called radical sustaining change from older bombs). He doesn’t believe in what he writes. Here, he says Apple should pull the plug on the iPhone ASAP. Responding to such trollish writers is like responding to the Onion.
This is a reason why this website has no ads. I expected many to think my more ‘dramatic’ conclusions in the articles would be interpreted as these trollish writers, to simply gain hits. But there are no ads, so getting hits isn’t doing anything for me. People may agree or disagree, but at least they know I believe what I say.
It is one thing for stupid people to be out there. But there is nothing lower than someone who doesn’t believe in what he says.
