Breathe
By Susana Moscatel
Have you had a hard time finding information you can believe in online lately? Me too. And I'm borderline desperate about it. I've been in this business long enough to be able to say that I opened the first Facebook page, Twitter account and YouTube channel for various projects and programs I've been involved in. And in those days the worst thing we could have done, informationally speaking, was to upload puppy and kitten content. Literally. Because there are few things like a video of cute animals doing their thing to generate traffic on the web, but there are some and they are much worse.
With the purchase of the social network formerly known as Twitter, Elon Musk managed to make an already violent context even more violent. Not only because of his new algorithm, which now shows you all the fights, insults and aggressions even if you don't follow those accounts, but also because of his radical policy of forgiving everyone (except those who speak ill of him). This week it was, again, Kanye West, who was more than once run off the net for his anti-Semitic tirades. Today, it's clear that Musk, misusing the flag of freedom of speech, is betting on the worst of human beings.
Tik Tok, a network that I have forced myself to try to understand so as not to be left out of the game, is even worse. The algorithm has to be polite but it will still show you the worst of human miseries because, they know well, our morbidity is often better than our best intentions. And there live millions of lives online. With that violence. With that desire to expose everyone. Why the fuck do I keep getting videos of overweight people in gyms? It is, apparently, a worldwide challenge to see someone who is making an effort to improve their health, humiliated. And it's just one of the disgraces popping up everywhere. It's as if most of us have already given up and decided that doing bad things is okay if it entertains and generates traffic.
I would love to say that journalistic spaces are the exception. That this type of clickbait goes through some editor who has the slightest intention of taking care of the veracity and quality of the contents. But that is a battle completely lost in the rush to win a story that is not a story or the desire to get many more eyes on a page that used to adhere to journalistic quality. No, now it sticks to La casa de los famosos, to the fights between influencers or to journalistic gems like one of this week's, "Did Mayela think about distorting the Pinal family?
Let's stop here, on this headline from a national newspaper, for a second. First of all, there is that awful new custom of putting a headline between question marks. What the hell does that mean? Are they asking the readers? Does the media not know the answer? Or is it simply that they want to traffic in gossip and that way they are safe? On the other hand, and the truth is that I'm even lazy to find out who the hell Mayela is, but it seems to me that, after reading a paragraph of that hogwash, what they meant to say is "extort", not "distort". And then, as a finishing touch: is what anyone can come up with somehow reportable? There are so many things wrong with this that I can't help but laugh, but feel a little squeezed in my little reporter's heart. Because this is just one of dozens of examples we see every day on the net. And let's not talk about serious topics, such as textbooks in Mexico, because few stop before giving the RT or send to your WhatsApp group to share things that are not even published there. Wow, there are enough horrors and true impressions without having to invent others. Why don't they review so many media? Because they are quoting what someone else posted on networks. Or even worse, what someone else posted on networks. Anyone. As long as it's online it seems to be valid in this new championship of disinformation.
So yes. I mightily miss puppies and kittens as clickbait. Although yesterday I did not miss the note of the influencer who paid thousands of euros to look like a Border Collie because that had been the dream of his life. Absurd but I prefer a thousand times that they try to incite me with my love for animals than appealing to the ugliest part of my being. At least if I see a Basset hound imitating the sounds of its human, I can believe they are telling me the truth. At least sometimes.
The opinions expressed are the responsibility of the authors and are absolutely independent of the position and editorial line of Opinion 51.
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