Have you ever heard of some incredible news story like an actor you somewhat know getting canceled or yet another company’s mascot getting a rework? You hear about it from a friend or social media and you just NEED to know the full story. That’s what I like to call “News In 2021”. Unless you are above the age of 50 or politically lean very strongly in a direction, you probably don’t have ONE place you get your news. Yes, seeing something on Twitter and checking the “source” is technically news, but that website or article you read from the trending tab is probably different every single time.
Getting the news in 2021 is like shopping on Amazon. You look something up because you’re interested and then you are bombarded with options to create the illusion of authenticity. Every toaster wants to claim it’s the best just like every news source claims to have the full story. You buy the toaster but wonder about the other ones. So, you go back to your options to see if there is something better. Soon enough you find out that, no, it’s just a fucking toaster. They all do the same thing. It’s the same thing with the news. You click on an article, decide if that is the full story, go back to the list of other websites, then find out “yea that was it”.That is the news in 2021.
There’s nothing really wrong with this process but it just got me thinking. As a blogger, I have to be pretty up-to-date on the day-to-day happenings of the world. I, like you, get this from friends or social media. Checking what is trending is how I write most of my blogs. Unless I have a story to tell or a general college idea to poke fun of, I mostly just “report” the “news”. I use quotes on “report” because the subject is probably something the majority of people already know that already has 10 or so articles about it. I will just see who is in trouble today, check the general opinion about it, and write a page on google docs agreeing while trying to be funny. I put quotes around “news” because “Addison Rae and Jimmy Fallon Show Off Their Tik Tok Dances” isn’t news, but a majority of news sources write something about it.
Let’s talk about these “news” sources. They get their news from other news sources. CNN sees that FOX wrote something so they write something… In the same exact way. Again, this happens in both directions. Their two articles aren’t designed to be entertaining, They are designed to get you to think of them as “The News”. They want you to get your daily dose of Coronavirus updates and policemen bad stories from them. Now I’m not saying those stories aren’t important. If anything those are the most important. What I am saying is they also copy every single other news source by regurgitating the information in 2-3 paragraphs.
None of these sites do anything more than explain exactly what the other ones did. It’s legal plagiarism. They say the same thing in a slightly different order with slightly different wording so you can’t actually say they copied the other.
At least I TRY to be funny. I’m not saying I’m better, I’m saying I’m different. I say what I believe the story to be, then I make fun of it. That doesn’t sound hard, but at least I try to give the people reading a little something more than just an onslaught of information they already know.
I know that this is just the way the news works and you can argue “yea there’s nothing more to say so that’s it, so what?” Well, then I say why are there so many news sources? Why do people say one is better than the other? If there’s nothing more to report then why report?
The obvious answer to all 3 questions is money, but it doesn’t stop me from pointing it out.
I know this blog may sound like incoherent ramblings of a young blogger but that’s what I am and I don’t want people thinking I have answers, I just want them thinking… eh alright.
