Something must have happened to Pajamas Media sometime.

This grabbed me by the eyeballs and I opened up the app called Grab and made this capture for you:



That's the "Editor's Choice" in the sidebar when I clicked on "Meryl Streep Admits She Reads Drudge, Watches Fox News."*

Let's talk about the psychology of Pajamas Media or, more accurately, the psychology Pajamas Media imagines in its readers. Somebody there believes that putting those 3 things together will work on you to click one. And they can see which one readers choose. Which way does your anxiety lead you? You can always calm yourself with the "overrated male musicians" if the idea of sexualized boys and adult wussies is too disturbing.

You might take refuge in "overrated male musicians" because it's the one that's not overtly sexual, and you know you'll see familiar faces — warning: you have to click through multiple pages — and you can dreamily lose yourself in contemplating how highly these men are rated and then whether they should really be rated lower. Hey! If you do that, maybe you're experiencing "modern life" and getting transformed into a wussy. What manly man gives a fuck whether musicians are overrated? By the way, the listicle is written by a woman and she begins by talking about Woody Allen and his 40-year-old riff from "Manhattan" about which writers are overrated.

I skimmed "How Modern Life Transforms Men into Wussies," including clicking through 4 pages. Apparently, men these days watch action movies and play video games instead of doing manly outdoor things. Well, if you're reading that article, you're probably not flexing your muscles out in the elements. And be careful. You're a modern man on the precipice of the wussy-making machine. You may be moved to comment over there, participating by whimpering something like: "So you just finished pointing out just how crappy the situation is for men, and then chide us for not participating in it?" Poor man. He should have opened door #3 where he could have calmly nodded over the notion that Stevie Wonder is overrated.

Need I open door #2, "New York Times Celebrates Sexualization of 10-Year-Old Boy"? It must attract PJ Media clicks, since it's an article that's already almost a month old. Of course, the NYT article doesn't talk about the "sexualization" of the boy, and it certainly doesn't "celebrate sexualization" of a child. It merely enthuses about a boy wearing what would be a depressing shitload of makeup on a grown woman. The PJ Media article chides the NYT: "Apparently, there are... many cosmetics companies and fashion magazines willing to whore out young boys for the sake of sales and clicks." But PJ Media is also using that madeup boy to get clicks, and it's putting "sexualization" in the article title and pimping it — weeks after its original publication — in the sidebar under a headline written to scare men about the world turning them into "wussies."

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* Don't get too excited about that nonnews. Meryl Streep is talking about news media, because she's in a new Steven Spielberg movie about the Pentagon Papers. She plays the role "of Washington Post reporter Katharine Graham," as PJ Media puts it. Katharine Graham wasn't a "reporter." She owned the newspaper and was its publisher. Anyway, Streep was answering questions about what media she consumes, she listed a lot of things, and on mentioning Fox, added that she looks at it "to see the manipulation." All the media manipulate, so I only wonder if she tries to see manipulation when she looks at media that lean the way she likes, but I'm not a reporter, I'm not interviewing Meryl Streep. I'm just a humble blogger prying my way into Pajamas Media at 5 in the morning.