"Today, almost my entire team at Upworthy/GOOD was laid off (and I resigned). This talented and passionate group of reporters, editors, growth/data and product experts is now looking for work...."

Tweeted Upworthy editor-in-chief Liz Heron.

I guess people don't want to be up anymore... they want to be down. Or getting boosted up no longer works.

CNN reports:

Upworthy skyrockted to viral fame in 2013 because of its catchy headlines and innovative mastery of Facebook's algorithm. The website is famous for headlines using the "curiosity gap," sentences that end in "You Won't Believe Why." At one point Upworthy attracted 85 million visitors. Traffic dipped to 6.4 million in June, according to ComScore. The website pivoted in 2015, writing original content and hired big names from the Wall Street Journal and New York Times. Good Media bought the website in 2017 and laid off staffers....

"Upworthy showed everyone that you get more pageviews with two-sentence headlines. What happened next will blow your mind."

From a Facebook discussion of the Slate article titled "Republicans Stole the Supreme Court/Democrats, don’t let them get away with it."

"Any kind of edge or stridency is a no-no for shareability."

The secrets of Upworthy, revealed in New York Magazine.

ADDED: The linked article is way too long and obfuscatory. Is Upworthy about building traffic for the ultimate purpose of monetizing and cashing in or is it a political propaganda operation at heart?

It's hard for the reader even to notice that should be the central question. If you do, good luck trying to find an answer in that prose that's cluttered with "Star Trek posters, felt ­Muppet versions of [it doesn't matter], and a cat named Bones with an unerring instinct to hop on the desk during work-related video­conferences, nuzzling his head at [an editor] and, by extension, pointing his anus directly at the camera lens...." and blah blah blah.

"My biggest problem with unworthy is one of my biggest problems with the 2013... internet...."

Says a commenter at Metafilter (and by "unworthy," he means Upworthy).

... i don't want to look at your fucking video to consume your content. I have no problem with videos, i just think they're the wrong medium for a lot of things. Video of something specifically happening, or some visual/multimedia art? Cool. Video documentary of a situation or about a person? fine. Stupid video of someone talking about something with a couple still photos overlaid a few times? Fuck. OFF.

There's an "idiot switch" safety step that's being skipped here. People need to be asking themselves "What would be missing from this if it was simply written out, maybe with a couple inline images?"...

I think unworthy is a far more sinister cancer than even buzzfeed. All the time people send me links to stuff on there and go "omg check this out". Click through at my desk at work/on the loo/etc and go "oh, video, nope"....

You want me to watch a 4:30 video of something i could read in like 45 to 60 seconds even if it was towards the thick end of content these videos ever have?...

There's a lot of pasta sandwich going on here. It's just the wrong type of content for the media.

Things were different back in the days of Rickrolling, when you didn't know you were clicking to a video, and as soon as you saw that you got to a video (that video), you knew you were tricked and you clicked away. Now you know by the teaser that you are getting sent to a video and you're somehow supposed to believe that if you spent a little time watching the material roll out — in that annoying, exasperating way that video subjects you to its time frame — you really will get to experience the promised feelings. Your heart will explode into a sunburst of tiny sparkles or whatever.

You'd think that by now — at the portal to 2014 — we'd be steely and unteaseable. Who would waste 8 seconds anticipating that this video will restore your faith in humankind?

***

Are you like me? When you read the words "if you spent some time watching the material roll out... you really will get to experience the promised feelings," did you switch over to thinking about Obamacare?

I'd like to think that by now — at the portal to 2014 — we'd be steely and unteaseable.

"We Wrote a Heartbreaking and Terrifying Post about Viral Content without Lists or GIFs. Then You Clicked on It, and Magic Happened."

"Sure, you clicked on '8 Reasons Why This Puppy Will Make You Cry and Change Everything.' But what if you didn't cry, and nothing changed?"

Once you've clicked on a few posts that promised to make you cry or change your view of the world forever but didn't deliver, your default assumption will become that when you see something like that, it means somebody's trying to get you to be a part of something artificial.

Yeah, but you've kind of got to give the people who do that kind of virality-by-headline credit for being so terribly transparent. How is anyone even fooled? It's as if your 5-year-old child ran up to you squealing "Ooh, Daddy, look, this is really really cute!" I feel a little embarrassed for these people sometimes. They are adults who've decided to write like a bunch of little girls talking about their little ponies.

I'm pretty sure these headline writers assuage their shame by nurturing their belief that it's all somehow ironic and somehow even edgy and not completely smooshy.

How dumb do you need to be to believe the headline's promise that you'll go all gooey or experience a new charge of hope for humanity? Well, if you're a little slow, then as the above-linked piece predicts, you'll probably eventually learn that it's a come-on, just as you've abandoned any shred of hope that — as it says in the email — you really have won a million dollars and just as, years ago, you were able to remain motionless in your recliner when the late-night TV huckster yelled that you must act now.

I'm more worried that these heavy-handed urgings will dull our response to subtler manipulations. The truly dangerous propaganda isn't about a kitten being cute or a dog welcoming a war veteran. That's the candy of pop culture that might waste our time and do nothing to alleviate our shallowness. We may learn that candy is candy, but that's not much insight at all. Maybe the real trick of places like Buzzfeed and Upworthy is that they get you only so far, far enough to notice and resist/resent sharp pokes in the ribs and to become complacent about your jadedness. And that's what leaves you open and vulnerable to the less obvious propaganda that permeates everything else.

"Reality"?

Upworthy has some interesting pictures from a British department store catalog and the headline is "A Catalog That Believes Reality Can Sell Clothes Better Than Photoshop." But is this "reality" or is just another kind of sensationalism? The first picture makes a nice bigger-is-better argument, but that bigger lady is fabulously large and even she has one leg angled forward and a strategically placed sarong to improve the proportions. And why the amputee models? Because of reality?

"That's an incredibly annoying song. Why are you playing that?"

I ask, and Meade says: "This is 'A Song To Play Every Time You See A Sexist, Racist, Or Homophobic Comment Online.'"

Me: "I would rather be called a 'fucking cunt' than have to listen to that song."

If you want to hear the chirpy irritatingness that I heard, you'll have to go — warning: it's Upworthy — here.

"Our generation wants to know what is going on, but we want it to be fun.... We think people get virality all wrong..."

"The reason people share things are not just because they are shiny and cute and crazy and fun, but because it is about something they are deeply passionate about. It can be about putting your best aspirational self forward."

Says Peter Koechley, on of the founders of Upworthy, interviewed in the NYT.

They began thinking about a site focused on what they considered noble causes, but it took until 2011, when [Chris Hughes, an early founder of Facebook] gave them $500,000 in seed capital, for both to start working on it full-time....

Upworthy produces none of its own content. Instead, it employs roughly 20 “curators” who find obscure video and graphics (but not text) in topic areas — like sexuality, civil rights or economics — that they feel are meaningful, but being passed over. The site repackages the freely available content with snappy headlines and content teases....

Disclosure: Koechley was one of the editors of a Madison high school humor zine, who used to meet at my house back in the 1990s.

Related fact: If only I'd taken my first husband's name, it would be more obvious — on the internet — that I am the author of a non-existent book titled "Post-Divorce, Pre-Death."