I was just having a conversation with a friend about the increasing frequency of upworthy posts showing up on our facebook news feeds.
The conversation turned to upworthy's amazing ability to write headlines, the nature of "creating the gap" in headlines, etc. ref: 1 2
The posts themselves are often stupid, shallow, and pointless. If they told us what the article/video was actually about in the headline, we wouldn't feel so compelled to click them!
"I wish there was a way to see an alternate headline that actually explains what the post is about. So I can read the upworthy headline, click it, and have it toggle to the stupid, infuriatingly shallow point of the post. Then I wouldn't have to actually visit upworthy and waste my time."
So. Someone make this for the sake of humanity. Please.
The name of the app would be "Unworthy"
I loathe Upworthy with an irrational burning rage which spills over to scald all similar sites with similar names: Viralnova, ClickTwitcher, CynicalSpread, EpidemiLOLery... The seething repulsion begins at first apprehension of the headlines which are now parodies of themselves. The subtle analyses of the psychology of 'creating the gap' driving think-pieces in The New Yorker, which we can all dissect over cocktails and electronic cigarettes, neatly sidesteps the pre-existing conditions of the headlines which are that they are cynical travesties of informational presentation; textual versions of prancing little man-whores with tight arses, eager and breathless with promise and mystery; heavy-lidded, raven-haired, inconceivably buxom sirens, pursing their lips and mouthing something you can't quite catch unless you lean in. They're the textual equivalent of the sexualisation of advertising except instead of exploiting our hard-wired libido they leverage our natural curiosity and, in exactly the same way, they might work but they leave us feeling hollow and exploited. Even when, defeated, we click... Then the bastard JS popover, with its facile messages. Isn't it nice to live in a world in which people live in a nice world? Don't you agree that good things are good? Yes, is the opposite of no, yes? An interaction created by bastards in a bastard's attempt to condition you to agree to something meaningless, placed there by bastards whose bastard misunderstanding of some poor bastard's psychological assertion in some bastard paper cited out of context somewhere has taken the irritating technology of JS popovers and blended them with the irritating pop psychological preenings of post-intellectual internet echo chamber researchers into a kind of festival of bastards, celebrated in pastel shades with rounded corners and drop shadow, appearing at some carefully calculated moment – no doubt specified by bastards in a bastard formula somewhere which links irritation with operant conditioning – just after one arrives on the bastard page that one is trying to read in the first place, like a idiot Cerberus the dog guarding the entrance to Hades. For the final destination is a kind of content hell. What happens next doesn't amaze me. What she did doesn't warm my heart. It may, had I stumbled across it organically. Instead I approach these lost, howling damned souls first stained by disappointment that one of my peers posted link, then grey with self-loathing that its street-corner gyrations actually worked upon me and seduced me into clicking, then insulted by the obfuscating inanity of the popup and finally ending up at a piss-poor bit of marketing someone spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to make look like an amateur video. Even when a genuinely interesting piece of content makes it through, I hate it before I've even clicked play. In a sense, the transactional miasma of social networking exploitation surrounding what might have brought tiny shoots of delight to the frozen winter soil of my heart instead just makes my eyes sting and water. Or maybe that's just me. Here's the Chrome extension I'd like. First, it assesses the content of my page and identifies all Upworthy links – and their cousins – and collapses or otherwise removes their containers. Then it would identify key moments in human history where these bastards sat in their bright, airy offices in front of their 27 inch iMac screens nursing their Fairtrade Organic imported coffee and having the first inklings of their ideas to revolutionise content sharing. Then it would open a portal through n-dimensional spacetime and allow me to travel there. And it would give me a length of lead piping. What would happen next would astound you.
This gif is going to blow your mind. (It's also how I feel about your comment.)
Holy shit. Remind me never to get on your bad side.
I'm a pussycat with a thesaurus, really. Though we should totally start epidemiLOLogy.com. #drunkstartups
Perhaps something that reads the page for phrases that come up frequently, so quoted text in the comments, or things the author says repeatedly. Additionally, maybe bolded or italicized text, so you see where the author put emphasis (I don't know if that's common. I refuse to give them traffic to find out) and then it makes a small preview window on the page you're on to view those select pieces of text. It would be great for Buzzfeed and Cracked as well.
Holy shit, I had this exact same idea, but as a website. Some sort of script that pulls content straight from Upworthy-type shit sites and posts them straight onto the separate page, no bullshit. Seriously though, I hate those sites with every fiber of my being. And so many of my Facebook friends post content from those kinds of sites. I'm trying so hard to continue to love them (my friends), but they're making it really, really hard.