This blog post seemed rather silly to me. It's poor journalism and quite frankly not news worthy. It feels like something that the author hopes gets picked up by Digg/Reddit/etc.
The author writes for the same blog as I do and I disagree this not being news. It is on the front page of HN right now with 50+ comments. If so many people care about it it is newsworthy.
Newsworthy isn't the same as "can get me traffic from hacker news." The initial event was newsworthy. But this meta discussion is just inciting angry behavior from people. That type of behavior drives traffic, of course, and I think it is extremely inappropriate to be using such a tactic with regards to such a sensitive subject.
I suppose my comments are delving into a larger problem with the media in general, and the constant use of sensationalized stories and facts in order to get more exposure. All the main news organizations are doing it as well, but I wish journalists would cover things that actual mattered. We blame the government and greedy businessmen for the current state of the economy, but honestly if we still had independent journalism, it probably would have never happened. What a man can do, a man will do, and in our society, what a powerful man can do is limited only by what the media will call him out on.
Anyway, I'm getting off topic. The bottom line is that page views != value. This seems like a blatant attempt at page views.
You make it sound like page views were invented by the Devil himself. Page views aren't bad and a good reflection of what people find interesting. Yes, this story is interesting. The 50+ comments are extremely interesting and highlight all the aspects that make this story interesting. Every blogger writes for an audience and having more people read your story is a good sign. The fact that this story was posted here (by someone not associated with that particular blog) is proof of that.
The blog post is clearly sensationalized. A poll option to fire him, really? There's also zero original content or insightful commentary, It's essentially just a copy/paste job from drama that happened on this site, with a bit of spice for page views thrown in.
This whole thing is an absurdly tragic event that is triggering all sorts of trollish behavior here. It is very sad, but the resulting discussion about tragedy and the meta conversation discussing the discussion of tragedy is just mean-spirited because this whole thing is making people feel very emotional.
Please flag this post and move on, the blogger doesn't deserve the traffic.
this whole thing is making people feel very emotional.
Serious question: is it?
I know people are saying things like "It's so sad", etc, but till now I was assuming that it's somewhat in the same vein as people who say "ROTFLMAO" 99% of the time. They're not usually rolling around on the floor laughing out loud, but they want to relay the spirit of as if they were. That is, it is sad that these things occur, but it doesn't affect one's emotional state due to the lack of connection to the event.
Few who aren't personally involved in the story are "emotional" about it, right? If they are, I'm intrigued. It shows an interesting cross over between fiction and reality in the emotional lives of some people - one I'm sure has probably already been studied to death by all the psychologists out there.
I mean emotionalness in the meta discussion, not sadness about the actual event. "Act emotionally" would have been better to say than feel emotional. People are saying angry things to each other that they probably wouldn't say to each other face to face.
Aha! Well, my questions still stand for anyone bored enough to ponder them, but yes, it seems in the meta discussion it's bit like the Normal Person + Internet Anonymity = Total Jerk comic strip ;-)
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[ 5.6 ms ] story [ 50.7 ms ] threadI know I can't.
Anyway, I'm getting off topic. The bottom line is that page views != value. This seems like a blatant attempt at page views.
Please flag this post and move on, the blogger doesn't deserve the traffic.
Serious question: is it?
I know people are saying things like "It's so sad", etc, but till now I was assuming that it's somewhat in the same vein as people who say "ROTFLMAO" 99% of the time. They're not usually rolling around on the floor laughing out loud, but they want to relay the spirit of as if they were. That is, it is sad that these things occur, but it doesn't affect one's emotional state due to the lack of connection to the event.
Few who aren't personally involved in the story are "emotional" about it, right? If they are, I'm intrigued. It shows an interesting cross over between fiction and reality in the emotional lives of some people - one I'm sure has probably already been studied to death by all the psychologists out there.