How Content Farms Exploit Uplifting Memes Like #DivorceSelfie

I've completely given up on the idea that the internet can make the world a better place. No app or social network can connect us. Ordering things and getting rides from faceless slave_drones can't make things any more convenient. No piece of content can correct ages of social problems or create a worldview worth sharing. Personal problems can't be solved by Googling anything and stumbling into strategically created content.

Content farms preying upon the positive hopes of humanity would have you think otherwise. They want to tell the stories that make life worth sharing. Content farms like Upworthy were able to master the art of the inspiring content scalability and the rest of the internet has continued to realize that #uplifting content is a seriously scalable tone worth implementing in a big box content farm.

The recently 'viral' divorce selfie has created a new cultural movement that may solve the nation's divorce crisis, and one couple has decided to finally do something about it while divorcing, but what they did next may make you think twice about why selfies might actually change the way we think about everything.

The self-made content photograph tells a story of a broken couple overcoming their differences [via failed marriage] to post one last selfie in the name of co-parenting. The children will have hope. They will not be abandoned. They will know that even though their parents failed in their relationship, for one last moment, they were able to create content. In dark times, they will always be able to navigate back to Facebook to know that their parents stand together. This type of content-creating teamwork may display that the couple had a real missed opportunity to start a family-style vlogging channel.

This is a story worth telling because it has the best characters, plot, theme, and pre-resolved conflict, ideal for packaging within a blog post/news story/video content package with pre-roll advertising.

This genre of positive content is actually propaganda for social networks, making media companies dependent upon stories that dictate the importance of social networks in our culture. The divorce selfie teaches the middle class that one day, their tiny moment can 'go viral' and 'change the world' by way of getting coverage on long tail sweeper content farms. If you achieve coverage on enough long-tail sweeping content farms, you can find a way to be on the favored side of the 'viral' algorithm.

The divorce selfie is the perfect example of the meaninglessness of the term 'viral.' Of course, virality has never truly been quantified across mediums beyond a Buzzfeed icon. Sure, you can measure tweets, mentions, and hashtags per minute. You can look at Google Trends, and continue to tweak algorithms to give context to 'what people are looking for.' However, the latest paradigm of the curated viral experience is only really aimed at anointing 'viral' rather than breaking a quantifiable, universal threshold. If you defined the rules, it would be even easier to achieve #virality.

In a world where the South Korean pop star Psy has 2 billion views, it is clear that virality means nothing about real engagement, cultural significance or changing the world forever with content.

This divorce selfie and future bleak #divorceselfies will not inspire people to talk about divorce in a 'meaningful way.' There is no genuine discourse that occurs on any content farm or on a social network. It is inspiring Facebook users to share the content within Facebook, and then project their own narrative onto the content. This type of trackable clamoring explains the way any 'value' is gained from the interconnected dependency of content farms and social networks.

Life as a content farmer discourages you from being negative and questioning these constructs of humanity portrayed through the digital realm. Even if you approach the world with a moderately critical view, it will be perceived as 'negative' in relation to the positive-wave world of divorce selfies saving society. Farming content means preying on the moral leanings of long tail readers who are most captivated by projecting their own moral leanings onto hard takes on this 'oddly enough'-style news.

Every day, we are presented with stories that tell us that the world is not what it used to be. This is the one narrative that we can count on to permeate throughout our lives, no matter where we turn to consume content. Uplifting content is the insulin spike of the internet, giving you the instant high to feel as if there is a kind world out there, worth discovering and sharing [via related posts].

Divorce is a widely accepted national pandemic that maybe only viral content can solve (according to uplifting big box content farms). Marriage failures are ruining the moral fabric of our culture, forcing children to grow up without two parents in toxic situations (according to big box content farm consumers). Content farms want you to believe that you should have hope, in any situation, because against all odds, someone had the audacity to create hopeful content.

This selfie didn't help to curb international divorce rates. It wasn't even a great story. These are the types of stories that social networks want to curate as #trending in order to add to the cultural value of social networks. They are post-native unpaid advertorials meant to deepen user perception of the importance of their engagement on any social network. Everyone has the chance to 'go viral,' as long as virality celebrates the idea that #ViralContentMatters.

Carles.Buzz is the fallen content farmer behind HIPSTER RUNOFF. Read more Life on the Content Farm here.