Clickbait

Everything online vies for attention.

If it bleeds, it leads.

If others bleed as a result, click-bait purveyors say the rubes should have known better.

Sensationalism is not new; Yellow Journalism presaged it ages ago.

Sensationalism follows the same rule as heroin: what started one out inevitably requires more.

When sensationalism fails, bald-faced lies begin.

When that is not enough, outrage usually enters.

When outrage is not enough, fear will probably work.

In most of it, snark and memes replace thought.

We are become what we consume, and what we consume is increasingly unreal, addicted to an information drug that displaces truth and reason.

And our world spirals.