[crsmithdev]

"My flippant tweet began to pick up traction. My intent wasn't to claim that the meme is inherently dangerous."

He spun an offhand comment into full-on opinion manipulation, because we're now reading his article on the topic that not only has a clickbait headline, it seems to imply there's something more to the story, when in fact there isn't.

So now we've got all this digital ink spilled on the (entirely hypothetical) topic, and plenty of eyeballs buying it with their attention. But all of it is vapor, even at the admission of the authors.

[warp_factor]

The issue with internet nowadays to be honest. As soon as you got a bit of traction with a tweet or with a blog post people try to milk it in order to market themselves or other narcissistic interests.

[porpoisely]

It's not the internet. It's media in general. They need to create an artificial story to make a profit. Now that the internet is a profit making center, the media and its tactic has found a welcome home in the internet.

Hence the "arctic blast" about to "ravage the east coast". Or as someone who has lived in the northeast, just winter. Or any other superlative clickbait. Everything is a crisis, everything is a disaster.

[avree]

You are replying to an article written by someone named "Kate O'Neill", in which they include a photograph of themselves via Twitter, and you are referring to them as "he"?

[crsmithdev]

Right, so there's a letter missing from a pronoun. Noted. Any thoughts on the commentary itself? No?