This Daily Dot piece on the early days of a Content Farm makes you realize that for some, 2009 is "the early days" of the internet. Hah! It's an interesting look at the soul-smothering process of writing something no one will ever read for a company doomed to stutter and shutter some day, or get bought by a big player who'll pay too much, won't know what to do with it, fold it into the big blob of useless features, then close it down, leaving only ghostly pages in the Internet Archive.
At least the pieces the author wrote consisted of actual writing, instead of the subliterate cutlines in the link-chum like "1,046 Shocking Historical Pictures That Will Leave You Speechless (#932 is scary!)" The article links to a blog devoted to hammering the Content Farm for various reasons, and one entry begins thus:
Sound familiar?
If it doesn't, you don't remember the unchanging intro of our old friend, Jim Anchower, the Bard of Wisconsin.(Warning: language, if you're bothered by salty vernacular.)
Anyway: the Daily Dot piece has this observation:
Absolutely so. I check out the chum boxes just to see how bad they get; today I found a useless site that promised 20 shocking photos of the sinking of the Titanic.Not one photo of the sinking of the Titanic.
