The War On…Fluffington Post

The War On… series, a new column exposing contrived media idiocies

Fluffmongering, or the art of peddling fluff, would be the ideal way to describe Internet newspaper [sic], Fluffington Post. Arianna Huffington’s precocious baby, born in May 2005, is now a multi-million dollar uber-tabloid, offering journalism students everywhere a crash-course in the cutting-edge world of cut’n'paste churnalism 2.0.

Indeed, Fluffington Post is currently puffing its own book, The Complete Guiding To Blogging, on its site. The key seems to be this: you can report on the Fourth Estate’s original reporting second-hand, but only if you use a Get Out Of Plagiarism Jail free card. i.e. tagging on a diminutive hyperlink to the original.

In the boring old days, this was called cheating. In today’s brave new w-w-world, it goes by the name “aggregator blog”, which means “borrowing” the hard work of others and presenting it in a lurid, sensationalised way – preferably in size 36 Arianna fonts, bold italics (natch). These aforementioned “headlines” are accompanied either with some ‘aw, shucks!‘ pretty pictures or “video footage” directly from that font of all titillating brainslop, Youtube. For the full user-generated experience, a comment section is added, with Stalinesque models of moderation and censorship in situ to wipe out any dissenting voices from the status quo of More Liberal Than Thou!

Even more amusing and odious than the narcissistic name of this tabloid extravaganza, are the links one can follow to “All Things Arianna”, an exercise of self-marketing worthy of Queen Robot herself, O(h, that’s another million bucks I just made)prah. Here, BS swallowers loyal to the scandal-fuhrer can follow her upcoming schedule, TV appearances, radio appearances, podcasts, publications, speeches, bowel movements, dental visits, and recommended depilatory treatments for stubborn upper-lip and underarm filaments.

As tabloid hooey always has, fluff works on a classic formula of hype promotion; namely Shock & Awesome! Hysterical headlines pull the punters in, while a ribald scoop can make it onto the news networks, where Fluff-meister AH seems to spend a lot of time. The site is therefore littered with digg this and buzz up buttons, to encourage readers to do the hard work of peddling the fluff for them. Adverts, of course, squeal at you from all angles, although it’s often hard to discern between FluffPo “articles” and the candy-coloured adverts themselves. Neat trick.

Like many doing the web-based media mash, FluffPo is involved in a global game of “First!” – that annoying thing users like to write on freshly-minted articles. Simultaneously, now that FluffPo has been successful in helping to get a pwoper-woper wiberal into the Whitehouse, it can no longer sleep. FluffPo is a 24/7 many-headed beast, not content at sticking to politics, it is now metastasizing into Style and Living and a bizarre phenomenon called Big News. You can bet superabundantly-sized readers heaved a humongous sigh of relief when they saw that they were getting their very own wide-angle coverage, eh?

FluffPo is now a highly virulent news sphincter, capable of squeezing out any old dribble of news and hearsay into sensationalist coils of hyper-caca, and is, even as I write, evolving into Obama’s very own mouthpiece.

Stories coming to a FluffPo near you:

- Boxers, Y-Fronts or Tanga Thongs – What Obama’s Underwear Could Say About The Next 4 Years!

– Obama’s Daughters Wearing Jimmy Choos? That’s So Last Year But Says A Lot About The Crisis At The Heart of Young Womanhood

– Herstory – What Obama’s Wife’s Nail Polish Has To Say About The State Liberal American Nails Are In (And Why It Matters To YOU!)