This article in Business Insider was making the rounds on my Twitter feed last week for its dystopian lede:
The title and content have shifted around a bit, from being “– and it was worth it” (Narrator: No, it was not) or, more recently, taking a nuanced “If I could go back through time and avoid this traumatic event…” tenor. It’s horrifying, weird, seems contrived, and people (such as myself) have spent more than a nanosecond making the Scooby-Doo noise.
The author’s bio supports my suspicion that maybe this is a demonstration of “a very particular set of skills,” those being summarized as SEO (“Search Engine Optimization”), or tailoring content to make it appear on the first page of (primarily) Google search results and generate traffic. Having worked indirectly with SEO folks at prior employers, it’s my impression they’re it an inherently unstable interaction of measuring, experimenting, measuring again, and luck.
