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It's Not News, It's Fark: How Mass Media Tries to Pass Off Crap As News
A founder of the popular comedic news Web site describes media patterns that demonstrate the lack of accurate and quality reportage taking place in the media world today, revealing practices of news mongers, bogus press releases, and coverage of seemingly inane subjects. 50,000 first printing.
288 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2007
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321 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 83 reviews
November 29, 2009
Right before I left New York a few years ago, I was anonymously sponsored for a TotalFark subscription. TotalFark is a sub-community of the news aggregator site, Fark, in which people pay $5 per month or are sponsored to enjoy a smaller posting community with extra viewing privileges. That's the most objective way I can define it, as since then it has changed my life dramatically. (I know, gross.)
I mention TF because it is only through the random sponsorship of Anonymous that I saw an announcement for the NYC Fark party where I met Drew. We had a nice one-on-one discussion about his new book, which I just got around to reading now. Having a strong interest in how people consume different types of media, I remember liking the premise he laid out. But at the end of our talk, I was mostly thinking, I just got a one-hour summary of a book on media by the author himself. Now I don't have to read it. Sweet!
Oh, how time and boredom make fools of us all.
I won't say the book was a waste of time, since mine comes cheap these days. However, it regurgitated much of what you could just read on Fark with some clever commentary from the book author and site creator himself. Sometimes it's funny, sometimes it's obvious. At times, it was even a little informative, but every once in awhile, it kind of missed the mark.
Funny: If my aunt had balls, she'd be my uncle. I really liked this immature way of explaining a valid point.
Obvious: Top 10 lists exist solely as commercials for the people who make them. Even when the publications explain the metrics used to arrive at their rankings (which is rare), they're still ridiculously biased.
Informative: I was wondering why Florida had its own headline tag. That state has the absolute most WTF stories in the entire US. Without Florida, Fark might not have existed.
Missed the Mark: He complains about people misinterpreting statistics, but in the same paragraph says 90 percent of any random group of people will be made up of dumbasses. I guess he could have mentioned that 82 percent of all statistics are completely made up, but I guess 67 percent of his readers already know that.
One of my favorite chapters was "Equal Time for Nutjobs". I agree that the media gives them far too much airtime in the interest of seeming unbiased and attracting readers with sensationalism. Toward the end of the chapter, he openly invites the media to "stop making the 'where do we draw the line?' argument. Just make a judgment call already." Yes. THIS.
To say this book is an all-out media bitch-fest is an understatement. It's full of clever criticisms, and I agree with them. I'm only giving the book three stars because he doesn't cover anything (aside from Fark-centric stuff) that you wouldn't hear in a college journalism class. Having participated in many discussions covering similar topics, I don't feel the book did much but reaffirm my hatred of journalism. It's okay though, because the book even has a section on the media's is self-loathing. As it should.
We have too much space, too much "media", and not enough actual news. And yes, the journalism profession has become defined by laziness. This started happening before my lifetime, but I'm sure it wasn't always the case. The internet really brought things to a head, making it worse than ever. Toward the end of the book, Drew spends a few pages discussing how online advertising changed everything, and I would have liked to have seen more depth on that since it's less obvious than the rest of the book.
To that end, Drew is not so different from the journalists he denounces. He's telling us stuff we already know and illustrating his points with summarized articles from an outside source and copypasta'ed quotes from Farkers.
As the site got popular, someone probably told him there was money to be made if he authored a book. He may not have admitted that directly in our conversation a few years ago, but I like that he didn't claim to break any ground either. "Read it or don't read it. I don't really care" seemed to be his marketing message. It was a refreshing indifference for a book author, but a common sentiment among writers expected to churn out dozens of articles per week.
I appreciate that he thanks Delta Airlines in the Acknowledgments section for delaying all of his flights so he would have time to write this book. I can say from experience Delta is to air travel what the National Enquirer is to journalism. So Drew hates the media AND Delta, and his writing is the result of sheer boredom. He's truly an everyman after my own heart.
This book is neither full of win, nor full of fail. And before you tell me to DIAF or EABOD, just know that ceiling cat is watching me write this, and if you comment on this review, I will really be getting a kick out of your replies.
I mention TF because it is only through the random sponsorship of Anonymous that I saw an announcement for the NYC Fark party where I met Drew. We had a nice one-on-one discussion about his new book, which I just got around to reading now. Having a strong interest in how people consume different types of media, I remember liking the premise he laid out. But at the end of our talk, I was mostly thinking, I just got a one-hour summary of a book on media by the author himself. Now I don't have to read it. Sweet!
Oh, how time and boredom make fools of us all.
I won't say the book was a waste of time, since mine comes cheap these days. However, it regurgitated much of what you could just read on Fark with some clever commentary from the book author and site creator himself. Sometimes it's funny, sometimes it's obvious. At times, it was even a little informative, but every once in awhile, it kind of missed the mark.
Funny: If my aunt had balls, she'd be my uncle. I really liked this immature way of explaining a valid point.
Obvious: Top 10 lists exist solely as commercials for the people who make them. Even when the publications explain the metrics used to arrive at their rankings (which is rare), they're still ridiculously biased.
Informative: I was wondering why Florida had its own headline tag. That state has the absolute most WTF stories in the entire US. Without Florida, Fark might not have existed.
Missed the Mark: He complains about people misinterpreting statistics, but in the same paragraph says 90 percent of any random group of people will be made up of dumbasses. I guess he could have mentioned that 82 percent of all statistics are completely made up, but I guess 67 percent of his readers already know that.
One of my favorite chapters was "Equal Time for Nutjobs". I agree that the media gives them far too much airtime in the interest of seeming unbiased and attracting readers with sensationalism. Toward the end of the chapter, he openly invites the media to "stop making the 'where do we draw the line?' argument. Just make a judgment call already." Yes. THIS.
To say this book is an all-out media bitch-fest is an understatement. It's full of clever criticisms, and I agree with them. I'm only giving the book three stars because he doesn't cover anything (aside from Fark-centric stuff) that you wouldn't hear in a college journalism class. Having participated in many discussions covering similar topics, I don't feel the book did much but reaffirm my hatred of journalism. It's okay though, because the book even has a section on the media's is self-loathing. As it should.
We have too much space, too much "media", and not enough actual news. And yes, the journalism profession has become defined by laziness. This started happening before my lifetime, but I'm sure it wasn't always the case. The internet really brought things to a head, making it worse than ever. Toward the end of the book, Drew spends a few pages discussing how online advertising changed everything, and I would have liked to have seen more depth on that since it's less obvious than the rest of the book.
To that end, Drew is not so different from the journalists he denounces. He's telling us stuff we already know and illustrating his points with summarized articles from an outside source and copypasta'ed quotes from Farkers.
As the site got popular, someone probably told him there was money to be made if he authored a book. He may not have admitted that directly in our conversation a few years ago, but I like that he didn't claim to break any ground either. "Read it or don't read it. I don't really care" seemed to be his marketing message. It was a refreshing indifference for a book author, but a common sentiment among writers expected to churn out dozens of articles per week.
I appreciate that he thanks Delta Airlines in the Acknowledgments section for delaying all of his flights so he would have time to write this book. I can say from experience Delta is to air travel what the National Enquirer is to journalism. So Drew hates the media AND Delta, and his writing is the result of sheer boredom. He's truly an everyman after my own heart.
This book is neither full of win, nor full of fail. And before you tell me to DIAF or EABOD, just know that ceiling cat is watching me write this, and if you comment on this review, I will really be getting a kick out of your replies.
December 29, 2014
★★★☆ for the introduction. On its own it would have made an interesting article, setting out a mildly humorous, yet fairly insightful, taxonomy of the sorts of stories mass media runs in the absence of any real news (“Media Fearmongering”, “Unpaid Placement Masquerading as Actual Article”, “Headline Contradicted by Actual Article”, “Equal Time for Nutjobs”, “The Out-of-Context Celebrity Comment”, “Seasonal Articles”, “Media Fatique”, “Lesser Media Space Fillers”).
The rest of the book, however, gets barely a single star. The examples of each type of story often aren't particularly interesting or enlightening (and the author can't seem to decide whether they should be funny or not), and the inclusion of seemingly random comments from Fark users about each story is so far beyond needless than even quickly skipping over them all without reading them still made me feel more stupid by association.
The rest of the book, however, gets barely a single star. The examples of each type of story often aren't particularly interesting or enlightening (and the author can't seem to decide whether they should be funny or not), and the inclusion of seemingly random comments from Fark users about each story is so far beyond needless than even quickly skipping over them all without reading them still made me feel more stupid by association.
Read
January 11, 2024Brief Summary:
The novel Fark is an exposé of the news media industry. The novel is based on a website created by Drew Curtis called Fark.com, which exposes lazy journalism and inaccurate reporting. The website reviews thousands of articles a day and corrects and criticizes them. The novel starts with Curtis’s commentary on how Media companies should change and then addresses the different problems he sees with mass media. The author takes a cynical approach to mass media. The book separates the media articles into the eight styles that Fark reviews: Media fearmongering; unpaid placement masquerading as an actual article; headline contradicted by actual article; equal time for nutjobs; the out-of-context celebrity comment; seasonal articles; media fatigue; and lesser media space fillers. The book dives into how the mass media produces articles which are false or unimportant in each style. Curtis finishes the novel with his thoughts on why the news has these unimportant or overblown stories, and what can be done. He realizes that the media companies are about making money and that clicks are what make the money, not an article’s importance to society. Curtis’s ‘solution’ is that there is not one, he says, “Everyone claims to want real news, but no one really does” (page 254).
2 Adjectives to describe the novel:
Critical - The novel analyzes the different strategies of mass media, however, because Curtis’s website, which the novel is based on, is about showing laziness in journalism, the novel consistently disapproves of the media companies' articles and decisions.
Extended - The novel was 200 pages too long. Curtis, having read through “2,000 news articles a day,” wants to share a large number of the articles (page 8). However, for a reader who does not have the same dedication, the novel is too long. Curtis will give a “mass media pattern,” and then provide too many examples when few would suffice. In the first chapter, there are fourteen examples of “media fearmongering” (page 19). The fearmongering is based on people's concern about threats to their safety: natural disasters, health problems and violent attacks. The three main ideas could have been explained by an example each, but Curtis used four or five interchangeable articles. Curtis has also included the comment section from his website. This mostly provided nothing, except for people agreeing with Curtis.
Something I learned:
In reading the novel, I learned how streamlined the laziness in the news industry is. In Chapter Three, it is revealed that a few “wire services” exist to digest press releases and spit them out for mass media to buy and release instantly “word for word” (page 59). This revealed how truly lax some companies and editors are to me.
Something I liked:
I liked the conversational style of writing. When reading the novel, I felt like I was having a conversation with Drew Curtis and he was explaining his frustration and critiques of the media industry. Curtis used conversational language, swearing and unimportant but character-defining subjects. Curtis’s language throughout was not difficult to understand, I never had to look up any definitions while reading. His use of swears threw off the reader and put an unprofessional feel into the book. This feel was reinforced by the constant mention of ‘Duke sucks.’ Curtis would use almost any moment of negativity into a joke against Duke. When talking about Equal Time for Nutjobs, he talks about having opposing opinions for facts, like the Holocaust, the moon landing, or “that Duke sucks,” and that the secondary opinion is not necessary as they are true statements or events.
Something I didn’t like:
This novel was made to expose the laziness of mass media, and the unnecessary amount of ‘news’ that is produced, but the novel was too long for the amount of interesting points. Reading the novel was like scrolling through Instagram. Most of the stories were repetitive and provided nothing but the same examples; however, some were gripping and kept my attention for the majority of the novel. I kept waiting for the interesting articles to pop up. Usually, they were right after the explanation. After I finished the novel, I reflected and realized that the novel could have been 200 pages shorter.
An implication (What does the information mean for us):
The implication for today is not the same as it was when the book was released. Now, social media reigns as the paperboy for news and mimics the similar style of lazy content production Curtis highlights. As going viral becomes commonplace, more people start to think they can get internet famous. Copycats arise more and more often. The internet is so large that most of a creator's audience will not see if they copy from another person, so if someone wants to go viral they can duplicate the work of another person who has already seen success. The duplication is similar to the mass media sharing of articles from sources like A.P. Reuters. As social media becomes a bigger part of our lives, we have to make sure that our news and content are not duplicated from another person, and especially that the creators have not reposted the information without fact-checking first.
Who is the novel for?:
The novel is for the people who feel overwhelmed when reading the news. This book helps the reader understand that the news is a for-profit business and that they make money off clicks and have deadlines to meet. The novel shows how not everything is true and can be misleading. The mass media wants to create stress over the news as it leads to repeat customers and the mounds of articles written every day are not all important.
Quote from the novel:
“Occasionally someone would protest one of the stunts, like Vasectomy Night, which was good for another run through the press” (84).
This quote encapsulates what the whole novel is trying to expose. The only point of the outrageous media stunts and devices used by mass media is to enrage, shock and interest. All of the reactions are good for the news companies as the story becomes more popular and raises profits.
The novel Fark is an exposé of the news media industry. The novel is based on a website created by Drew Curtis called Fark.com, which exposes lazy journalism and inaccurate reporting. The website reviews thousands of articles a day and corrects and criticizes them. The novel starts with Curtis’s commentary on how Media companies should change and then addresses the different problems he sees with mass media. The author takes a cynical approach to mass media. The book separates the media articles into the eight styles that Fark reviews: Media fearmongering; unpaid placement masquerading as an actual article; headline contradicted by actual article; equal time for nutjobs; the out-of-context celebrity comment; seasonal articles; media fatigue; and lesser media space fillers. The book dives into how the mass media produces articles which are false or unimportant in each style. Curtis finishes the novel with his thoughts on why the news has these unimportant or overblown stories, and what can be done. He realizes that the media companies are about making money and that clicks are what make the money, not an article’s importance to society. Curtis’s ‘solution’ is that there is not one, he says, “Everyone claims to want real news, but no one really does” (page 254).
2 Adjectives to describe the novel:
Critical - The novel analyzes the different strategies of mass media, however, because Curtis’s website, which the novel is based on, is about showing laziness in journalism, the novel consistently disapproves of the media companies' articles and decisions.
Extended - The novel was 200 pages too long. Curtis, having read through “2,000 news articles a day,” wants to share a large number of the articles (page 8). However, for a reader who does not have the same dedication, the novel is too long. Curtis will give a “mass media pattern,” and then provide too many examples when few would suffice. In the first chapter, there are fourteen examples of “media fearmongering” (page 19). The fearmongering is based on people's concern about threats to their safety: natural disasters, health problems and violent attacks. The three main ideas could have been explained by an example each, but Curtis used four or five interchangeable articles. Curtis has also included the comment section from his website. This mostly provided nothing, except for people agreeing with Curtis.
Something I learned:
In reading the novel, I learned how streamlined the laziness in the news industry is. In Chapter Three, it is revealed that a few “wire services” exist to digest press releases and spit them out for mass media to buy and release instantly “word for word” (page 59). This revealed how truly lax some companies and editors are to me.
Something I liked:
I liked the conversational style of writing. When reading the novel, I felt like I was having a conversation with Drew Curtis and he was explaining his frustration and critiques of the media industry. Curtis used conversational language, swearing and unimportant but character-defining subjects. Curtis’s language throughout was not difficult to understand, I never had to look up any definitions while reading. His use of swears threw off the reader and put an unprofessional feel into the book. This feel was reinforced by the constant mention of ‘Duke sucks.’ Curtis would use almost any moment of negativity into a joke against Duke. When talking about Equal Time for Nutjobs, he talks about having opposing opinions for facts, like the Holocaust, the moon landing, or “that Duke sucks,” and that the secondary opinion is not necessary as they are true statements or events.
Something I didn’t like:
This novel was made to expose the laziness of mass media, and the unnecessary amount of ‘news’ that is produced, but the novel was too long for the amount of interesting points. Reading the novel was like scrolling through Instagram. Most of the stories were repetitive and provided nothing but the same examples; however, some were gripping and kept my attention for the majority of the novel. I kept waiting for the interesting articles to pop up. Usually, they were right after the explanation. After I finished the novel, I reflected and realized that the novel could have been 200 pages shorter.
An implication (What does the information mean for us):
The implication for today is not the same as it was when the book was released. Now, social media reigns as the paperboy for news and mimics the similar style of lazy content production Curtis highlights. As going viral becomes commonplace, more people start to think they can get internet famous. Copycats arise more and more often. The internet is so large that most of a creator's audience will not see if they copy from another person, so if someone wants to go viral they can duplicate the work of another person who has already seen success. The duplication is similar to the mass media sharing of articles from sources like A.P. Reuters. As social media becomes a bigger part of our lives, we have to make sure that our news and content are not duplicated from another person, and especially that the creators have not reposted the information without fact-checking first.
Who is the novel for?:
The novel is for the people who feel overwhelmed when reading the news. This book helps the reader understand that the news is a for-profit business and that they make money off clicks and have deadlines to meet. The novel shows how not everything is true and can be misleading. The mass media wants to create stress over the news as it leads to repeat customers and the mounds of articles written every day are not all important.
Quote from the novel:
“Occasionally someone would protest one of the stunts, like Vasectomy Night, which was good for another run through the press” (84).
This quote encapsulates what the whole novel is trying to expose. The only point of the outrageous media stunts and devices used by mass media is to enrage, shock and interest. All of the reactions are good for the news companies as the story becomes more popular and raises profits.
May 11, 2009
I really liked this in the beginning, but then I began to lose interest.
Also, I took a bit of offense at the take that news outside of NYC and LA is not covered. Of course NYC and LA get tons of coverage: they're our biggest (and greatest) cities! Boo hoo, Kentucky!
Also, I took a bit of offense at the take that news outside of NYC and LA is not covered. Of course NYC and LA get tons of coverage: they're our biggest (and greatest) cities! Boo hoo, Kentucky!
May 15, 2008
Funny, but about 200 pages too long.
June 18, 2009
You all know FARK.com, right? What? You've never heard of it? I'm honestly and truly shocked - unless, of course, you've been away from the internet for the last ten years, in which case you may be forgiven. For the rest of you - SHAME!
FARK is a news aggregator website, though it differs from others in that it's entirely moderated. People submit stories that they think are interesting, add what they hope is a funny tag line or title, and see if it'll be green-lit to make the front page. Over the years, as FARK's audience has grown to make it one of the most influential websites out there, FARK has become a kind of go-to site for news and commentary, though probably not the erudite, level-headed commentary we all might want.
Whether site creator Drew Curtis intended it or not, FARK has become a de facto source of news for many people on the internet who are looking not so much for the top stories of the day, but for all the strange, cool, heroic and Florida-centered news that CNN claims to have too much dignity to run. Over its decade-long history, Curtis has seen thousands upon thousands of articles, moderated countless threads about the day's news and, therefore, believes he has a pretty good idea of how the mass media works.
In this book, Curtis uses his experience as a professional newshound to look at the trends in mass media, attempting to identify the reasons why there's so much irrelevant crap out there. We all know what he's talking about - the helicopter shots of motorcades, the Missing White Women, the shark attacks, internet predators and the top ten lists of household products that could kill you and your family. We've all seen this and asked, "Why are they bothering with this crap?"
According to this book, there's two big reasons: the endless, 24-hour news cycle and sheer human laziness.
There is only so much Real News in any given day, Curtis believes, and I agree with him. The question, of course, is "What is 'real news,'" and rather than try to determine what real news is, Curtis decides to explain what real news isn't. As for the rest, we'll know it when we see it.
Of the many ways that the mass media tries to fill time and space, Curtis points out seven major ones, my favorite being Media Fearmongering. I suppose I like this because it's just so obvious and so easy. Examples include the current hype over where to relocate the world-devouring supervillains from Guantanamo, the perennial articles about how hidden earthquake faults could kill us all, and the airplane crash stories. The recent crash of Air France 447 is an excellent example.
While it is certainly a terrible thing that the plane went down, and important to the families and friends of those who died on the plane, is it really a topic the needs a week of international coverage? 228 people died in that crash, and while it's not really fair to weigh one death against another, it is estimated that that many people die in car accidents every two and a half days in the United States. The same goes for suicides in Japan. So why does the media go nuts for a plane crash, but not for unsafe driving or suicide? My guess is that a plane crash is more spectacular, more mysterious and more likely to get people's attention. Reporting on the actual number of auto-related fatalities would hit too close to home. What's more, a plane crash story probably writes itself. Change a few names and numbers, and the reporting on one crash looks pretty much like every other. That combination of spectacle and sloth makes plane crashes a godsend for reporters and editors with time to fill.
Fearmongering in the media isn't harmless either. Last year, in the run-up to the activation of the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland, there were a lot of articles about whether or not the LHC would destroy the world. Rather than do some investigating, ask some experts and report back that it wouldn't, the media decided to teach the controversy. Matching another of Curtis' bad news categories, they gave Equal Time to Nutjobs who claimed that the work at the LHC would destroy the world. Rather than debunk the nutjobs, they played it for all it was worth, claiming that there actually was a controversy over the LHC, when in fact no such controversy existed.
One of the effects of this was the suicide of a girl in India, who believed in the end-of-the-world scenarios. She was sixteen years old, and the news convinced her that she and everyone she loved was going to die. Can we hold the mass media directly responsible for this girl's death? Only if we can hold them responsible for the other deaths their fearmongering has caused - and here I'm thinking of the "controversy" over whether vaccines cause autism. They don't, but it's more fun for people like Oprah Winfrey to pretend they do. And so kids die.
My other favorite Not News is Media Fatigue - what happens when the media eats itself. With twenty-four hours a day to fill, but without twenty-four hours of news to fill it, the competition for breaking news is incredibly fierce. The first network to report on a big story will basically own that story, and the other networks have to scramble to catch up. In that writhing, twisting nest of vipers, it's sometimes very hard for anyone to stop reporting on a story that has basically run its course - thus, media fatigue. Curtis has broken it down into five simple steps:
1. News breaks
2. Issue retractions
3. Talk it to death
4. Can't... stop... talking
5. Has The Media Gone Too Far?
By the time they stop focusing on the story and start talking about themselves, you can be pretty sure that you're seeing the end of it. Examples of Media Fatigue abound, and Curtis uses Dick Cheney's shooting spree and Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction as examples. Really, neither of these events were news of any import. Hunting accidents happen all the time, and Jackson's boob-flash was so quick and so low-def that most viewers didn't know they had seen it until they were told they had (and probably didn't know they should be outraged until there were told they should be). But both stories generated media storms that didn't blow out until way past their expiration dates.
The point is that while the concept of news on demand is good, the execution of it has been terrible. With networks talking about health care reform in the same breath as whether or not David Letterman made an inappropriate joke, it's hard for the audience to know what they should read and what they should ignore. While the news providers' position has always been 'We leave it up to the readers to judge what's important and what isn't," that flies in the face of what we all know about human nature: people can be really, really dumb. People don't have the time or the inclination to read every story, judge it on its merits and sort the wheat from the chaff, and to pretend otherwise reveals either a profound misunderstanding of human nature or a level of cynicism that makes me look like Pollyanna.
While it may seem all patriarchal, I think we do need someone to draw the line and say what is news and what isn't. I don't know who, or how, but someone should do it if only so that we can have a news source that we can trust to give us what we need to know. Put the Britney and Elvis stories in the tabloids - if we buy those, we know what we're getting - and leave the real news alone.
The book is a good, quick read, and while it's clear that Curtis may not have the academic or professional qualifications to be a media analyst, he has whatever the internet equivalent of "street smarts" is. He's snarky and cynical, in the mold of so many people whose job it is to sit back and observe society. You can only run a news-based site for so long without noticing some patterns. He also includes some of the stories featured on FARK and select comments from users, which are usually entertaining.
While Curtis believes that there may be a way to fix the media, he doesn't believe it'll ever be done. As a fellow cynic, I have to agree - it would be far too much work and cost far too many advertising dollars to whip things into shape. The current system, from the point of view of the media outlets, works, and there's no point in tinkering with it. Perhaps the much-prophesied Death of the Newspapers will help some - the local news outlet can be resurrected by a kind of local bloggers' co-op or somesuch. I'm sure there are people out there who follow the journalistic tradition of wanting to tell people what's going on. Unfortunately, those aren't the people that the media wants right now.
So give it a read, and keep your eyes open. When you see a story about something like "sexting" or whether Tom Cruise drinks puppy blood for breakfast, ask yourself - is this news, or is it just FARK?
FARK is a news aggregator website, though it differs from others in that it's entirely moderated. People submit stories that they think are interesting, add what they hope is a funny tag line or title, and see if it'll be green-lit to make the front page. Over the years, as FARK's audience has grown to make it one of the most influential websites out there, FARK has become a kind of go-to site for news and commentary, though probably not the erudite, level-headed commentary we all might want.
Whether site creator Drew Curtis intended it or not, FARK has become a de facto source of news for many people on the internet who are looking not so much for the top stories of the day, but for all the strange, cool, heroic and Florida-centered news that CNN claims to have too much dignity to run. Over its decade-long history, Curtis has seen thousands upon thousands of articles, moderated countless threads about the day's news and, therefore, believes he has a pretty good idea of how the mass media works.
In this book, Curtis uses his experience as a professional newshound to look at the trends in mass media, attempting to identify the reasons why there's so much irrelevant crap out there. We all know what he's talking about - the helicopter shots of motorcades, the Missing White Women, the shark attacks, internet predators and the top ten lists of household products that could kill you and your family. We've all seen this and asked, "Why are they bothering with this crap?"
According to this book, there's two big reasons: the endless, 24-hour news cycle and sheer human laziness.
There is only so much Real News in any given day, Curtis believes, and I agree with him. The question, of course, is "What is 'real news,'" and rather than try to determine what real news is, Curtis decides to explain what real news isn't. As for the rest, we'll know it when we see it.
Of the many ways that the mass media tries to fill time and space, Curtis points out seven major ones, my favorite being Media Fearmongering. I suppose I like this because it's just so obvious and so easy. Examples include the current hype over where to relocate the world-devouring supervillains from Guantanamo, the perennial articles about how hidden earthquake faults could kill us all, and the airplane crash stories. The recent crash of Air France 447 is an excellent example.
While it is certainly a terrible thing that the plane went down, and important to the families and friends of those who died on the plane, is it really a topic the needs a week of international coverage? 228 people died in that crash, and while it's not really fair to weigh one death against another, it is estimated that that many people die in car accidents every two and a half days in the United States. The same goes for suicides in Japan. So why does the media go nuts for a plane crash, but not for unsafe driving or suicide? My guess is that a plane crash is more spectacular, more mysterious and more likely to get people's attention. Reporting on the actual number of auto-related fatalities would hit too close to home. What's more, a plane crash story probably writes itself. Change a few names and numbers, and the reporting on one crash looks pretty much like every other. That combination of spectacle and sloth makes plane crashes a godsend for reporters and editors with time to fill.
Fearmongering in the media isn't harmless either. Last year, in the run-up to the activation of the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland, there were a lot of articles about whether or not the LHC would destroy the world. Rather than do some investigating, ask some experts and report back that it wouldn't, the media decided to teach the controversy. Matching another of Curtis' bad news categories, they gave Equal Time to Nutjobs who claimed that the work at the LHC would destroy the world. Rather than debunk the nutjobs, they played it for all it was worth, claiming that there actually was a controversy over the LHC, when in fact no such controversy existed.
One of the effects of this was the suicide of a girl in India, who believed in the end-of-the-world scenarios. She was sixteen years old, and the news convinced her that she and everyone she loved was going to die. Can we hold the mass media directly responsible for this girl's death? Only if we can hold them responsible for the other deaths their fearmongering has caused - and here I'm thinking of the "controversy" over whether vaccines cause autism. They don't, but it's more fun for people like Oprah Winfrey to pretend they do. And so kids die.
My other favorite Not News is Media Fatigue - what happens when the media eats itself. With twenty-four hours a day to fill, but without twenty-four hours of news to fill it, the competition for breaking news is incredibly fierce. The first network to report on a big story will basically own that story, and the other networks have to scramble to catch up. In that writhing, twisting nest of vipers, it's sometimes very hard for anyone to stop reporting on a story that has basically run its course - thus, media fatigue. Curtis has broken it down into five simple steps:
1. News breaks
2. Issue retractions
3. Talk it to death
4. Can't... stop... talking
5. Has The Media Gone Too Far?
By the time they stop focusing on the story and start talking about themselves, you can be pretty sure that you're seeing the end of it. Examples of Media Fatigue abound, and Curtis uses Dick Cheney's shooting spree and Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction as examples. Really, neither of these events were news of any import. Hunting accidents happen all the time, and Jackson's boob-flash was so quick and so low-def that most viewers didn't know they had seen it until they were told they had (and probably didn't know they should be outraged until there were told they should be). But both stories generated media storms that didn't blow out until way past their expiration dates.
The point is that while the concept of news on demand is good, the execution of it has been terrible. With networks talking about health care reform in the same breath as whether or not David Letterman made an inappropriate joke, it's hard for the audience to know what they should read and what they should ignore. While the news providers' position has always been 'We leave it up to the readers to judge what's important and what isn't," that flies in the face of what we all know about human nature: people can be really, really dumb. People don't have the time or the inclination to read every story, judge it on its merits and sort the wheat from the chaff, and to pretend otherwise reveals either a profound misunderstanding of human nature or a level of cynicism that makes me look like Pollyanna.
While it may seem all patriarchal, I think we do need someone to draw the line and say what is news and what isn't. I don't know who, or how, but someone should do it if only so that we can have a news source that we can trust to give us what we need to know. Put the Britney and Elvis stories in the tabloids - if we buy those, we know what we're getting - and leave the real news alone.
The book is a good, quick read, and while it's clear that Curtis may not have the academic or professional qualifications to be a media analyst, he has whatever the internet equivalent of "street smarts" is. He's snarky and cynical, in the mold of so many people whose job it is to sit back and observe society. You can only run a news-based site for so long without noticing some patterns. He also includes some of the stories featured on FARK and select comments from users, which are usually entertaining.
While Curtis believes that there may be a way to fix the media, he doesn't believe it'll ever be done. As a fellow cynic, I have to agree - it would be far too much work and cost far too many advertising dollars to whip things into shape. The current system, from the point of view of the media outlets, works, and there's no point in tinkering with it. Perhaps the much-prophesied Death of the Newspapers will help some - the local news outlet can be resurrected by a kind of local bloggers' co-op or somesuch. I'm sure there are people out there who follow the journalistic tradition of wanting to tell people what's going on. Unfortunately, those aren't the people that the media wants right now.
So give it a read, and keep your eyes open. When you see a story about something like "sexting" or whether Tom Cruise drinks puppy blood for breakfast, ask yourself - is this news, or is it just FARK?
May 16, 2018
What's amazing about this book, a decade after its appearance, is how benign the media landscape it presents is. Fake news is lazy and annoying, but not necessarily evil or destructive. The Russians are interested in analyzing what "gets clicks" in America, but the answer they've come up with is not "hate" or "divisiveness" but "ghosts" (!).
Fark is not so much a warning that we ignored (it certainly doesn't imply that things will get worse) as a Proud Tower–style portrait of a world before the fall. A stupid, corrupt, lazy world, but still a prelapsarian one.
Fark is not so much a warning that we ignored (it certainly doesn't imply that things will get worse) as a Proud Tower–style portrait of a world before the fall. A stupid, corrupt, lazy world, but still a prelapsarian one.
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April 15, 2020The founder of news site fark.com complies a media criticism of the not-news stories that mainstream media regularly runs--celebrity comments, equal time for nut jobs, things given more importance if they happen closer to New York, L.A., or CNN's Atlanta hub. Complete with sample articles and comments from threads on fark.com.
February 11, 2022
It entices, captures you and then instantly takes you for a ride.
October 7, 2008
I've been reading Fark.com for years, so it was inevitable that I would make a point to read Drew Curtis' book. Although the book has been out for a couple of years, a quick glance at the book store convinced me that there was no rush to read it and that I should just take it out of the library when I got around to it. While “It's Not News, It's Fark” is entertaining, sometimes laugh out loud funny, and occasionally insightful, this is hardly a must-read.
In case you don't know, Fark.com is a news aggregator website that focuses on strange, often humorous stories. Each story is submitted by the readers, who send a link to the article and a funny headline. The best links are posted on the main website, and become open to discussion. Because Drew Curtis, the creator and owner of Fark, reads most of the articles that are submitted, he is perhaps more qualified than anyone else in the world to write a book about garbage articles being passed off as news. Curtis understands how the news world works, and how the defining feature of Mass Media (always capitalized in this book) is laziness.
There is no conspiracy by Mass Media to keep the public uninformed, or to push them towards one political extreme or the other. Rather, most people working in media will take the path of least resistance and churn out articles with as little effort as possible. This gives rise to the targets of “It's Not News, It's Fark”, articles such as the Repeating Seasonal Article (really, do we need the news to tell us that Christmas Eve will be a busy shopping day?), the Unpaid Placement Masquerading as Actual Article (articles copied and pasted from a press release by any business, organization, or charity), or Media Fear Mongering (Everybody Panic!). Curtis points out that none of these types of articles are really news, but Mass Media will continue publishing them as long as readers keep consuming them. Following each example article, Curtis makes some observations then includes some of the comments that were posted about the article on Fark. These comments, often caustic or sarcastic, always funny, are some of the best moments of the book.
Unfortunately, “It's Not News, It's Fark” often suffers from the exact same fault that Curtis is blasting the Mass Media for committing; too much filler and not enough substance. “It's Not News, It's Fark” makes it's points well, but seems to have dozens of pages left over that need to be filled with rambling thoughts and observations that are somewhat interesting but not too compelling. Curtis also demonstrates his own laziness; at dozens of times be makes a point or mentions a fact and then appends “as far as I know”, or “if I remember correctly”. This is well and good if you're debating on a message board, but there is a different standard when you are publishing a book. Now that I've written that, I'm not entirely sure why that is or if it should be the case. But it is an important point, that material published on the internet has a lower assumed value than what is published on paper. Perhaps this is one of the reasons that Mass Media can get away with publishing the kind of crap that it does; people assume that because it is in a newspaper or on TV, it means that the information is trustworthy, accurate, and worth hearing about.
A book about Mass Media written by an outsider is valuable and relevant. Unfortunately this book simply is not as good as it could be, and left me feeling like Curtis didn't try hard enough or that the book could have used a couple more edits. In the end “It's Not News, It's Fark” is worth reading for the points that it makes, but these worthwhile bits are mostly hidden among the less interesting stuff.
In case you don't know, Fark.com is a news aggregator website that focuses on strange, often humorous stories. Each story is submitted by the readers, who send a link to the article and a funny headline. The best links are posted on the main website, and become open to discussion. Because Drew Curtis, the creator and owner of Fark, reads most of the articles that are submitted, he is perhaps more qualified than anyone else in the world to write a book about garbage articles being passed off as news. Curtis understands how the news world works, and how the defining feature of Mass Media (always capitalized in this book) is laziness.
There is no conspiracy by Mass Media to keep the public uninformed, or to push them towards one political extreme or the other. Rather, most people working in media will take the path of least resistance and churn out articles with as little effort as possible. This gives rise to the targets of “It's Not News, It's Fark”, articles such as the Repeating Seasonal Article (really, do we need the news to tell us that Christmas Eve will be a busy shopping day?), the Unpaid Placement Masquerading as Actual Article (articles copied and pasted from a press release by any business, organization, or charity), or Media Fear Mongering (Everybody Panic!). Curtis points out that none of these types of articles are really news, but Mass Media will continue publishing them as long as readers keep consuming them. Following each example article, Curtis makes some observations then includes some of the comments that were posted about the article on Fark. These comments, often caustic or sarcastic, always funny, are some of the best moments of the book.
Unfortunately, “It's Not News, It's Fark” often suffers from the exact same fault that Curtis is blasting the Mass Media for committing; too much filler and not enough substance. “It's Not News, It's Fark” makes it's points well, but seems to have dozens of pages left over that need to be filled with rambling thoughts and observations that are somewhat interesting but not too compelling. Curtis also demonstrates his own laziness; at dozens of times be makes a point or mentions a fact and then appends “as far as I know”, or “if I remember correctly”. This is well and good if you're debating on a message board, but there is a different standard when you are publishing a book. Now that I've written that, I'm not entirely sure why that is or if it should be the case. But it is an important point, that material published on the internet has a lower assumed value than what is published on paper. Perhaps this is one of the reasons that Mass Media can get away with publishing the kind of crap that it does; people assume that because it is in a newspaper or on TV, it means that the information is trustworthy, accurate, and worth hearing about.
A book about Mass Media written by an outsider is valuable and relevant. Unfortunately this book simply is not as good as it could be, and left me feeling like Curtis didn't try hard enough or that the book could have used a couple more edits. In the end “It's Not News, It's Fark” is worth reading for the points that it makes, but these worthwhile bits are mostly hidden among the less interesting stuff.
February 26, 2008
I picked this book up for my boyfriend, who is an avid Fark and Total Fark reader, but I enjoy the site as well so gave the book a shot. It's a quick read, and Curtis immediately hooked me with his scathing commentary on the ridiculousness that passes as news (though it's a good thing he's pretty funny, because his writing talents are not exactly stellar). His insights aren't anything that someone who regularly reads the mainstream news hasn't already realized, but his wit, immense memory for inane news stories, and Fark comments keep it feeling fresh.
I kept thinking, okay, he's setting the stage and then he's going to get to the point. Halfway through...still not there. Two thirds...still yelling about non-news with even more bitterness. Suddenly I'm at the final chapter, which purports to tell us what mass media should really be reporting on instead of fark/crap. The verdict? Curtis has no clue. He doesn't even attempt to offer alternatives. He concludes that people don't actually want to read real news; they want the crap. Certainly he has an interest in maintaining the status quo--Fark exists because of all the crap.
In the end, what really bothered me was that he uses no references AT ALL. For a book about how terrible news organizations are for not fact checking, reporting on rumors, cutting and pasting, and not doing any in-depth research, he sure sets a terrible example of how to do better. The book reads more like a blog than anything else. Maybe that's how he intended it, but it grated on me that Curtis would not at least attempt to gain some of the credibility he accuses mass media of lacking due to laziness. All in all, this book falls prey to the exact same affliction. It's a shame...it could have and should have been much more legitimate.
I kept thinking, okay, he's setting the stage and then he's going to get to the point. Halfway through...still not there. Two thirds...still yelling about non-news with even more bitterness. Suddenly I'm at the final chapter, which purports to tell us what mass media should really be reporting on instead of fark/crap. The verdict? Curtis has no clue. He doesn't even attempt to offer alternatives. He concludes that people don't actually want to read real news; they want the crap. Certainly he has an interest in maintaining the status quo--Fark exists because of all the crap.
In the end, what really bothered me was that he uses no references AT ALL. For a book about how terrible news organizations are for not fact checking, reporting on rumors, cutting and pasting, and not doing any in-depth research, he sure sets a terrible example of how to do better. The book reads more like a blog than anything else. Maybe that's how he intended it, but it grated on me that Curtis would not at least attempt to gain some of the credibility he accuses mass media of lacking due to laziness. All in all, this book falls prey to the exact same affliction. It's a shame...it could have and should have been much more legitimate.
February 1, 2011
I'm a bit of a fan of Fark.com already, so there really wasn't anything particularly new in this book, but I found it a very well-written and well laid out explanation of the problems with Mass Media in the modern age. As such, the book is likely to become a bit dated before long... in fact, it already has to some extent. It was published in 2007 and, for example, has many references to a now deceased celebrity and multiple references to a politician who was at one time believed to be involved in the death of an intern and has since been completely exonerated (they found the actual killer last year). Kind of awkward (although, also sort of to the point of the book).
The book goes through the various problems in stories run by Mass Media, giving multiple examples of each type of issue (e.g. "Headline contradicted by actual article" and "Equal time for nutjobs") from real news items and followed up with some of the actual comments from Farkers when those stories originally ran. It's a fairly informative and interesting look at Mass Media and also a great introduction to how Fark works (complete with NSFW Farker comments).
The book goes through the various problems in stories run by Mass Media, giving multiple examples of each type of issue (e.g. "Headline contradicted by actual article" and "Equal time for nutjobs") from real news items and followed up with some of the actual comments from Farkers when those stories originally ran. It's a fairly informative and interesting look at Mass Media and also a great introduction to how Fark works (complete with NSFW Farker comments).
July 11, 2007
As someone who enjoys Fark.com, I'm down with a book that attempts to look at the media patterns that allow a humorous news aggregator like Fark to exist. This book certainly does that, and was good for a few laughs over a plane ride and some odd looks from fellow passengers. The problem, I think, is that it's written in the same style that I would use to write a book, and I'm not a very good writer. Drew tosses in a few "So it goes," which for some reason irks me more in print than it would on the internet and has some minor quirks in style that one might find odd if one ever wasn't reading Fark for more than thirty seconds at a time. It's hilarious in some parts, seems copy-and-pasted in others, and the use of farker comments varies between adding to the humor and appearing to be the source for the media analysis in the chapter in which they appear.
I'd recommend giving it a read, but know that you're getting what you could probably get from simply hanging out in some Fark threads for a little while.
I'd recommend giving it a read, but know that you're getting what you could probably get from simply hanging out in some Fark threads for a little while.
June 20, 2015
This is another one of those books that I initially loved, but over time, my feelings have softened up toward it. However, I think that this has a lot of good points to make about Mass Media in today’s world, and it’s still pretty good.
Curtis’s main argument is that there’s really not a lot of ‘important’ news that takes up media space, particularly when there’s not real news going on. Most of the non-news can go in one of several categories (all of which get their own chapter) with several examples proving the point. While Curtis says that he’s not a trained journalist, I do actually agree with a lot that he mentions. He does say that what he’s talking about shouldn’t apply to hard-hitting news, but a lot of the fluff pieces to eat up time. My one big nitpick is the inclusion of Fark comments at the end of each example article. They’re funny, but a lot of the included comments have the feel of “You had to be there” and jolts the reader out of the point for the respective chapter. Overall, decent read, would recommend for newshounds.
Curtis’s main argument is that there’s really not a lot of ‘important’ news that takes up media space, particularly when there’s not real news going on. Most of the non-news can go in one of several categories (all of which get their own chapter) with several examples proving the point. While Curtis says that he’s not a trained journalist, I do actually agree with a lot that he mentions. He does say that what he’s talking about shouldn’t apply to hard-hitting news, but a lot of the fluff pieces to eat up time. My one big nitpick is the inclusion of Fark comments at the end of each example article. They’re funny, but a lot of the included comments have the feel of “You had to be there” and jolts the reader out of the point for the respective chapter. Overall, decent read, would recommend for newshounds.
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July 25, 2011What a fantastic, eye-opening, revealing, hilarious exposé on mass media! Curtis, as a result of his proprietorship of Fark.com is the single person most qualified to opine on this subject, and he does so with aplomb, blowing the lid off the machinations of the media and why they function the way they do. This book provided a valuable service for me. It happens often that a certain detail of humanity drives me nuts, and I read a book that explains the phenomenon in detail and puts me at ease. The first time this happened was when vehicular traffic and the fact that three buses show up at my stop at the same time. I read a book called "Why Buses Come in Threes" and laid these matters to rest for me. I then found myself railing against non-news items and am fully assuaged with the reading of this book. Now irrational human behavior still drives me nuts, so I'll be reading Dan Ariely's "Predictably Irrational" in the hopes of laying that to rest as well. Anyway, I had slacked off my Fark.com readership of late, but now I'm back, oh yes, way back, and I'm loving it.
February 23, 2008
Easy, fun read. Did it in one evening.
Very funny book. Drew Curtis is no award-winning author (he's engaging, but not the best I've ever read), but his ideas are compelling and his website (www.fark.com) is a winner. I've been saying these things for years. Just recently the TOP story in the 6 o'clock local (Baltimore) news was an outbreak of MRSA in a well-known hospital. They listed all the shocking things the hospital was doing to prevent further spread. NEWSFLASH: it's the middle of winter; these people are already very sick; and nothing the hospital was doing was outside of "normal operating procedures" for a hosptial with more than x number of pts with MRSA. It was the epitomy of "non-news"
The difference between my story and Fark's--hilarity. I would suggest not reading this in a public place unless you don't mind leaking gafaws and having people think you're crazy.
His reuse of "Duke sucks", boobies, and Florida cracks can get tedious, but oh well.
Very funny book. Drew Curtis is no award-winning author (he's engaging, but not the best I've ever read), but his ideas are compelling and his website (www.fark.com) is a winner. I've been saying these things for years. Just recently the TOP story in the 6 o'clock local (Baltimore) news was an outbreak of MRSA in a well-known hospital. They listed all the shocking things the hospital was doing to prevent further spread. NEWSFLASH: it's the middle of winter; these people are already very sick; and nothing the hospital was doing was outside of "normal operating procedures" for a hosptial with more than x number of pts with MRSA. It was the epitomy of "non-news"
The difference between my story and Fark's--hilarity. I would suggest not reading this in a public place unless you don't mind leaking gafaws and having people think you're crazy.
His reuse of "Duke sucks", boobies, and Florida cracks can get tedious, but oh well.
September 9, 2008
I'm a big fan of fark.com, and I have been for a few years. Much like the Daily Show and Colbert Report, I feel like I'm getting a more trustworthy version of the news from the semi-comedic sources than the actual news.
What's nice about this book, is it helps explain why that is the case. Drew has been using his position as the owner of fark to analyze the media over the past decade, and the book presents an extremely clear and fairly thorough critique of all that is wrong with the media. It ranges from things that are obvious to probably pretty much everyone (celebrity obsession, for example) to some more subtle media patterns. Not merely an inventory of media problems though, the book also explains how or why the problems exist, and in many cases, barriers that exist preventing the problems from being fixed.
The nice thing is, since it's Drew from Fark, he's doing this fairly serious analysis in a very casual, easy to read, and humorous way.
What's nice about this book, is it helps explain why that is the case. Drew has been using his position as the owner of fark to analyze the media over the past decade, and the book presents an extremely clear and fairly thorough critique of all that is wrong with the media. It ranges from things that are obvious to probably pretty much everyone (celebrity obsession, for example) to some more subtle media patterns. Not merely an inventory of media problems though, the book also explains how or why the problems exist, and in many cases, barriers that exist preventing the problems from being fixed.
The nice thing is, since it's Drew from Fark, he's doing this fairly serious analysis in a very casual, easy to read, and humorous way.
May 11, 2014
This book is both funny and depressing. It’s funny because of the comments and stories, and depressing because damn the media hasn’t changed in the seven years since the book came out.
It might have gotten worse.
Fark details and presents examples about how the media doesn’t really report news when it is reporting - at least in most cases unless something major happens. So CNN’s the plane is still missing thing. Or NBC’s Real Poverty : Man lives on $5,000 a day. OR Rain, see that drop!
There’s a snowflake! Blizzard!
Yeah, you get the idea.
And it isn’t just American news networks.
The book details the different ways the media does this, and points out that in some cases, we enable the media. It will make you laugh, cry, and want to hunt down any cable news network besides Al Jazeeza.
Crossposted at Booklikes".
It might have gotten worse.
Fark details and presents examples about how the media doesn’t really report news when it is reporting - at least in most cases unless something major happens. So CNN’s the plane is still missing thing. Or NBC’s Real Poverty : Man lives on $5,000 a day. OR Rain, see that drop!
There’s a snowflake! Blizzard!
Yeah, you get the idea.
And it isn’t just American news networks.
The book details the different ways the media does this, and points out that in some cases, we enable the media. It will make you laugh, cry, and want to hunt down any cable news network besides Al Jazeeza.
Crossposted at Booklikes".
March 6, 2008
As a student of journalism, I added this book to my list for purely educational reasons. This book was educational, witty and funny. It really is funny how much of our daily "news" is actually crap that is just constantly recycled. I actually have a lot of fun now watching the news in the morning and going on CNN at work and counting the crap that is actually mentioned in Curtis's book. Some parts did read very textbook-y to me, as surprisingly, most journalism textbooks I read in college are not well written. I say, if you're tired of the mass media, give this book a read -- it will give you many more reasons to make fun of lazy journalists, who couldn't write an original story to save their lives.
January 31, 2009
This is a bathroom book. It isn't a book I read from front to back. I pick it up, read a little and put it down. Eventually all the stories will become old and I'll lay it down for a few years, and read anew. In other word I'm sure this will be on my current list for most of this year.
The premise of this book, for those who have not visited the site, is the author has reviewed enough news stories to see a pattern in their stories. When there is no new news, or a need to take a break from an on going new story, they use filler news. These story run from the inane, to corp pandering. For instance story reminding us Californians the San Andreas fault still runs through L.A., or a story from an insurance company telling us the latest stats on accidents over the three day weekend.
The premise of this book, for those who have not visited the site, is the author has reviewed enough news stories to see a pattern in their stories. When there is no new news, or a need to take a break from an on going new story, they use filler news. These story run from the inane, to corp pandering. For instance story reminding us Californians the San Andreas fault still runs through L.A., or a story from an insurance company telling us the latest stats on accidents over the three day weekend.
September 14, 2008
I picked this book up because I wanted an inside perspective about what stories "make news" when there is no news worth reporting. It was good to read about how certain stories gain horrific proportions in the effort to win viewers, and see the patterns for myself. For example the "bacteria" story. "Do you know what is lurking in your kitchen/bathroom towels/drinking water? etc.
Other questions it raised. Why are power outages in New York so much more interesting than another other locale in the U.S? Why do Shark Attacks make such prominent news but alligator attacks don't rank? Why do media viewers care about missing white girls, but not other races?
Unfortunately, the delivery of information in this book is crass, vulgar, and quite distasteful.
Other questions it raised. Why are power outages in New York so much more interesting than another other locale in the U.S? Why do Shark Attacks make such prominent news but alligator attacks don't rank? Why do media viewers care about missing white girls, but not other races?
Unfortunately, the delivery of information in this book is crass, vulgar, and quite distasteful.
August 25, 2011
Fark is my number one website distraction, and the Fark book is the paper version of the screen experience. Unfortunately, I was hoping for a little more. The book, like the website, is funny, pleasant, and occasionally dabbles in some level of intelligent analysis of or commentary on the news. This book could have been so much more, though. Had it included some expert opinion, the slightest bit of research, or connection to other work done on the state of the modern media, this could have been quite a bit more significant. Instead, this book is simply the author's observations of undesirable trends in the media without much backing. Enjoyable, but a little too much like the website - I just need more out of my books.
September 5, 2008
20080301 - bought. Started 23 Aug 2008;
Drew Curtis is the "father" of fark.com: a website where visitors submit links to news items found around the Internet and provide a witty tagline - Curtis and his compatriots winnow through the submissions and pick the best/funniest ones to post. This site is perhaps only second to The Daily Show as being both a source for actually getting one's news as well as making fun of how Mass Media covers the news.
This book provides a detailed, amusing and yet somehow depressing look at how Mass Media desperately tries to fill the 24/7 news cycle... whether there's anything newsworthy going on or not.
Drew Curtis is the "father" of fark.com: a website where visitors submit links to news items found around the Internet and provide a witty tagline - Curtis and his compatriots winnow through the submissions and pick the best/funniest ones to post. This site is perhaps only second to The Daily Show as being both a source for actually getting one's news as well as making fun of how Mass Media covers the news.
This book provides a detailed, amusing and yet somehow depressing look at how Mass Media desperately tries to fill the 24/7 news cycle... whether there's anything newsworthy going on or not.
February 23, 2009
As a long-time farker (mostly a lurker), I was glad to see this volume finally see the light of day. A very readable, entertaining work that gives the media the dressing down it deserves, while explaining the basic human weakness inherent in the rest of us which has caused all the trouble.
As one of the world's busiest news readers, Curtis is uniquely qualified to talk about media trends, and his voice, even at its most disappointed, is always pleasant and friendly. The format of the book is not quite a critique, but it isn't a simple rehashing of silly news, either. Well-organized and stimulating. A great light read for people interested in the sad state of modern news.
As one of the world's busiest news readers, Curtis is uniquely qualified to talk about media trends, and his voice, even at its most disappointed, is always pleasant and friendly. The format of the book is not quite a critique, but it isn't a simple rehashing of silly news, either. Well-organized and stimulating. A great light read for people interested in the sad state of modern news.
July 4, 2009
I've heard of Fark but never visited it. This was loaned to us because my boyfriend works in local news. He hasn't had a chance to read it yet but I really enjoyed it. The "most news is crap" message wasn't exactly surprising or controversial, but it was interesting to see it divided into clear recurring themes. And his analysis and suggestions at the end about how to stay viable made a lot of sense. Most of the funniest bits were in the comments. Which I thus felt a little guilty about laughing at because mouthbreathing comment sections are a major reason I don't get much news online. But there are some gems here.
June 8, 2010
You could probably call it 'The Daily Show' for newspapers.
Fark creator/curator Drew Curtis breaks down a lot of the problems with the junk that fills up the spaces in between the newspaper ads, breaking it down by section in a pretty clever way.
Unfortunately, most of the problems with lazy journalism is already well-documented and actual ideas on how to fix the newspapers/journalism are a lot more interesting that attacks are at this point. (And Curtis throws his two cents in at the end, bringing some decent ideas to the table on how save newspapers, like splitting actual news apart from tabloid, not letting them share the same spreadsheet.)
Fark creator/curator Drew Curtis breaks down a lot of the problems with the junk that fills up the spaces in between the newspaper ads, breaking it down by section in a pretty clever way.
Unfortunately, most of the problems with lazy journalism is already well-documented and actual ideas on how to fix the newspapers/journalism are a lot more interesting that attacks are at this point. (And Curtis throws his two cents in at the end, bringing some decent ideas to the table on how save newspapers, like splitting actual news apart from tabloid, not letting them share the same spreadsheet.)
September 25, 2010
Drew Curtis, the man behind FARK.com, has seen approximately one kajillion postings flow through his site since the day he founded it. That's plenty for him to notice patterns in the information that the mass media generates to fill the demands of today's 24-hour-a-day news cycle. This book brilliantly deconstructs those patterns, with the assistance of actual examples from FARK's archives and the usual gang of commenters. There are laughs aplenty, too, as one might expect from a book that came out of FARK. As a sometime FARKer myself who has had a beer with Drew, I can offer my completely unbiased recommendation. :-)
May 3, 2013
I used to visit this site daily, and it's great. Drew tried to go in a slightly different direction with this book and mix in funny stories that are submitted to the website along with his commentary about Mass Media as a whole. I think it's a good effort, and I enjoyed reading it, but I thought there was a bit of a disconnect in this attempt, mostly because a lot of the commentary seemed redundant. The best part of the book were the comments by Farkers. That being said, the last few pages Curtis sat down and pretty much just gave his overall take on a variety of issues with Mass Media as a whole and that was an awesome read.
November 8, 2014
You don't have to read much of this book to get the point. In fact with a reasonable amount of thinking and intelligence, you might not have to read it at all. Fark is everywhere, and fairly obvious. Fark is especially prevalent on some one-sided political media sources. Fark may be why we rarely see dogs or cats watching TV. They're smart enough to know that it's crap. I have to wonder if the promotional line at the top of the cover claiming that it's quoting Stephen King is Fark. It says,"The right book at the right time. I laughed. I cried. I wished up." Surely King was able to recognize Fark before reading this book?
November 27, 2008
This book could have been an informed critique of Mass Media, and it comes close---I think a lot of the attacks levied by Curtis are valid. Unfortunately, his claims are only backed up by anecdotes, and overall he seems more concerned with writing a funny book than an informative one. The only reason I was excited to read this book was because I saw the first chapter posted online when it was published and it was interesting---little did I know that the rest of the book would consist of Curtis harping on the few, simple points he made in that first chapter.
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