A recent spike in interactions on The Public Apology Facebook page is pretty much reflective of society’s intellectual malaise, according to founder Dave Edwards.
Nate Silver’s analytics blog, fivethirtyeight.com, reported that 95% of TPA Facebook followers do not interact with the actual website – just the fan page itself.
The Public Apology’s core business is to provide tailored sports content to discerning readers, in the form of news, opinion and feature articles.
However, Silver found that the recent spate of ‘likes’ and comments on the TPA Facebook page were a result of a new strategy to target “stupid c*nts” by posting rig shots of gorgeous women covered in various World Cup accoutrement, complete with a pithy caption underneath.
“90% of TPA readers are intellectual lightweights who are incapable of consuming thoughtful, timely written content,” founder Dave Edwards fumed.
The short-term strategy, Edwards explained, was to increase interactions during the World Cup to boost the ‘fan’ base. Once the tournament was completed, the company would go back to its core business strategy of re-emphasising written content.
“I hoped that by ‘selling out’ we would be able to acquire some high-value, cerebral readers in the process, who would stay on and become part of our core reader base,” Edwards said.
“But if Nate Silver’s analytics are anything to go by, it looks like Australians are much happier to click ‘like’ on a rig shot than they are to read a verbose, self-indulgent meandering article that leads to nowhere in particular.”
Edwards said that while he fears The Public Apology is steering “off-brand” with this populist strategy, it’s a necessary tactic in this modern media landscape.
“Social media has turned everyone into fucking morons,” he added.
“But we are getting ‘hits’ – and really, isn’t that all that matters?”
AAP