three reasons I’m not down with Upworthy and why they don’t care
By: David Connell
Tags: Upworthy Headlines, Criticism, Upworthy Profile, New York Magazine, Technology

First, if you care at all about digital content, how it works and how it’s shared, you need to study Upworthy and you need to try and understand what they do, how they do it, why, and why it works. To get a sense of all that, read this article from New York Magazine now.

Did you read it? Good. Now here’s why Upworthy is not for me (and I’m not for them):

I can’t stand the headlines, but mostly, I think, because they’ve been so often imitated by clones and spammers. This isn’t Upworthy’s fault, but those headlines have become a parody of themselves.This is referenced at the end of the able article, so I’m guessing this will be dealt with soon enough:

Then he lets everyone in on his newest data discovery, which is that descriptive headlines — ones that tell you exactly what the content is — are starting to win out over Upworthy’s signature “curiosity gap” headlines, which tease you by withholding details. (“She Has a Horrifying Story to Tell. Except It Isn’t Actually True. Except It Actually Is True.”) How then, someone asks, have they been getting away with teasing headlines for so long? “Because people weren’t used to it,” says Mordecai. “Now everybody does it, and they do cartoon versions of ours.” (CNN, for instance, recently ended a tweet about a child-murder story with a ghoulish “the reason why will shock you.”)

I’m too old and cynical for Upworthy (and I have a high opinion of myself) or, in other words, I’m not their target audience. Judging from the comments in this article, Upworthy is for hopeful, positive Millennials who live in the midwest — or something. I’m a jaded, cynical GenXer who lives in a major metropolitan area. Also, Upworthy seems to hate the media elites with the strange bizarro-world passion of a Fox news-watching Tea Partier. I read The New York Times daily.

I don’t think Upworthy’s content elevates the discourse. This is simultaneously my toughest criticism to prove, and Upworthy’s toughest to refute. In other words, it’s subjective. The article states that Upworthy’s “mission is to ‘draw massive amounts of attention to the topics that really matter.’” That’s all well and good, and I can’t argue with the premise that the majority (but not all) of what Upworthy aggregates matters.

However, what does “drawing massive amounts of attention” do for an issue if you’re not actually adding to the discourse around that issue. Raising awareness for awareness sake — even if it’s “massive amounts of awareness” seems about as compelling to me as bumper stickers and awareness ribbons. They’re clever and touching when you first see them, but after while they start to loose meaning. To me, this is the real danger for Upworthy. That, sooner rather than later, their message is going to be glossed over as we all move on to the next bright and shiny Internet thing that makes us feel all warm inside.

All of that said, you have to admire Upworthy. They’re truly fantastic at what they do and they have real, genuine and completely uncynical zeal for doing it. Even with those horrible click-baity headlines that have spread like a plague across my Facebook newsfeed (I really, really hate those headlines), they — on balance — make the Internet a better place.