Digital Media Is a Wasteland

John DeVore
Medium

1. I am a writer and an editor who launched his first site in 1999. Since then, I have either launched or edited at least 30 sites, maybe more. I also used to drink too much. I am probably responsible for a hundred billion clicks, the most precious resource in the world.

Over the years, I have pivoted from print to digital, from digital to video, from video to digital, and from panic to depression. I have been laid off three times, and each one is different, like a snowflake of pain. I ran a cupcake blog once. I edited 20,000 zingers on a joke website. I have worked for a leading cable news website, and an Emmy-winning comedy website, and the blog of a prestigious magazine. I was an editor for a movie website, a travel website, and for two years I wrote a weekly column for a feminist website, which I’m very proud of even if I never, ever read any of those columns again. I was a mucky-muck for a viral clickbait factory. I ran a website for a mattress company. I have dispensed love and sex advice on the internet because the old saying is true: Those who can, do; those who can’t give love and sex advice on the internet. I was part of an infamous Bush-era political parody website and sometimes, late at night, I wonder if I helped make the world better or worse. I have written thousands of blog posts, slideshows, articles, and essays and I have even won awards. I have also managed social media accounts and real talk, social media is just the internet on crystal meth.

Now, I’m not bragging. Really. I’m not. I just feel that I’m qualified to write about digital media and I have no idea what’s going on and never have. Anyone who says they do is either lying or hasn’t properly had the shit kicked out of them by the internet.

2. Remember the Predator movies? They are a beloved sci-fi horror franchise about a giant alien gorilla-crab monster who hunts human beings. In one of the recent sequels, a group of humans — each more badass than the last — are kidnapped and dropped on another planet, to be hunted by the titular character. At one point, they stumble upon the skeleton of another person and learn that they are not the first group of prey to be dumped onto Planet Predator. Then, later, they meet a human, played magnificently by Lawrence Fishburne, who has found a way to survive on the intergalactic game preserve. Against all odds, he has eked out an existence without being blasted into chunks by lasers or butchered by space swords. But he’d already gone insane from years of isolation and fear — and from the knowledge that at any moment, randomly, he could be killed in a spectacular fashion.

Anyway, that’s how I feel after working in digital media for 20 years.

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