In the push for traffic, viral content and revenue, has our online experience been so manipulated the Internet losing its appeal?
For many of us, and if we are prepared to admit it, we are becoming fatigued by the Internet. While this by no way means that we are cutting it out of our lives for good, to varying degrees, we might be suffering from overload, especially on our social networks. So much information is vying for our attention – video clips, chain posts, advertisements, to name a few – and in what limited time we have, we have to be ruthless about what we read and focus on.
Consequently, one of the filters many of us apply to identify what content we should access, is authenticity: whether a content creator is sharing personal or first hand experiences, or material that genuinely enriches our lives. However, with all of the data and analytics available on online user behaviour, are we truly getting authentic content, or that which has been manufactured to appeal to our tastes and biases?
Over the past month, that question reared its head in the United States, quite compellingly, in the case of Rachel Brewson. In summary, and in December 2015, Rachel Brewson authored two posts, which were first published on the website, ReviewWeekly.com, in which she shared the experience of falling in love with a man who supports the Republican party, whilst she is a Liberal Democrat. By the second article, which was published in March 2016, Rachel and her boyfriend had broken up, but her two posts had garnered thousands of comments, and were republished on other websites, and ultimately took on a life of its own – until it all came crashing down. Rachel Brewson does not exist.
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