15 Amazing Thoughts About BuzzFeed

1) It is my belief that BuzzFeed, the widely panned purveyor of meme culture, meaningless quizzes, and general inanity, is the most effective website on the Internet.

2) Let’s take you as a case study. Do you really care what your favorite Disney princess reveals about you? Is your heart truly warmed by “21 Finger Faces That Are Strangely Heartwarming?” The more you intellectualize BuzzFeed, the more absurd it becomes that the website has attracted over half a billion page views and, by implication, has taken up around half a billion hours (57,039 years!) of human life.

3) And yet—and yet!—BuzzFeed continues to woo hundreds of millions of likeminded people who have no honest interest in “11 Haikus Clearly Written By Dogs” but still click through the links. BuzzFeed “user” is an accurate term.

4) Crack, nicotine, and alcohol are all biologically addictive. They sell themselves. Meanwhile BuzzFeed employees have to work harder to produce a site that lures people to override their better judgment.

5) Buzzfeed’s siren-like ability to suck you in is the product of hours and hours of conscientious design. Look at the front page: Every inch is sculpted to optimize endless procrastination. You can’t scroll to the end of BuzzFeed because as soon you hit the bottom, a new stream of posts appears. The site updates automatically, with new items appearing as notifications. There is a banner of suggested articles, a sidebar of trending items, an adjacent sidebar of news stories, a list of top videos, and, of course, the main stream. How can you gaze at this super-saturation and not find something to click?

6) It takes a psychology degree-and-a-half to explain how this exploding presentation affects your brain. My best guess is that the sheer volume of content overwhelms your critical scrutiny. Might as well click everything in sight, you say. So begins the night of a thousand tabs.

7) If BuzzFeed is a hard drug, then Facebook is clearly the gateway substance. A friend posts a quiz on your wall, and bam, you’re already hooked.

8) Maybe it’s unfair to compare a site that specializes in pictures of puppies to chemicals that have life-ending consequences. In the short term, BuzzFeed can bring joy and satisfaction. (Then again, so can cocaine.) But really, what’s wrong with dedicating half-an-hour every day to laughter?

9) This chain of logic assumes that all pleasure is equally virtuous. The joy you receive from surfing YouTube is not the same as the joy you receive from hearing a friend tell a joke. One type is more permanent and meaningful. On this ladder of pleasure, BuzzFeed exists near the bottom, one rung below deep-fried Oreos. The website is essentially a form of non-sexual porn.

10) Is clicking through BuzzFeed articles a sign of moral decay? Probably not, so long as losing yourself in pages and pages of Jennifer Lawrence coverage doesn’t interfere with important everyday tasks like eating and showering. A certain minute-amount of BuzzFeed is appropriate; a certain minute-amount is not. All users have to discover this razor-thin limit on their own.

11) Does going to Harvard change the above calculation? Now we’ve hit on a more difficult concern, one that transcends the blurry-eyed provinces of the Internet. The question of Harvard students on BuzzFeed is, at its core, an issue of privilege and obligation.

12) Maybe matriculating at Harvard means that you have an increased duty to create value, however you define that phrase. Since opportunities abound here, every minute of Internet procrastination carries extra moral weight.

13) Maybe, on the other hand, insisting that Harvard students have higher standards is an inexcusable act of vanity. Should we assume that kids from other schools have less value-making potential? Why should a flimsy letter of admissions change the expectations that we have for ourselves?

14) Unfortunately, I lack a satisfactory answer. The matter of whether privilege implies obligation is one of the top-three life questions that I still have no idea how to answer. However, I find that the example of procrastination on BuzzFeed at least sums up this conflict in a clear way.

15) What does all this add up to, aside from the number 15? Like BuzzFeed lists themselves, I don’t have a conclusion that wraps a nice bow around the preceding thoughts. Appreciate the hidden cleverness of a website that just debuted an app called “Cute or Not.” Question whether you, as a Harvard student, have an added onus to avoid this app. Beyond that, don’t forget to tune in next week for “Which Letter of the Alphabet are You?” We guarantee your world will never be the same.

Sam Danello ’18 is a Crimson editorial writer living in Grays Hall.