Cold Coffee: Rumor Journalism

In our current age of technology, everything and everyone is moving so damn fast that we've become greedy. Whenever something big is announced, we want to hear every little thing about it, which makes for some very cluttered news feeds chalked full of what I like to call ‘garbage'. I'd lose count if I tried to list all the random crap the major news sites have been filled with in regards to the ‘PS4' and ‘Xbox 720'.

Now garbage is a term I use for anything that I find to not be worthy of a news article. Site owners are paying these guys to put out quality articles and what they're getting is a two paragraph blurb with a random pic that consists mostly of filler text…oh and there's a rumor about how much RAM the next Playstation has in there. It's a sad little ploy to get readers to scurry over to their site, thereby earning them views and money, which they can then use to pay these people more to keep the crap flowing off the assembly line. It's a scary little spiral but it's a means of views and even some of the biggest and most respected video game sites are in on it.

I hate to sound like some conspiracy theorist but this is just the way I see it. I've written entire articles then taken a look at them afterwards and thought ‘no, that's not worth publishing'. I just wish more people did too.

When you really think about it, it's hard to put the blame on any one group of people. The only reason why these articles continue to be published and earn hundreds of thousands of views is because we WANT them. I personally don't even look at these articles but most do because, as I said before, we're hungry for info nowadays. We want everything now. It seems as though patience is steadily becoming extinct among our modern society and that's just too bad. So who do we blame? I honestly don't know; the writers for publishing cheap articles or the fans for throwing fuel in the fire? Maybe there's a shady board of shadowy figures looking over the video game industry and pulling everyone around by their puppet strings…that last one might be a little far fetched.

My point is, it's sad to see the world of video game journalism being shit on like it is. What was once a passion for some is becoming just a cheap source of income and newer guys like myself look upon the industry as a whole and wonder what the future could possibly hold for us?