GIF-packed clickbait trumps One Direction listicle to cinch Pulitzer Prize

The literary world has been left speechless, stunned, blown away, and had their lives changed forever this morning, after a gif-heavy clickbait article about cats narrowly beat its closest competitor - a One Direction listicle outlining 15 reasons Harry is the Perfectest Member of 1D - to win the Pulitzer Prize for Literary Excellence.

The Award Selection committee – who conferred the prize to the article’s author, 23-year-old blogger James Ericson, a wordsmith matched only by Matt Stopera and Benny Johnson when it comes to literary genius – now says that it’s about time the world’s most prestigious literary award reflected the state of modern literature.

“The times are changing, and we believe the Pulitzer Prize should reflect that,” said Award Selection Committee member Ash Hitpost. “It’s about time this globally revered prize echoed our world’s deepest hopes, terrible sorrows, and inability to read anything more than 140 characters long.”

Hitpost holds fast that – much like the wide body of unconventional literature that has won a Pulitzer before this – modern works of art can be misunderstood.

“These so-called ‘cynical, demographically-targeted ad-revenue-hungry GIF-laden list articles with misleading titles’ get such a bad rap,” she explained. “But which Pulitzer Prize didn’t? Did society wholeheartedly accept Allen Drury’s works outlining the difficult world of politics and homosexuality in Advise and Consent? Was there not fervent outcry around the coprophilia of Thomas Pynchon's controversial Gravity's Rainbow?”

“Clickbait has the power to move us,” she continued. “Who could ever forget the first time they read ’27 times Friends was the most flawless show of all time’? How could anyone not cherish those early childhood memories of reading ’21 Pictures of Emma Watson that will blow you away and leave you breathless’? Who doesn’t hold close to their heart the first moment they shared ’12 facts about Harry Potter that will totally blow your mind’ - especially after you got to number 6, which totally left us stunned?”

“And the best part is, the authors didn’t have to live a drug-addled, depressed hand-to-mouth existence in a dead-end job buried deep inside the clutches of an oppressive and prejudiced society to craft these colossal artefacts of definitive importance,” she said. “Hell, writers today barely even have to look past the front page of Reddit to find the inspiration for their masterpieces.”

The selection committee applauded Ericson’s magnum opus, lavishing it with praise at the awards ceremony in Geneva.

“When we read this timeless exposé into the human condition, we were blown away,” read the award motivation. “We were left speechless. We were shocked. Number 7 had us in tears. Ericson has reached that apogee of literary greatness: he is the Hemingway of snappy bullet points, the Gordimer of Cat gifs, the Proust of content appropriation. We are humble to hold this fragment of a genius’s soul up and say that it has finally arrived: The Great American Listicle.”

And fans could not agree more.

“Thumbs up, fireworks emoji, smiley, winking smiley, crazy-grin smiley,” said 21-year-old Tiffany Megan-Amber. “Tongue-out smiley, heart, heart, 100-exclamation-underlined.”

Buzzfeed apologises for endless stream of shallow, un-lifechanging garbage

Citing the endless stream of failed attempts to “blow your mind”, “change your life”, “make you weep” and other such hyperbolic click-baitery, the chief editor and long-time writer at viral media website and “content aggregator” Buzzfeed has this morning issued a long and heartfelt apology to the internet, people who originally made the content they so brazenly “aggregate”, and the world in general.

“We just want to say we’re so damn sorry,” said editor Plaie Gerize. “Looking back at our long and ugly history of hyperbole, exaggeration and outright lies, we want to wholeheartedly apologise.”

Gerize’s list of apologies was long.

“We’re sorry. We know that Picture Number 8 didn’t blow your mind. We know Number 6 wasn’t perfect, as we said it would be in countless articles,” he said, permanently deleting the entire website in a show of ultimate contrition and sorrow. “Those fabulous snaps of Jennifer Lawrence didn’t prove that she was perfection, and that series of photos that was supposed to restore your faith in humanity was completely inadequate. We're scum. We're cancer. And we’re sorry. We can’t say that enough.”

Pictured: the new Buzzfeed website, with all relevant changes.

His apology extended to all the content that the Buzzfeed team as a whole –regardless of country or origin or format – had produced.

“Even our videos. When they weren’t silly or ham-fistedly trying to send an self-evident life-lesson, they were just totally trivial. Also, time and time again we totally blew down the importance of individual people’s hard work and passion by never using their name and just reducing them to their sex, nationality or even just ‘someone’. We should have given them due respect, even if it is hard to get a click out of you by using someone’s full name.”

He continued.

“We’re also sorry for having outright stolen content from many sites. Sorry, ‘aggregated’. Or maybe ‘curated’? I dunno, which word are we using these days?”

“Furthermore, we’re sorry about contradicting articles that provide you with reasons why each member of your favourite boyband or series is the best one. Like those twenty articles which individually claimed why different members of Friends or One Direction or The Backstreet Boy or whatever were by far the best. I mean, how did we not see how black our souls were, posting these kinds of articles at the same time and having each written by the same author? How could we have been so spineless as to not have an editorial stance on anything?”

“Finally, we’re sorry for using social issues and controversial topics to squeeze a few cheap clicks out of you. Like videos where we show people giving homeless people a pizza or a hundred dollars in a video that probably makes eighteen times that, or with serious issues that don’t deserve to be trivialised in shallow, bullet-point, GIF-heavy listicles.”

Having realised their errors, editors and writers at the website have since vowed to take courses in ethics and journalistic values, and have furthermore vowed to never oversimplify an argument or concept by using cat pictures or images cut from popular culture.

“We realise now that our insatiable hunger to just get that click out of you, to bleed you and other readers for pageviews and time, made us blind,” he said in a long, profound, ten-chapter essay that didn’t contain one picture or numerical bulletpoint. “It turned us into monsters, veritable scum-sucking bottom feeders who lurked on Reddit and subReddit forums and Tumblr pages, copy-pasting and rehashing and resharing old and boring content because we knew that, hell, you’d click whatever old shit we regurgitate.”

The move has been met by widespread praise.

"Their apology was amazing, incredibly. It literally blew my mind and changed my life," said one internet user. "In fact, if there was a list of 10 apologies published on the internet somewhere, this would probably be at number 4."

Those wanting to know more about this story can read this exact same article on The Huffington Post, Upworthy and Elitedaily.

10 questions that will blow your mind and leave you speechless

1. WHY?

   In the long, long history of questions, has there ever been a question as astonishing, as astounding, as simple and as breath-taking, as 'why'? Why? Just Why? Ask yourself that. The answer might surprise you.

2. WHO?

   When our early ancestors first asked this question, they never knew what they were unleashing on the world. Just the sound of this question is enough to make you stop whatever you're doing and launch into an extensive period of intense introspection and self-scrutiny. 'Who?' you ask, again and again. 'Who'?. But is that silence - or is it the sound of the abyss telling us what we fear most?

3. WHERE?

   When Christopher Columbus uttered these infamous words when he discovered the sun in 1066 BC, who could possibly have guessed the same question would be echoing endlessly in the halls of history? This question - a solid 6th on our list - will probably be asked by our children and our children's children.

4. WHEN?

   Holy crap, just let that sink in. When. WHEN. Wheeeeeeeeeeeeen. When. After a while, it stops sounding like a word that even exists. How can you answer a question that doesn't exist?

5. WHICH?

   Seriously, this question gets us every time. It doesn't matter if someone is asking us to pick between two equally delicious breakfast cereals or seeking clarity as to whether a black-dressed broomstick-saddling woman is a spell-casting harlot belonging to the Dark Lord and Damned Soul-eater Satan and his black shadowy cabal of wicked deceivers testing the faithful and pure. 'Which', now matter the context, is one of the most powerful questions you can ask.

6. WHAT?

   This question, just, wow. We can't even. 'Can't what?' you ask? Exactly, bro. Exactly.

7. CAN YOU EVEN FUCKING COUNT?

   We don't know about the rest of you, but this one really left us gobsmacked. We're not sure if it was the creeping, disturbing realisation that there's an obvious contradiction between the title of this article and its content, the niggling feeling that we've made little numeracy errors in the body of text, or even the dawning horror that even an expensive university education leaves you prone to embarrassing mistakes that not even a child would make, but this question is nonetheless a haunting, haunting quandry.

8. HOW?

   Like, HOW, though? How? Let that sink in for a second. Let us know when you have an answer in the comments below - or we'll be flabbergasted for the remainder of our lives.

9. WHY IS MATTHEW WRITING THIS CLICKBAIT CRAP?

   When Matthew asked himself this, it left him quiet and mopping in his room for ten minutes. Try it for yourself. Just remember that we tried to warn you.