Splitsider

Personality-driven reporting has become the rule rather than the exception. On Fox News and MSNBC, breaking stories come with a built-in perspective, keeping viewers loyal while helping insulate them from dissenting, challenging or complex opinions. Most blogs operate in a similar way. Try, if you can, to count how many times in the last few days you’ve skimmed over insight-free outrage at the childhood behavior of Mitt Romney. This is a question of hits, of course — a famous man being awful is news everyone wants to click on, and taking a righteous stance against him is easy, safe, and brand-building. On its own, this seems to be just another quirk of the opinionated internet media. But writ large, it’s pernicious. No matter what your political views are, the RSS feeds, Facebook pages, and Twitters you probably spend the most time on are the ones that flatter you, pander to you, and reaffirm beliefs you already hold.

Given that prevalent attitude, it’s a bit hard to understand the popularity of Christwire. A played-extremely-straight satire of the religious far right, Christwire at first glance seems more like a collection of terrifying opinions than any sort of insight you might agree with, let alone one you’d find humorous. It shares a small handful of commonalities with Hipster Runoff — firstly, that one may have to read a few articles to realize there’s a joke at all, and secondly, that when the joke finally emerges, it seems more bitter and resigned than laugh out loud funny. But while Hipster Runoff is largely read and commented on by those who are in on the gimmick, Christwire attracts a much larger array of different responses, from various displays of reactive vitriol, to people who jump in and participate in the site’s antagonistic fun, to to my personal favorite: commenters who condescendingly call the site “hilarious.” READ MORE