One of the things that both makes me laugh and gets me excited is the amount of media FUD and FOMO on crypto. Quite often, we talk about how wrong the articles might be or how they have misrepresented the situation in the downs, but also how ridiculously transparent they are as they feed into greed in the ups. But regardless of what their ulterior motives are and while not "all news is good news", this is a good sign for crypto adoption.
The reason is that the media is big business and like all corporations, they act in their own interests, which means that they make profits from what they are "reporting" on. It could be that they are investing into crypto and buying the dips on their own FUD and selling the peaks as they drive FOMO and I suspect this happens a fair bit. But more likely, it is because there is increasing public interest in the articles.
As more people get involved in crypto at the investor level, they are going to be increasingly looking for content to support their newfound passion. With the variation in types of people getting involved, a large percentage of them are still going to be using the mainstream media a their sources, as they don't recognize the errors being reported yet. So, the global media are only too happy to oblige and they do it in the way that they do - which is through clickbait.
What this increasing media attention indicates though, is that people are actually clicking, otherwise the media would report on it at all. Mass media makes its money through advertising revenue too, which means in order to sell space, they have too attract attention. Over the internet age, this has led to a degradation of journalism and integrity because the incentive is aligned with volume of readership to consume advertising, not quality or accuracy of reporting.
Much of the mainstream media is filled with celebrity gossip and clickbait titles because they are designed to appeal to the consumer masses, as they are the ones who are targeted by the advertising anyway. The average mainstream media consumer is average and they are the masses. Catering to them increases ad revenue for the newspapers.
Not only this, with the fastest uptake of crypto being predominantly being in the under 25 demographics currently, this gives the news media a chance to win back some lost readership, as they can now cater to the younger audience with more than just the celebrity gossip, which they probably get enough of from other sources like Instagram and Twitter anyway.
Obviously, the strategy is working, since the news media is very sensitive to what gets traction and what doesn't, which means people are clicking on crypto articles enough to warrant publishing more crypto articles. At the moment and as clickbait media generally does, they focus on the polarized extremes of the highs and lows as that is what "buys" attention. The nuance and detail is of course missing, but the emotional reactions are there and feed both sides of the largely ignorant viewer. Those that are new to crypto and reading get upset or elated when they read "Bitcoin crashes" or "Bitcoin is at an all time high" respectively. While those who are not in crypto and potentially negative on it will get more of the inverse of those two. Those who are not in of course, will have their greed centers triggered by the ATH news however and are still more likely to click.
But over time and the more the new investors participate in the crypto economy, the more they start to recognize that the sources they have been using are various degrees of incorrect and, they start looking for more nuance and detail - more objectivity, as well as more support for their position. Places like Hive are fantastic for these kinds of users and will increasingly cater for the entire spectrum.
So, while it is funny to read some of these articles at times and get the reactions as more seasoned crypto users, it is also valuable to recognize that these articles are actually getting traction to the point that the mass media is able to generate significant income from the ad revenue attached to them, otherwise, they would publish the articles at all. It is good to remember that they don't care if people win or lose, they don't care about a decentralized future or supporting the governments either - they only care about their own bottom line and work in the interest of making profit.
This makes the increase in articles a very good indicator of the interest level in the general population and it seems, adoption is happening, even if it is slower than those who have already been here for years would like. But how often do we get what we want, when we want it?
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
