The Cult of Buzzfeed

There is a certain kind of horror to a Buzzfeed headline. 

Like discovering an ancient manuscript whose contents can only be understood by the initiated, all of whom go mad upon teasing out its secrets.

It is the horror of knowing that you live in a society where these sentences convey information.  Information that some are eager to receive. 

Yes, there are those among us who eagerly devour this foul excrement.

By choice.    

If you’re like me, dear reader, this revelation may leave you on your knees, praying to whatever Gods there be for an end to this pale farce that we dare to give the name “humanity,” almost as if to mock all the great heroes of our race that came before.

Perhaps an asteroid launched at our tiny, blue planet from the cold reaches of space, or nuclear weapons hurled through the sky by those distant Asiatic peoples, who are heirs to the Goths, Huns and Vandals that have ever been bent on reducing the entire world to their own primitive state of unreason. Alien invasion, a solar storm, even a plague like the one delivered by the God of the Hebrews upon the ancient Egyptians shall be good in mine eyes.

But I am not one of those who cheers on the destruction of humankind simply as a way to escape my own pitiful existence and lack of achievement like so many to be found hanging about the interwebs, ever ready to engage in verbal pugilism with whomever has the distinct misfortune to cross their path. Oh no, not at all.

Had simple bankruptcy solved the problem, I surely would not cheer for the deliverance of such horrors upon my fellows, forcing all to pay the price for the sins of one magazine. But like its counterpart in corruption, the aptly named, Vice, the assayers and the creditors and the courts with all their combined powers have not been able to put a stop to the thing that animates them, for that thing is older than they. Older than time itself.

 It is the face of true evil, and evil can never truly be destroyed.  

Behold! Even in its weakened state, it is capable of this:

Arrrggghhhh! Look away! Look away at once you fools, lest you succumb to its foul logic.

For to understand it, is to become it. It is at once description of its creed and warning against its consequences. Look away lest thy feet begin to kick and all good sense and reason are swept away in a mad giggle. For none hath ever trod that path to madness and returned to the land of the wise.

And another!

Like the Sirens that called to Odysseus’ men with the promise of sweet oblivion, the Buzzfeed calls to those who happen upon it in their aimless online meanderings with the promise of a mushy mind trapped in a state of perpetual amazement at the sight of the wonders contained within.

But these are only the least of its tricks. Lest the giggling, foot kicking creature its incantations hath wrought feel the absence of God too acutely or begin to crave the comfort and companionship that was once the province of religion, the creature will offer endless tales of nether regions frustrated in their desires and then set free in the great “coming out.”

And finally, should the mushy-minded victim of these dark deceptions still retain some awareness of how far they have sunk from the dignity that is their birthright, the intuition will be quickly crushed by the High Priests of the thing it serves, eager to profit from the judicious application of their “anti-anxiety” unguents and “anti-depression” pills. Anything to keep the feet kicking, the throat giggling and the mind as empty as the heart that has never known true love.

Heed my words, o intrepid seeker after the arcane and the hidden. Beware the Buzzfeed! For within its pages lie all the evils that have beset us since the Fall, in dark communion with all the follies of our wretched age. To know it is to know true madness and to understand its putrid logic is to be lost forever to the void.