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ISIS, Mexico, How News Circulates and What's Fucked Up About Gawker

William M. Arkin · 04/16/15 10:30AM

I get an email newsletter everyday from THE SOURCE, produced by something called The Intelligence Community, LLC, which markets itself as "the largest LinkedIn group for National Security professionals" and is building a business based upon nonpartisan expertise and insight. Yesterday's piece screaming ISIS just eight miles from Texas caught my eye, because this "community" of current and former government intelligence people must know something—my membership fee told me. And yet when I dug deeper, what I discovered was just an ecosystem of viral idiocy, of which Gawker is often criticized as being a part. And I learned another lesson: how the fight for eyeballs drives stupid stories, makes us all dumber and just increases the power of the permanocracy.