AN: Sorry 4 teh belatedness of this chapter, but I've been going thru sum [41 lol] personal issues like breaking up with mine boyfriend and developing an addiction 2 tofu so ive gone abit of the rails. This story has aslo increased in it's scope. I feel a bit liek George RR Tolkien as he's writing the popular Game of Thones sirius. It takes longer to wright cos the intricate story strands of mine story grow more complex and more difficult to resolve. But I hath written this great chapter and drafted several other chapters which will be coming out soon, as the story continues to evolve from it's humble love triangle beginnings into a profound and philosophical literary masterwrok, lol. Fangs for reading, keep those reviews cumin, and LIVE LONG AND PROSPER!
Captain Haldier of Gondor sighed a weary sigh as the overenthusiastic tour guide emphatically ushered the group through the gilded gates of the FriffCorp Media Empire's main Headquarters. Before their very eyes lay the ground floor of a vast palace filled with extravagant classical statues, lavish fountains, and rows of squat, chipper mythical creatures, whom the tour guide referred to as members of that rare and noble (and also rather squat and apparently musically-inclined) race of Intern-Winterns, tapping furiously at adamantium typewriters. The rest of the tour group certainly appeared to be utterly awestruck by this dazzling display, but to Haldier, the whole spectacle was just so much friff; all gaudied-up nonsense designed to distract everyone from the utter dearth of anything resembling a soul. Haldier had been feeling that way about a lot of things lately. He found himself sighing a lot, and feeling old and decrepit and worn-out, despite his relative youth. As much as he loved King Aragorn, he longed for a reprieve from his service. Nothing fancy, mind you, just a weekend away from the drudgery of it all, that he might spend some time with his wife and daughter, whom he felt he had been neglecting of late. And not to mention his young apprentice, who was at a crucial phase in her training, and would likely be requiring his guidance. As his thoughts wafted and drifted gloomily like a winter cloud, Haldier saw that the group was presently being approached by a portly, slug-like, grey-haired man in a purple suit, who walked with the aid of a gilded cane, and smoked a cigar near as fat as he was. Haldier noticed that the smoke came out in the shape of a skull and crossbones. The man had a menacing air, which gave Haldier an acute case of the howling fantods, even before he realised who it was that now stood before him.
The tour guide squealed obnoxiously. "OMFG!" she 1337-sp3ak3d. "And right here is the man himself, His Lordship and Media-Mogulship himself! Looooooooord Ruppert Murder-dock!"
The group clapped excitedly. Haldier pretended to share their enthusiasm.
"Now booooooow before His Newspapership!" she commanded them, with her rather sugary brand of forcefulness.
Haldier bowed with the rest of them, but his mind, ever tactical and cunning, was hard at work.
"G'day mates," Ruppert spake merrily, his jaunty jowl rising and falling along with the low grumble of his prolonged syllables.
"Good day," Haldier replied in a clipped tone. He knew he had to be polite, lest his cover be blown. But it was, like, so hard to take this guy seriously, let alone remain unrepulsed by his rotund and gaudy appearance, which seemed to stand as a living, stumbling, waddling shrine to excess and AVARICE.
"G'day Lord Murder-dock," chirped the others in perfect harmony, which seems to happen a lot in this universe.
"I love you soooooo much," the tour guide squeaked to Lord Murder-dock. She was still bowing fervently.
"You may riiiiiiiiiise," said Mr Ruppert, sounding like Jabba the Hutt's Australian cousin or something.
There was half a minute of creepy silence. Everyone just sort of stood there. Haldier could hear the Intern-Winterns tap-tap-a-tapping at their keyboards. Bland elevator musak was crackling from a PA somewhere.
"So," Murder-dock rubbed his palms together like a greedy fly, "who wants a friffing tour of me friffing newspaper office factory place?"
The group erupted into a frantic chorus of "Oooh! Me! Me! Me!"
Haldier let out a single, sober "Aye."
They all boarded a rowboat, carved from mithril-mahogany and powered by the heart of a dark star (and also rowing). They paddled down an indoor river, which Murder-dock-senpai had dubbed "The River of Clickbait." Haldier threw a coin into the river and smirked slyly, but nobody got the reference. One of the passengers, one Heckuis Tarnation of Flamingsphere, Minnesota, nine years of age and in the prime of the rhyme, asked the mogul naively, "Why do they call this the River of Clickbait, m'lord?"
Ruppert just laughed a guttural, demonic chuckle of death, and proceeded to ruffle the small boy's mess of straw-coloured hair. "M'boy, this is the River of Clickbait because this is where Clickbait is baited!"
His fleshy hands gestured grandly over to a group of Intern-Winterns, who were fishing by the side of the river for lower than minimum wage.
Mr Murder-dock hurled a boot in their general direction, and they began to sing, rods still in hand:
"Intern-Wintern winterny-woo
I have a rad madrigal for you
Intern-Wintern winterny-wee
What could this 'Clickbait' possibly be?"
Then the tempo and melody suddenly changed into a samba-ish rhythm. One of the Intern-Winterns started to rap, while the others provided some sweet #ethereal backing vocals.
Clickbait
I r8 your b8
8/8 m8
Haha good meme
But seriously
Let me tell you 'bout my theme
Clickbait, a lot of journalists do it
If you listen to me, then you will see through it
Clickbait, is when your make your headline
Outrageous, misleading, and completely malign
So people will click on your article
Or read your papes; this doesn't rhyme
But now it does…uh…"
The rap tapered off into oblivion.
Murder-dock continued, barely managing to suppress his righteous rage over his unpaid and mistreated staff's lack of work ethic, which was totally their own fault. "Ahem. Clickbait has existed in journalism since at least the nineteenth century, when it was known as 'Yellow Journalism'. It has recently enjoyed a resurgence thanks to the increasing popularity of social media websites like Friffbook, Friffer, and Friffblr. Obviously, you can't include an entire news article in a single post, as the aforementioned sites have word limits and suchthelike. Furthermore, you will make zilch in the way of that sweet Gil-revenue-cha-ching unless you encourage suckers to click on the link that takes you to your own website, because that's where your sponsors display their advertisements."
Miss Wart Pepper, who, despite her name, was actually the single most attractive woman Haldier had ever seen in his life, asked Murder-dock, "Who are some of your sponsors, your lordship?"
He waved one of his hands around, airily. "Oh, you know, certain lobbyists, one or two federal governments. I'm not one to name names or anything, but it's a two-way stream. We like to help each other out." He chuckled good-naturedly. "So anyway, mates, what we do with our headlines, rather than provide an overview or summary of the events reported in the article itself, is to, uh, basically create a feeling of anxiety, of unknowing, of incompleteness, which can only be sated by clicking through to the article! Invariably, the article itself will be a total let-down, and may even be almost completely unrelated to the headline we bated on the other website. But that's okay, because by then they've seen our backer's advertisement, and the deal is done! Haha!"
Everyone chuckled.
Haldier was growing impatient. "I have seen some of this clickbait in my time, my lord, despite being a character from a high fantasy world where the internet doesn't even exist yet," Haldier shattered the fourth wall, which was pretty brittle to begin with. "And it seems like you're deliberately misleading people! Taking advantage of this generation's…of its addiction to data, to having their queries resolved at the click of a button! When thou doth verily vomit out some headline that says…you know… 'If you like drinking coffee, you're gonna want to read this…' and then include some obvious stock photo of some coffee-drinker looking anxious, and then link the photo to some recycled FriffCorp dot com article about how drinking ten cups of sweetened coffee in a row might not be so great for your liver, according to a panel of undergrad med students…"
"Mmmyeeess?" Lord Ruppert prompted meekly, failing to see what H-man was getting at.
"Isn't that kind of unethical?" Haldier finished, weakly.
Ruppert ruffled Haldier's hair playfully, which seemed to kind of be Ruppert's signature thing. "M'boy, how could any of that friff you just spoke of possibly be seen as unethical? I mean, it's not like we're lying, or anything…"
"Well, not technically, but…"
"And we pride ourselves on having Freedom of the Press on this here Shard Plane. Um, I mean, country. This country. Which I rule legitimately, bt dubs."
"But…"
"And do we not also have Freedom of Speech in this nation, enshrined in our Constitution? Do you not cherish your g*sh-given freedom to express yourself freely?"
"Of course I do!"
"Are you a Commie, m'boy?"
"What? No!"
At this, Ruppert spake into a little microphone pinned onto his lapel, and recorded a voice memo: "Note to self: new Friffbook post: 'Captain Haldier, Devious Ringleader of the Traitorous Malaise Scum that is the Gondorian Tyranny of Doom Death Cult Welfare Nanny State 69 Unionists, is a friffing COMMIE RAT.' Anyway, where were we?"
Haldier paused to compose himself. A lone bugle sounded solemnly in the background. A patriotic background of stars and stripes enraptured the entire building. The Gondor flag has stars and stripes too. And a tree.
Spaketh Haldier:
"Of course freedom of speech and freedom of the press are good things. But what I think you've lost sight of is the fact that with great freedom comes great responsibility. That's what my uncle Benmir taught me before he was friffing MURDKILLED by Githyanki pirates. You, sir, possess one of the most influential media empires in the whole of Middle Earth. You could use that for good. You could use it to inform your readers of unbiased facts, provide unprecedented access to information, and ensure that reporting is effective and fast-paced without needing to sacrifice truth or ethics. Instead you…you squander these opportunities on emotionally manipulative language and—"
But Haldier's speech was interrupted when one Heckuis Tarnation of Flamingsphere, Minnesota, nine years of age and in the prime of the rhyme, leapt emphatically into the River of Clickbait.
All gasped. One person fainted, but for unrelated reasons. It got pretty stuffy in this building at this time of day.
It was an agonising few moments as the group waited for the lad to resurface from the murky depths of bullfriff.
But just then, avast, ye maties, virus database has been updated!
One Heckuis Tarnation of Flamingsphere, Minnesota, nine years of age and in the prime of the rhyme, leapt straight into the air like a friffing kipper or some other kind of fish that leaps around out of the water. He jumped right over the rowboat, flapped his mouth open and shut, and, whilst midair, uttered one single horrifying, prophetic sentence; a phrase so game-changing and ground-breaking that Middle Earth and the Mirror Shard Planes would never fully recover from the sheer monumental gravity of his incredible words.
Click through to find out what he said.
