Great expose. Why hasn't this received more publicity? http://thefastertimes.com/news/2011/06/16/aol-hell-an-aol-content-slave-speaks-out/ -------------------------snip Some people struggle to write for their whole lives, and only dream of ever getting paid for it. And here was I was, Mr. Big-Shot-Razor-Blade-Man, getting paid a real salary. I could sit at home and write in my pajamas while eating take-out food; and that’s what I did. I was so grateful.
But this was part of the problem. We — by which I mean me and my fellow employees — were all so grateful. Which allowed us to ignore — or willfully overlook — certain problems. Such as the fact that AOL editors forced us to work relentless hours. Or the fact that we were paid to lie, actually instructed to lie by our bosses. I was given eight to ten article assignments a night, writing about television shows that I had never seen before. AOL would send me short video clips, ranging from one-to-two minutes in length — clips from “Law & Order,” “Family Guy,” “Dancing With the Stars,” the Grammys, and so on and so forth… My job was then to write about them. But really, my job was to lie. My job was to write about random, out-of-context video clips, while pretending to the reader that I had watched the actual show in question. AOL knew I hadn’t watched the show. The rate at which they would send me clips and then expect articles about them made it impossible to watch all the shows — or to watch any of them, really. That alone was unethical. But what happened next was painful. My “ideal” turn-around time to produce a column started at thirty-five minutes, then was gradually reduced to half an hour, then twenty-five minutes. Twenty-five minutes to research and write about a show I had never seen — and this twenty-five minute period included time for formatting the article in the AOL blogging system, and choosing and editing a photograph for the article. Errors were inevitably the result. But errors didn’t matter; or rather, they didn’t matter for my bosses. I had panic attacks; we all did. My fellow writers would fall asleep, and then wake up in cold sweats. I worked the graveyard shift — 11PM to 7 or 8AM or later — but even the AOL slaves who wrote during the day would report the same universal experience. Finally falling asleep after work, they would awake with a jump, certain that they had forgotten something — certain that they hadn’t produced their allotted number of articles every thirty minutes. One night, I awoke out of a dead sleep, and jumped to my computer, and instantly began typing up an article about David Letterman. I kept going for ten minutes, until I realized I had dreamed it all. There was no article to write; I was simply typing up the same meaningless phrases that we all always used: “LADY GAGA PANTLESS ON LATE NIGHT WITH DAVID LETTERMAN,” or some such. Then there was the week where I only slept for about six hours over the course of five days — a week that ended with me being so exhausted that I started having auditory hallucinations, constantly hearing a distant ringing phone that didn’t exist, or an imaginary door slamming in the background. At the time this all seemed mysterious. AOL is a billion dollar corporation, and the foundation of its current business model is words. So you would think that AOL might care about the people who write these words. Or, at the very least, that they might care about the words themselves. But now, I am not so mystified. With the recent release of a top-secret business document from AOL, things have been clarified. “The AOL Way,” as the document is called, lays the whole plan bare — long flowcharts, an insane number of meaningless buzzwords… the works. One slide is titled “Decide What Topics to Cover.” It then lists “Considerations” from top to bottom. “Traffic Potential” is the top consideration, followed by “Revenue/Profit” and then “Turnaround Time.” “Editorial Integrity” is at the bottom. Specifically, “The AOL Way,” is to massively increase writing production, while at the same time cutting costs. The document reveals the same attitude that the bosses at the old Ford Motors factory had, when the assembly line was first introduced. Every week or so, the assembly-line was sped up; incrementally, barely noticeably, but the increase had a staggering, cumulative effect, and soon, those workers who couldn’t keep up found themselves standing by the wayside. If AOL could find a good way for machines to write about Lady Gaga, they would almost certainly fire the writers who remain. When it comes to an article, what AOL cares about is the title, and the “keywords” that will make the article more likely to show up among the top results on Google. You type phrases into “Google Trends,” and it suggests the most popular combination of words associated with that topic. You then stick those words into your title and first paragraphs. Rinse, wash, and repeat. The article itself was just ballast. “LADY GAGA PANTLESS IN PARIS” is the example given in “The AOL Way” internal documents. That’s the best possible title. A buzz-worthy topic, a sexy result. It mattered little if Lady Gaga was actually pantless in Paris; it only had to relate somehow to the article as a whole. The entire title could be a come-on, a tease. It might well turn out that Lady Gaga was neither pantless, nor in Paris at the time. The important part was that the reader would click on those words to read the rest, thereby producing ad revenue for the websites. Words didn’t matter; stealing other people’s work also didn’t matter. I still have a saved IM conversation with my boss, written after 10 months of employment, when I was reaching the breaking point: “Do you guys even CARE what I write? Does it make any difference if it’s good or bad?” I said. “Not really,” was the reply. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
