The Pop Craveification of Breaking News

We're all learning about major events through increasingly bizarre digital formats.

At 10:50am PT on Sunday morning, just three and a half minutes after Joe Biden officially announced he was dropping out of the presidential race, LizaMinnelliOutlives, a Twitter account that documents historic events and figures that Liza Minnelli has outlasted, posted the news. That same minute, prolific NBA Twitter scoop machine Shams Charania tweeted the announcement from his own account. 

A deluge of content followed as the news was broken by meme accounts, TikTokers, Twitch streamers, and Instagram theme pages normally dedicated to topics like wild animals, scuba gear, jujitsu, and the TV show The Sopranos. Pop Crave and Pop Base, two new media outlets who have become synonymous with breaking news online, posted the news at 10:51am PT, just a minute after LizaMinnelliOutlives. 

"The way I’ve gotten so many major news events of the last few years from pop crave 😭😭😭" one user tweeted. 

Two and a half years ago I wrote about how the Depp vs Heard trial offered a window into the future of media, where content creators serve as the personalities breaking news to an increasing number of viewers — and, in turn, define the online narrative around major events. In this new landscape, every big news event becomes an opportunity to amass followers and clout, and the money that inevitably follows. 

Biden's resignation showed how we've moved even further into this fractured news environment. Our information system has split into an endless number of micro communities, from group chats to online fandoms, all learning about news and major events through increasingly bizarre digital formats. 

When I polled a group of friends, one person heard the news in the comment section of a bird's Instagram account, another learned of it in a Discord gaming lobby. Lots more saw it on meme pages and random X accounts. 

It's clear that no central news source has a monopoly on breaking news anymore, and certainly not legacy media. Though many people undoubtedly received a Washington Post or CNN breaking news alert, the number of people becoming informed about the world through disparate networks of online accounts and creators is growing. 

"Being the most online friend in a group chat today is no easy task. I’m sending tweets, memes, copypastas…" the comedian Britt Migs posted yesterday. "Shoutout to my fellow sisters in arms." 

One of the most common ways people reported learning that Biden dropped out was through a horny copypasta text chain. These texts are functionally chain letters, consisting of long, all caps, emoji-laden summaries of news events where regular words are replaced with NSFW phrases. 

Horny copypasta lets you share news with your friends in a way that feels ironic and fun, rather than a straight news text which feels weird and formal. "I think horny copypasta chain texts to break big news will be our generation's greatest contribution," Aubrey Burrough, a social media and brand strategist posted. 

“In recent years, as the internet has become a shell of what it used to be, where it is no longer this free realm of information and connection but rather a hyper-sterilized wasteland of ads and sensationalized content, that we yearn for something novel and familiar,” Dravved, a 29 year old moderator of the subreddit r/emojipasta, told Rolling Stone last year. “That’s where the exaggerated degeneracy of the copypasta comes in.”

As more people online recognize breaking news as an opportunity to amass followers and attention, more non-traditional accounts and content creators will move into covering breaking news. 

We’re already seeing this phenomenon through the proliferation of what Caitlin Dewey recently described as "news hustlers." News hustlers, who operate primarily on X, but also Threads, Instagram, and any app with a native reshare button, are the Pop Crave model of news on steroids. They post urgent information natively across social media along with often unsourced videos and photos. They describe themselves as “researchers,” “analysts,” “curators,” or "creators." (Pop Crave— which btw I’m a huge fan of!— does now add sourcing to their content and produces original reporting). 

Nearly every large breaking news event in the past couple years has birthed a new crop of these news hustlers. When COVID began its deadly spread, anonymous accounts launched and amassed hundreds of thousands of followers by posting minute updates. When Russia invaded Ukraine, “war pages” proliferated. More recently, accounts on X posting real time news about the war in Gaza have taken off. After the Trump shooting a week ago, and following Biden's announcement yesterday, many of these news hustlers kicked into overdrive. 

“At its core what we’re looking at here is a different vision of what news is,” a researcher told Brandy Zadrozny at NBC last fall. “It’s fast, it’s unvetted, and it’s very often unsourced. And there’s every indication that the shift is not accidental and that it’s part of a vision of what news is going to be on X.”

There are plenty of ways Musk's X has boosted the news hustler ecosystem, which Dewey outlines very well. But I think the problem extends beyond X. 

In the absence of a robust traditional media ecosystem, where news is reported by journalists, false information and conspiracy theories are flourishing. It's good to question the power and motivations of traditional media, and learning about the news through a horny text chain or meme account is a great way to find out the basics of something that's happening. But, these newer formats don't often provide deeper reporting or context surrounding the information they’re sharing. And all of these shifts in media consumption are happening at the same time people across the political spectrum are growing more conspiratorial. 

For now, there are no signs the information ecosystem is slowing down or consolidating. It’s probably only a matter of time before we’re getting news straight from AI influencers on our smart vapes. By Sunday night, LizaMinnelliOutlives was celebrating its small role in history. "I only trust you for my news," one user replied, to which the account sent a kissing face emoji. 

Another person posted, "I’ve decided to stop fighting it and just accept that a Liza Minnelli updates twitter account will be how i get my news from now on." 

PS: I know I said I would only send this newsletter once a week, but since I’m trying to use X/Twitter less, I thought I’d put some thoughts down here instead of there. :) I’ll still send my link roundup on Friday!

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