• by Kaila Colbin , Featured Contributor, August 14, 2015

The company has taken umbrage at a piece in Vanity Fair. And to be fair, author Nancy Jo Sales doesn’t make the app, or the culture in which it resides, sound particularly appealing. It’s all quick hookups and volumetric sex, the pleasure of gorging yourself, and the realization of the fleeting nature of such superficial satiation.

It’s not a pretty picture, and Tinder objected. You may already know this, as company reps have expressed their displeasure -- appropriately enough for this generation of passive digital grenade-lobbying -- via the Twitters.

Funnily enough, this wasn’t the only old-school long-form journalism vs. new-school smut skirmish unfolding this week. The New Yorker, apparently, is taking a page out of Vanity Fair’s book and threatening an exposé of celebrity gossip show/rag TMZ. Reportedly, TMZ is also not happy.

“People are silly,” appears to be the Vanity Fair/New Yorker observation. “They are motivated by sex and titillation. Can you believe it?”

Turns out I can. In fact, one might question why on earth any media outlet of substance would bother with such unsubstantial subject matter.

But the answer seems obvious: How can they not bother? People are so silly, and so motivated by sex, that Tinder and its ilk are reshaping the entire way we connect with each other and mate. People are so silly, and so motivated by titillation, that our journalism landscape is descending, of necessity, into (to paraphrase Hugh MacLeod) a swampy mush of clickbait.

Tinder, TMZ, Fox News… This is where the eyeballs are. The thin veneer of civilization coating our behavior is no match for the unstoppable force of our baser instincts.

So much so that even haughty, high-falutin’ folk like myself, if unwilling to participate in the melee proper, are strangely drawn to read about it -- perhaps even in lieu of developing an informed opinion on such important topics as the Iran deal or the privacy debate. It’s much more fun to read about trashy behavior in respectable outlets that allow me to pretend I’m somehow above it. Journalists of substance have two options: report from the edge of the swamp, or descend themselves.

Which is precisely the crossroads at which political commentators find themselves: in the midst of a circus performance of a primary, one driven by ever greater levels of outlandishness and ever-diminishing amounts of depth. This is not a political column, and not meant to be. I’m not here to debate the merits of larger vs smaller government, of trickle-down versus bottom-up. or any one of a hundred other policy positions on which two reasonable people might hold differing opinions.

But Trump vs. Everybody is not a topic for reasonable disagreement or discussion, and that’s precisely the point. He’s not playing the same game as everyone else. He’s not even in the same arena. As Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi put it, “Trump didn't… prepare for the debate… All he did was show up and do what he always does: hog everything in sight, including airtime. As hard as Fox tried to knock him out, the network couldn't take its eyes off him. He ended up with almost two full minutes more airtime than the other ‘contestants,’ as he hilariously called them on the ‘Today Show’ the morning after the debate.”

Taibbi went on to say, “America is ceasing to be a nation, and turning into a giant television show.”

There is no substance left. All that remains is formerly serious outlets and people writing about never-were serious outlets and people. And, in an orgy of irony, my metacommentary on top.

We’re doomed.