Much of the Internet Misses the Point of the "Gay Superbowl Ads"

I love the internet — some of my best friends are the internet.

But man, writing for the internet can be an infuriating experience, at least if your goal is to create something approximating journalism. It's depressing to see how many other outlets don't seem to care about old-fashioned notions of "facts" or "accuracy" — and how a lie can now travel around the world before the truth can even put its underwear on.

Case-in-point: today's "controversy" over "Doritos' gay Super Bowl ads."

Many media outlets, including The Advocate and the EW blog, are strongly implying or saying outright that these were ads created by Doritos, and that there is some chance in hell that they'll run them during this year's Super Bowl.

They weren't, and they won't: they're entrants in a contest sponsored by Doritos and Pepsi Max, but they're not even finalists.

(AfterElton.com was the very first media outlet to run at least one of these ads, which we did early yesterday morning, but we identified them accurately, which is why they didn't generate much discussion here).

The infuriating part? These other sites were wrong, but they no doubt saw their traffic explode by pondering the potential "controversy" over a possible Super Bowl airing (which was never going to happen). There's nothing many readers like so much as a fat, high-profile, very-simple-to-understand "controversy" they can spout off about, even if it's not an actual controversy, just a completely manufactured one.

*Sigh*

This is all very depressing to those of us who work hard not to screw up (even if we sometimes do anyway). There are dozens of stories every week that we choose not to run because we're not sure about our facts (or we're not sure about the integrity of the sourcing site), or because the story seems irresponsible, unfair, or inflammatory in some other way. Other stories we deliberately choose not to sensationalize, for similar reasons.

In the age of the internet, I guess these small burdens are still too high for some.

In addition to those websites that saw their traffic explode, the real winner here is, of course, Doritos, which gets millions of dollars in free publicity without having to pay a penny or deal with any of the ensuing controversy.

The losers are readers, who we think deserve much better.

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