Nights at Freddy's franchise bought by Disney!

Full cinematic universe plan!

Negan spin-off series coming for the

walking dead! Marvel vs DC movie plan for

2022! Former reality TV host elected president!"

Man, really can't believe

anything you read these days can you?"

"Hello internet, welcome to Film Theory!

Where today, a show dedicated to

concocting half-baked theories about

movies and TV, is talking about the

mainstream media lying to you.

In other words, we finally reached theory

level conspiracy!

Let's face it, 2016's biggest theme and

media, both television and online, was the

issue of click baiting. Coming up with

over-the-top hyperbolic extreme

headlines, and a shameless attempt to get

people to click. But that's nothing new, it's

always been around you say. But what used

to be just a mild annoyance, took on a

really sinister tone this year. As

clickbait gave way to it's far more

dangerous - relative - fake news. Websites

and newspapers blatantly lying to you,

and then passing it off as fact, just to

get a headline that gets you to click.

It's been an especially hot topic in the

aftermath of the presidential election,

where the news is now being blamed for

swaying voters, suppressing voters, creating

scandals, and worst of all, outright lying

about simple, INDISPUTABLE facts. Like

which candidate got more votes! Seriously,

do you for a hundred percent certainty

know who got more votes in this year's

election? According to the headlines, it's

been flipping back and forth for weeks.

And when you can't get a straight answer

on something as objective as how many

people voted for the leader of the free

world, then you've got yourself a problem.

Probably the most high-profile example

of this was facebook, getting hammered

over election stories appearing in

people's news feeds that had nothing to

do with the facts. So you don't even have

to look to headlines that big for fake

news. Despite these fear-mongering

articles from supposedly reliable news

sources, you're not going to get Lyme

disease from your christmas tree, the

White House did not ban nativity

scenes from their christmas decorations,

and Fidel Castro was, shock of all shocks,

not a professional baseball star. Now for

all you new theorists subscribed to the

channel, it's our annual tradition near the

end of the year on both game and film

theory to end with a meta theory a state

of the union address about a major theme

of the year, trend in the industry that you need

to know about.

So, why should you care about this

episode when you're here for another

disney conspiracy, or to tell me that I

was wrong about rogue one, or to

complain about Doctor Who part 3, still

not being uploaded. Well one, most

importantly because this is real life

and not some fictional movie, and two,

because we're all the targets.

You, me, your family, my family, your

friends, my... cat, because misleading you

is big business. And you deserve to be

informed of how everything from the

evening news, to your local newspaper, to

online blogs is attempting to manipulate

the way that you think, and by extension,

the way that you act. Actually have a

couple other theories related to this

one that are specifically about YouTube,

that are over on the game theorists

channel right now, so if you haven't seen

those, click here to check them out. So also

be links at the end of the video. And if

you're loyal game theorists coming from

over there,

welcome, my arms are open to you. The

theories are just as depressing on this

side of the internet. Now go ahead, kick

back, and get ready to never trust

anything you ever see online, ever again.

Let's call a spade a spade, 2016 was a

sucky year. It was a year full of

international crises, racial tensions,

surprising celebrity deaths, and a very,

very tense presidential election. And all

along it seemed like the media was just

going about doing their job of reporting.

But ask yourself this,

how much of what you see is real even

from the sources we consider to be the

most trusted in the world.

How is it possible, in the information

age to have false stories get treated as

fact is the whole media machine just

asleep at the wheel, or what's really

going on here? So to understand media of

today, we need to take a stroll down

memory lane. Fake news is way older than

you think, dating all the way back to the

mid eighteen hundreds, with the first

daily newspapers started being sold by

newsboys on the street corners. Think

Newsies, but with a lot less singing, and a lot

more of newspapers hiring urine-soaked

bums to shout headlines. These newsboys

literally had to shout headlines to get

people to impulse buy papers each and

every day, which meant one thing the

headlines had to be catchy. One might say

they had to be, click-baity. That's right,

click bait actually predates the click.

Once people started realizing that

exaggerated catchy

titles and fun headlines would sell more

papers on the street then cut and dry

news stories, the age of yellow

journalism began. So what's, 'yellow

journalism'?

well, if you've read facebook newsfeed

since, uhhh, since the facebook newsfeed became

a thing, then you've already probably

seen it.

Yellow journalism is quote/unquote news

that's badly researched. Mostly guesswork,

and has lots of big statements that are

supported by very little fact. Some of

the most successful papers in this era

were papers like the New York Tribune,

and the San Francisco Examiner. But what made

these papers stand out from the crowd

was the types of news stories that they

covered. You see they specialized in the

sleaze, exaggerated gory crime stories.

Stories about political scandals and

corruption. The New York Tribune became

especially successful off of it's racist

coverage, and strong anti-immigrant

stances. Sound like anything you've been

reading this year? Maybe? Sure, it doesn't

paint a pretty picture, but it definitely

sells newspapers, or in the modern case

of digital media, gets people clicking.

And from there, once people have clicked,

or bought the paper, it doesn't really

matter what the content is or whether

the headline was true or not, in fact in the

heyday of yellow journalism there were

companies who liked it better if the story

was false, because then the paper could

run an exposé, then an argument, a

rebuttal, or some sort of angry response

drawing out a clickable headline for

more and more papers on those clickable

subjects. Keeping people coming back to

stay on top of a scandal, that wouldn't

have even existed if the newspaper had

done their homework in the first place!

which begs the question, why do we have

this problem? Are reporters just bad? Are

news outlets just less selective about

the stories they run? Why are news companies

and TV networks still going if they're

clearly bad at their job of reporting

news?

Well, the reason, is that reporting news

isn't their job. They're not actually in

the news business. They're in the

advertising business. Most news companies

don't make money from the news, they make

money from the ads that are sold

alongside the news. Reporting on current

events is just filling time, giving them

content to get you to watch, and to read,

so that way you're there when the next

ad starts to slot in. These news companies

aren't making money off of the

article, they're making money off of what's

above the article, and what's next to the

article, and popping up over top of the

article, and then flashing and auto

playing in the middle of that article

Man! The internet looks completely

different when you turn off your ad

blocker. I can't understand how people can

use the internet when it looks like this. Ugh!

So step one is to stop thinking

about the blogs that you read as news

sites, because they're not, they're product

isn't news. It's advertising space. Take

this line of thought to it's logical

conclusion, and you get something that

makes a whole lot of sense when you stop

to consider it. YouTube isn't a video

platform, it's an advertising platform.

Facebook isn't a social site, it's an

advertising site that happens to have

pictures of your friends' babies to lure

you in. Google? It ain't making a whole lot of money

off of it's search engine, or the new tech

that it's producing, it's all about the ads.

According to Bloomberg businessweek $76.1

billion dollars, or around ninety percent

of Google's income, is coming off of it's

ad business. To cite a former executive

from the company, quote, 'No one wants to

face the reality that this is an

advertising company with a bunch of

hobbies.' Creating products, where it can then

place ads. And news is just a fancy word

for a genre of entertainment, stories that

may, or may not be real to get your

attention and sell some commercial

breaks in the process. But I hear you

rightfully asking, 'Is clickbait actually

doing any harm outside of being mildly

annoying? Nothing lost but a little bit

of time, right?' Wrong. It turns out that

not only does the media do a good job of

figuring out how to get people to click

on fake news, they do an even better job

of getting us to share that fake news.

One thing we've seen a lot of this year

is reaction compilations. Don't laugh,

don't cry, don't cringe, emotional response

is huge on the internet, and that applies

just as much to regular news, as it does

to YouTube. But not all reactions are

created equally.

It turns out that after a hundred and fifty

years of media coverage, news outlets

have pretty well figured out what

emotions are better at getting people to

share than others. So let's look at the

five major emotions as we've been told

by Inside Out. Any guesses as to which

one gets people to spread news the

fastest? Is it disgust, like the

pictures of redneck eighties prom photos?

Or is it happiness, like all those videos

of dogs greeting soldiers coming back

from Afghanistan.

Awe stop the clip I'm going to lose it

they get me every time! But I'm not

likely to share it because not even the

warm fuzzies can top the most powerful