Hi, I'm Dylan Matthews (named after Thomas not Bob) and write articles for Vox like "15 FUNsettling facts about drones," "Your favorite singers' vocal ranges, in one chart," and "Each state's largest minority, in one map." As you can guess, I worship Buzzfeed and its genius founder Jonah Peretti. It's especially cool how he ropes you with clickbait headlines that play on your inherent narcissism ("hey, this is about me!"), simultaneously delivering you to advertisers and inflating click counts so publications like New York think Buzzfeed is a thing.
So, I found out what many people already knew, that Peretti had an arty background and read theory in college, and something you may not have known -- that he wrote a paper in the '90s based on Deleuze that criticized MTV for the very things Buzzfeed does now. Except Peretti, because he's Peretti, isn't a foul hypocrite but actually this Warhol-like figure that's critiquing all the way to the bank, and at the same time showing old media how they can combine advertising and journalism and ride the wild whirlwind of VIRAL CURRENTS that supposedly no one can get a handle on.
So I like, "reached out" to Peretti and asked if his old college "critique" paper was in fact a blueprint for his current venue's outstanding marketplace success and you know Peretti said? You know what he said?
He emailed me back and said "LOL." That's all. Can you even comprehend how cool that is?
Background links:
http://www.vox.com/2014/5/20/5730762/buzzfeeds-founder-used-to-write-marxist-theory-and-it-explains
http://nymag.com/news/features/buzzfeed-2013-4/
http://www.critical-theory.com/from-deleuze-to-lolcats-the-story-of-the-buzzfeed-guy/
http://www.critical-theory.com/buzzfeed-founder-responds-to-his-marxist-roots-lol/