April 24, 2012

Andrew Butler

Dear whoever is responsible for deciding what is and is not breaking news,

First off, let me make clear that I appreciate getting an optional breaking news update about world events of broad general significance and/or that may have direct serious impact on my life. If you were to only send me tweets in all caps and dramatic push notifications on my mobile devices about such events and news items then I would not only be grateful, but would not need to write the rest of this letter.

Who decides what is “breaking” news? Isn’t all news “breaking” at some point? Do you just open up the newspaper and throw darts at it to decide what to bug me about? Because that system might actually provide more relevant news updates.

More seriously, I suspect the reason you send me bullshit “news alerts” is because you think you know what will draw traffic to your website. However, as someone you probably fired must have pointed out, your attempts to drive traffic to your news site based on what’s trending or on what you think people are likely to click on debases your value to me as a gatherer and curator of pertinent information.  I WILL STOP ENGAGING WITH YOUR NEWS PUBLICATION IF YOU DON’T GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER AND STOP ACTING LIKE YOU’RE TMZ. I’m looking at you New York Times.

For the news industry’s benefit, I have crafted some examples of what I think ARE and ARE NOT legitimate stories to send barreling to the forefront of my attention.

“BREAKING: NORTH KOREA DETONATES NUCLEAR WEAPON IN SEOUL.” // My god, yes. I want to know immediately if something this horrific should ever happen.

“BREAKING: NORTH KOREA NOT VERY GOOD AT ROCKET SCIENCE” // NO. This is not breaking news. We all already knew this. I don’t need you blowing up my phone to tell me what North Korea sucks at. It can wait until I pick up your paper or open your app.

“BREAKING: BRAD PITT AND ANGELINA JOLIE TO WED” // NO. This  is not life affecting news AT ALL. TO ALMOST ANYONE. Yes they are breaking their promise to forgo marriage until there is marriage equality, but I don’t need a text message alert dedicated to telling me that celebrities are flakey humanitarians.

BREAKING: BRAD PITT AND ANGELINA JOLIE DETONATE NUCLEAR WEAPON IN SEOUL. // YES. Unlikely, but all the more reason to let me know ASAP. Who knows, I might see one of them in SoHo and survive to contact the UN.

“BREAKING: FLORIDA SINKS INTO THE OCEAN” // YES. My mom lives there, as do lots of moms. National tragedy.

“BREAKING: FLORIDA OFFICIALS REJECT RESIGNATION OF POLICE CHEIF IN TRAYVON MARTIN CASE” // NO. Do I care? Yes. Is it important? Yes. Does finding out now vs one hour from now matter? no.

“BREAKING: ATHLETE DOES SOMETHING COOL!” // NO

“BREAKING: ATHLETE DOES SOMETHING SO COOL THAT WATCHING IT WILL LITERALLY MAKE YOU POOP YOURSELF” // STILL NO. I can sign up for ESPN updates if I need instant notification of future sports trivia.

“BREAKING: WE ARE REALLY SORRY YOU ARE SO ANAL ABOUT YOUR NEWS ALERTS, MAYBE YOU SHOULD RELAX” // NO. See, this one is too personal, while it does affect me, I wouldn’t want everyone else to have to check their phone in the middle of watching Mad Men, only to think “what’s the big deal, unless I’m Andrew there is no reason you needed to interrupt Don  Draper to give me this information.” WHO’S THE ASSHOLE NOW NEWS SERVICES???

“BREAKING: STILL YOU” // WHATEVER. You’re just mad because you know I’m right.

March 27, 2012

Andrew Butler

Amnesty International just released their yearly country-by-country report on government executions and after reading it, quite frankly, I am disgusted to be an American.

On the list of countries that execute the largest number of their citizens, we’re in 5^th place. FIFTH. We should be number ONE. You know what color medal the person in fifth place gets? A failure colored medal, that’s what color. WE ARE LOSING THE INTERNATIONAL EXECUTION RACE. And guess who’s winning: CHINA. Just like they’re winning at everything. Smart kids? CHINA. Manufacturing? CHINA. Executions? CHINA! And Amnesty International thinks they probably carried out a bunch more executions that they just didn’t bother to report! Cocky bastards.

Sure, we’re beating Yemen, we’re beating Somalia, we’re beating North Korea, but those are bullshit little countries that probably just can’t afford to be killing off what few citizens haven’t died of curable diseases, hunger, and pirates. 

You know who else we’re losing to? Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Iran. JUST EMBARASSING. Sure, we could try to claim that Iraq is following in our footsteps: establish representative government, have those representatives kill people on our behalf, etc etc, but deep down we know they’re just better at it than we are. Maybe it’s all the oil over there? That could also explain why Texas is so darn good at executing people (30% of our executions happen in the Lone Star State. Good work Texas!).

Look. It’s not hopeless. We ARE good at this. SO GOOD in fact, that all the other Western countries have given up on executing people. LOSERS! The playing field is tighter than it’s ever been, down 10% to just 20 countries who carried out executions last year, but the total number of world wide executions rose 28%, so now that we’ve separated the men from the men-who-don’t-want-to-kill-other-men, the game is really afoot. 

Can we keep up? A healthy 34 U.S. States have the death penalty, but only 78 prisoners received death sentences last year. I don’t know about you guys, but I don’t pay my taxes every year for them to get used on not-killing my fellow countrymen. We need to step up our game in 2012. This is our year. Call your Congressman! Let’s put some Americans to death!