What the f*ck did I just read?
I don’t know why I’m actually writing about this but today I came across an article on the guardian which is about men who pretend to be dogs. At first I didn’t intend to read the article because I just saw it as one of those click-generating articles which do not have any content. After I finished another article, however, I could see that this article was among the top ten of popular articles across the guardian. “This is ridiculous”, I thought…still I clicked on it.
Photograph: Richard Ansett/Channel 4
The whole article is very awkward as you are introduced to a scene of mainly gay people who went from BDSM to become so-called “human pups”. It also introduces a TV show about this topic called “Secret Life of the Human Pups”. The topic is probably something most people would feel uncomfortable with but it is nice to see that online news media provide a platform for those who feel attracted to this kind of fetish.
I know this sounds weird but today just so many minority groups of very specific interests want to be accepted so I think the first step must be to mention those groups in the media. Yet, publishing articles or creating TV shows about groups like human pups, in my opinion, shows the negative side of news media: The side that reveals that everything is about the money.
I have the feeling that a TV show about a small gay community is just on air so that people can enjoy the freak show. That is definitely something that annoys me because it would prove what I expected of the article in the first place:
It is just about the clicks.
