Michael Moss' "Sugar Salt Fat," the latest in the "there's no food in our food" book trend, details how processed food companies spend enormous amounts of money on R&D to get the public to eat as much of their product as possible. Brilliant minds collaborate to find what they call the "bliss point" of new foods using a combination of chemistry and advanced mathematics. They optimize the shape, color, and consistencies of food to make them as appealing and addictive as possible while using industry lingo like "mouthfeel" and "flavor burst" to describe and measure the success of their work. The stakes are hundreds of billions of dollars, and the results are products like Lunchables, where an individual children's meal can contain up to two full days worth of sodium and saturated fat. I couldn't help but think about the similarities between processed foods and the most popular online content these days, specifically the viral-content factories Upworthy and Buzzfeed. Like the food scientists at companies like Kraft and General Foods, these companies do an amazing job of constantly researching the best ways to get people's eyeballs on their product. I have a great deal of respect for the technologists, product developers, and research analysts at these companies who have enabled their editorial teams to perfect the skill of writing the most sharable and clickable titles on the internet. Even if you don't actively visit Buzzfeed.com, you are no doubt familiar with their style of click-bait titles like, "29 Things That Are Way More Important Than Work Right Now" and "The 19 Worst Things Ever" that have become ubiquitous in all of our news feeds. If you actually click through (and based on the numbers, most of us do) you will often find that these articles are not much more than a half-assed list of animated GIFs of other people's intellectual property.

Upworthy has also figured out a winning formula for social distribution, even when they are just re-packaging someone else's YouTube video. In an online presentation they explain their social-first strategy. Their two primary tactics are using software that selects the headline with the highest click-through from a pool of 25 options, and being meticulous about every image and piece of copy used to promote their content on Facebook. Their titles are even more ridiculous than Buzzfeed's; "Walmart Went On The Record About What It Pays Its Workers. It Didn’t Count On Us Knowing Math." and "What They're Trying To Do To This Man Is Rough, But What He Says At The End Is Devastating" are two of my recent favorites.

What Buzzfeed and Upworthy are doing with online content is finding the mental "bliss point" of the internet. They are constantly tweaking their mixture of ingredients to optimize the "clickability" of their content, and their numerous iterations are creating a product that values convenience over quality. Reading Buzzfeed instead of a book or newspaper is like snacking on empty calories instead taking the time to prepare a healthy meal. It's easier and provides instant gratification, but in the long term it's as bad for you as the mouthfeel of a chemically-altered salty sweet flavor burst.