EDIT: Blog sparks controversy

Aware that controversy attracts clicks, returnofkings.com, a previously low profile, anti-feminism blog, recently posted a provocative article entitled, “5 Reasons to Date a Girl with an Eating Disorder.” This article went viral on social media Tuesday, and clearly demonstrated how easily Internet trolls garner attention.

Return of Kings, a blog for heterosexual men undermining feminism to empower masculinity, generated enough web traffic through publishing this outrageous article it actually overloaded the website’s server for an hour, subsequently shutting it down for about an hour, according to a Monday International Business Times story.

While some regard the story about the glorification of eating disorders as an epic attempt at trolling, others view it as a disgusting and manipulative way to entice readers to their website.

With this case in particular, considering the sensitivity of self-image in today’s society, the author of this viral article saw the opportunity to irritate his readers. And, considering the influx of backlash from readers, the author succeeded in his mission.

Soon after the article went viral, readers began a petition on Change.org to force Return of Kings to take down the controversial article. About 900 people signed the petition in just one day, closing in on the 1,000-signature goal.

People feel empowered by social media because it gives them a public outlet to approve or disapprove of sensitive and radical topics. Readers like to get angry and show people how angry they are. Writers know this, and as a result, capitalize on how impressionable their audiences can be.

At the end of the day, does it matter what readers think as long as the blog created enough traffic to generate the necessary funds? Though we as readers cannot control what is made available to us online, we do have complete control over what we click on and donate our attention to.

A prime example: amidst the beginning of the Syrian crisis on Aug. 26, the main headline story on CNN.com read, “Miley Cyrus twerks, stuns VMAs crowd.” It doesn’t matter that the news of Cyrus’ outrageous performance at the VMAs the night before had absolutely no relevance in the grand scheme of things at the time. All that mattered was the headline garnered clicks and web traffic.

Unlike newspapers and other legitimate online news sources, there are no set moral guidelines for blogs. Writers are free to say what they want about whomever they want, whenever they want. Blog posts are meant to generate discourse among its readers, whether it be negative or positive.

The tricky thing about the online world today, however, is that page views are an extremely inaccurate way to show how people actually feel about a certain online piece.

This is not to say that the author of this viral article is not a sadist who actually thinks eating disorders add to the “retail-value” of women by making them more vulnerable as well as better in bed. But, given the benefit of the doubt, the author could also very well just be a website administrator who is overly concerned about pleasing his advertisers with website traffic.

For the creators of this blog, having their website shut down temporarily because of excessive web traffic is the epitome of online success. The website reached a peak amount of readers, which in the online world, not only means more attention, but more money to please advertisers as well.

This author of this blog post may simply just be an immoral strategist, if you may.

So, in a way, writers are the puppeteers and readers are the marionettes. The media knows how to tap into our emotions to create an immediate, passionate and mass response ­— anyone else remember Kony?