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BuzzFeed has built a business on coordinating the internet's confusing spectacle into listicles easily comprehended by the most numbed office workers. The website's approach to each of content as building blocks for listings puts it in an embarrassing position in relation to internet etiquette and journalistic integrity.

Internet culture wonks have been hashing over an article by Slate's Farhad Manjoo that shown BuzzFeed's popular lists are often not first flashes of genius that was viral. The BuzzFeed listicle "21 Photographs Which Will Restore Your Faith In Humanity," appears to be an almost exact replica of just a few articles on a vague site Named Nedhardy: "7 Photographs Which Will Restore Your Faith In Humanity" and "13 Photographs to Assist You Restore Your Faith In Humanity." BuzzFeed slapped together many of the exact images, presented it as a first concept, and it moved Avian-Flu-level-viral, ending up with more than seven million page views.

Even though BuzzFeed has assembled "Intense" sections of traditional journalists reporting on technology, fashion and politics, so it is the viral and lists video scavenging that bring in the most traffic. This has put off some chin-scratching over whether what BuzzFeed is doing is actually bad, or whether repackaging funny things found on Reddit is the way the internet works these days. Can you really tear off the concept of putting cheesy pictures at a list? Some say BuzzFeed's failure to mention the sources of ideas because of its listicles is a good example of "Bad nettiquette." If neglecting to mention memes found on Reddit is bad netiquette, what is lifting sentences from IMDB? After reading Manjoo's article, I slid into the BuzzFeed archives and found they're filled with passages copied from other sockets with no charge.

Consider the output signal of BuzzFeed senior editor Matt Stopera. Stopera's one of BuzzFeed's most popular editors; he also makes regular appearances on Headline News and was the subject of a Businessweek profile, and that espouse his ability to assemble massively viral lists in lightning pace. A vital part of this code will be copying and pasting chunks of text into lists without attribution. Stopera doesn't only lift from IMDB. A 2011 post "26 Things You Probably Didn't Know About Elizabeth Taylor," is cribbed from a number of resources. Then there's 2010's 38 Facts About Reborn Dolls, which basically only transforms the paragraphs of this 2008 Today.com article into a list, again with no charge.

As the accusations from Gawker revealed a tin ear against the way the internet works, the label of plagiarism seems anachronistic in the case of a listicle. BuzzFeed Editor-in-Chief Ben Smith, who combined BuzzFeed from Politico last December, said he's moving the site away from this free-for-all approach: " started BuzzFeed as a technology business and some sort of a content laboratory, also initially had a hefty aggregation attention," he wrote in an email. Stopera has been more careful about sourcing because Smith became EIC of all BuzzFeed. "Matt is one of the terrific Internet originals, as I think is pretty clear from the body of his work," Smith said.

The clinic does signify something which's bugged me for a little while about BuzzFeed and the Reddit-Tumblr-4chan matrix from which its side springs: The explosion of individuals happily sharing text and images entirely void of context. There's a dumb disinterest from the story behind whatever glistening internet thing has gone viral now, as if knowing more would ruin the mystical viralness of the item. BuzzFeed has, either knowingly or unintentionally, capitalized on this with obscuring the origins of its facts taken from resources, and ideas found among newfangled meme-creators. A clean list of credits and links interrupts the effect, and makes it more of a box.

The best argument from this context-free viral culture actually comes from that goddamn "21 Graphics That Will Restore Your Faith In Humanity" listing. The very first picture from the list is a "Picture of Chicago Christians who showed up in a gay pride parade to plead for homophobia from the Church," according to the caption. You would never learn that from the list, which includes only a link to the website of the photographer who took the film, added only after it moved viral. BuzzFeed just hired Metro Weekly's Chris Geidner, one of the best reporters on LGBT issues in the nation.

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