Buzzfeed Hires Daniel Kibblesmith from Clickhole, The Professional Parody of Sites Like Buzzfeed
(via Poynter)
Clickhole was founded by The Onion to satirize all the clickbait sites that have risen to prominence online over the last couple of years. One of their biggest targets was Buzzfeed and they made sure to make Buzzfeed style quizzes and listlcles, but with their own absurd twist. The folks at Clickhole were so good at parodying Buzzfeed that, sometimes, the only way to differentiate between the two was the font, graphics, and URL.
Now, “the snake has eaten its own tail” or “life imitates art” or “if you can’t beat’em, join’em” all applies as Buzzfeed has just hired Daniel Kibblesmith, a Clickhole associate editor to be part of their staff. They were impressed with his work and thought his quizzes would work as regular non-parody on Buzzfeed.
What this all means in the long run has yet to be seen, but we do know that this is one way where the Internet has reinforced itself from attempts by others to “break it”.