Normally, we find the saccharine-sweet clickbait going around social media downright idiotic, and possibly even offensive. And that isn’t necessarily because the overdose of toxic cuteness is itself stupid; rather, it has to do with the fact that it is so easy to “share” content that people seem to have stopped thinking about what they’re passing along.
To the other, it’s not like we’re going to knock Gina Lee or her daughter Willow. But in the first place, the destruction of language—such as Mike Spohr’s BuzzFeed headline, “A Little Girl Named Willow’s Costume Game Has Already Won Halloween”—really should stop. Professional writers should not go out of their way to behave as if they are functionally illiterate. Then again, botching the language is a commodity these days, so … you know … whatever. And Mr. Spohr can always blame his editors. We hope.
And, additionally, there are still other treasures to be found. The photographic exhibit also contains one of the best editorial corrections I’ve ever witnessed:
An earlier version misidentified the Skipper costume as The Professor.
Is this the part where we say, “Oh, my”?
Or would, “Ouch!” suffice?
To the other, BuzzFeed is aiming for proper journalism, saccharine clickbait notwithstanding. Many, perhaps most, of us would likely have just made the correction and not attached any sort of note. So thank you, Mr. Spohr, for taking that one on the chin for the sake of journalistic integrity.
And, no, that’s not nearly as much of a joke as it sounds.
But, yeah. We’ll give a little razzing. How could we not?
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Spohr, Mike. “A Little Girl Named Willow’s Costume Game Has Already Won Halloween”. BuzzFeed. 21 October 2014.
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