Thread by @brycey

The other day I went to the shops.

For the purposes of this story, I own a little media company. And this wasn't any old shop, it was a super modern shopping complex with a weird name. I think it is from overseas. Anyways, this place is huge.

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And not just shops - there's all sorts of clubs and community centres, a bunch of libraries, a church for every religion. Yeah, everything.

So I walk around for a bit, then eventually decide I wanted to see what was happening in the world and searched for the newsagent.

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Now, I've been doing my job for a loooong time - I'm really good at it. Over the years I've refined the delivery of 'news' to be mainly gossip, scandal or self-serving politics and charging people money for the privilege of reading it. People love a scandal.

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What we do is put a brief description at the top of the front page - called a headline - and then you can see a bit of the info from the article right there as well before picking it up and unfolding it. I guess we could call that part of the editorial content a 'snippet'.

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We've always had this freely visible as it entices you to purchase. The newsagent is cool because you can flick through and read a quick article or sth, but if I stand and read all day they tell me I have to buy it or get out. It's usually after I've read about 3 articles.

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This newsagent was AWESOME! They had this technology which I couldn't understand (but I'll try to find out or steal it somehow keke) whereby whatever news I was thinking about THAT SECTION of the newspaper became the front page! It was amazing! Right down to the snippet!

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Again, I had to actually pick UP the paper to look in it, and only got a few articles before they told me to buy it or leave but still..wow. I asked the guy how much they were charging for this service of fundamentally staffing a billboard for my products and - get this..

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..he said ZERO. But - the best bit - the govt is now trying to make HIM PAY ME! HAHA! It turns out we're making him give a portion of their whole complex' turnover, not just the news, because it's easier to lean on friends I got voted in than develop a better business model

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He said he hadn't paid yet because it was too expensive, but they were trying to figure out something more sensible.

So I called the lawyers, burnt the place to the ground and got my newspapers to say terriers did it because it's their fault there are pediatricians.

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