10 Most Important Points from BuzzFeed Founder’s $40k Feel-Good Slideshow Pep Rally

Back in March, Jonah Peretti, founder of BuzzFeed and the Huffington Post, gave a presentation at the University of Florida. As had been previously reported, Peretti was paid $40,000 for a 45 minute speech on the nature of shareable content on the web, which he and BuzzFeed have inarguably mastered. (Peretti said the fee is filtered back into the company).

While media had only been allowed to record the first five minutes of the presentation, which is somewhat strange for a lecture about the way media is created and consumed, MuckRock’s Conor Skelding published the contents of the presentation on Monday, which he obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. In the spirit of the post-Buzzfeed media climate that we all live in, I will now distill what was likely a thoughtful discussion full of nuanced points and hard-earned expertise into bullet points, reducing someone else’s labor into a half-assed joke.

Here are the 10 most important takeaways from the 121 pages of slides.

Pander to narcissists

Peretti warmed up the crowd by giving the people what they want: stories that reinforce things that they already know, set in their own specific geographic location:

Buzzfeed is big

In case you didn’t know, Buzzfeed has a lot of readers – sorry, “uniques.” Most of them are in the key advertising demo!

Peretti is good

Peretti, as you may not remember, is responsible for one of the first bits of viral content on the internet, the infamous Nike “Sweatshop” design. He is good. Here’s an image from when he did it:

Peretti is good

Here’s another famous thing he did. Black People Love Us. Remember that? That was viral content, you see? He practically invented the stupid internet.

Quality doesn’t matter

The biggest misconception, he says, is that quality is all that matters. Not sure why this needs to be reinforced since we’re all familiar with BuzzFeed, but here it is in plain English in case you’re an idiot. Bad things? Well, sometimes people like them.

Virality is a religion

Just like Judaism and Mormonism, viral culture is a religion that is spread by lying to people. Which one has spread more quickly in recent years? The one with the more aggressive salespeople. Long story short, BuzzFeed is God:

BuzzFeed is big

Just another reminder, a dozen slides or so later, in case you’d forgotten:

BuzzFeed is a serious credible news organization

They’ve got longform stories and reporters in other countries. It’s not just the home of goofy listicles and cat pictures that you think it is.

BuzzFeed is a site that shares cat pictures

Sure, they have serious reporters throughout the world, but the reason why that works? Because people like cat pictures.

Pushing back against share culture means you’re LITERALLY inhuman.

If you don’t like cat pictures, then you’re one of two things:

[Peretti image via Brendan Mcdermid/Reuters]

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>> Luke O’Neil is a journalist and blogger in Boston. Follow him on Twitter (@lukeoneil47).

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.