A mysterious gut doctor is begging Americans to throw out “this vegetable” now. But, like, which? A journey through internet garbage.
There is a gut doctor, and he begs Americans: “Throw out this vegetable now.” This news is accompanied by a different image nearly every time. This morning, the plea appeared at the bottom of an article on Vox next to a photo of a hand chopping up what appears to be a pile of green apples. At other times, it has been paired with a picture of a petri dish with a worm in it. Other times, gut bacteria giving off electricity. The inside of a lotus root. An illustrated rendering of roundworms.
The gut doctor’s desperation pops up over and over, on websites like CNN and the Atlantic (and as I said, this one), in what are known colloquially as “chumboxes.” These are the boxes at the bottom of the page that have several pieces of clickbaity “sponsored content” or “suggested reading.” They’re generated by a variety of companies, but the largest two are Taboola ($160 million in funding) and Outbrain ($194 million in funding), both founded in Israel in the mid-aughts.
What is the point of a chumbox, and why would it be called that?
Chumbox is a sort of gross fishing reference, chum being the tiny fish that fishers use as bait to catch larger fish. Before the word came into the lexicon, Casey Newton explained the purpose of these boxes for The Verge in 2014:
In 2015, John Mahoney coined the term and wrote a widely cited “taxonomy” of chumbox content for the Awl. The content types he identified:
By 2016, 41 of the top 50 news sites used these modules as a revenue source. Reply All co-host Alex Goldman visited Taboola’s New York offices in June 2018, where he met CEO and founder Adam Singolda. Singolda informed him that he had never heard the term “chumbox,” and that he did not like the word “ads,” but that Taboola serves about 20 billion “recommendations” per day.
by Kaitlyn Tiffany, Vox | Read more:
Image: uncredited
There is a gut doctor, and he begs Americans: “Throw out this vegetable now.” This news is accompanied by a different image nearly every time. This morning, the plea appeared at the bottom of an article on Vox next to a photo of a hand chopping up what appears to be a pile of green apples. At other times, it has been paired with a picture of a petri dish with a worm in it. Other times, gut bacteria giving off electricity. The inside of a lotus root. An illustrated rendering of roundworms.
The gut doctor’s desperation pops up over and over, on websites like CNN and the Atlantic (and as I said, this one), in what are known colloquially as “chumboxes.” These are the boxes at the bottom of the page that have several pieces of clickbaity “sponsored content” or “suggested reading.” They’re generated by a variety of companies, but the largest two are Taboola ($160 million in funding) and Outbrain ($194 million in funding), both founded in Israel in the mid-aughts.What is the point of a chumbox, and why would it be called that?
Chumbox is a sort of gross fishing reference, chum being the tiny fish that fishers use as bait to catch larger fish. Before the word came into the lexicon, Casey Newton explained the purpose of these boxes for The Verge in 2014:
Outbrain, Taboola, and their peers have a simple pitch for the sites they work with: add our modules to your site for free, with just a few lines of code, and start making money immediately from the traffic you deliver to paying partners. “Our whole pitch to publishers is a no-brainer,” LaCour says. Adam Singolda, co-founder and CEO of Taboola, says top journalistic outlets are making more than $10 million a year adding its modules to their sites — significant revenues in an industry still struggling to find its footing online.The shift happened after publications realized that they weren’t making enough money from banner ads (which have dismal click-through rates of around one-tenth of a percent) and before they started cutting deals directly with large tech platforms like Facebook and Google to serve their content to broader audiences and try to wring out some revenue.
In 2015, John Mahoney coined the term and wrote a widely cited “taxonomy” of chumbox content for the Awl. The content types he identified:
- Sexy Thing (e.g., hot singles in your area, “your area” determined using your IP address)
- Localized Rule (e.g., some change in your city’s parking meter system, ditto)
- Deeply Psychological Body Thing
- Celeb Thing
- Old Person’s Face
- Skin Thing
- Miracle Cure Thing
- Weird Tattoo
- Implied Vaginal or Other Bodily Opening
- Disgusting Invertebrates or Globular Masses
- Extreme Weight Loss Thing
- Money Thing
- Wine
- Oozing Food
By 2016, 41 of the top 50 news sites used these modules as a revenue source. Reply All co-host Alex Goldman visited Taboola’s New York offices in June 2018, where he met CEO and founder Adam Singolda. Singolda informed him that he had never heard the term “chumbox,” and that he did not like the word “ads,” but that Taboola serves about 20 billion “recommendations” per day.
by Kaitlyn Tiffany, Vox | Read more:
Image: uncredited
