A Commercial for Dog Food as a Top Story Sets a Very Bad Tone

Let me start by saying in no way should this post be taken as a slight against the author or the quality of the "story" linked here which describes the wonderous impact of the petfood Ollie on the health of Teddy the Hollywood dog. It also should not be taken as any sort of attack on Teddy who seems to be a very cute little guy and a fairly typical small dog based on the description provided by the author who calls him a "bundle of energy" and repeatedly mentions his "high activity level." Dog Teddy, it turns out, is an actor, and is much more well known and popular than human Dan, who is not. Ironically, Teddy, like many humans, also makes more money from writing on Vocal than Dan, but that is not saying much as $47.73 over the course of 1.5 year is a pretty low bar. Teddy was apparently underwhelmed by his former diet and looking to make a change to something more fresh, wholesome, and less processed. Enter Ollie brand pet food, a "small batch" premium pet food product that no doubt costs a small fortune, but apparently has had a positive impact on Teddy's behavior and appearance. Finally, this story is in no way intended to besmirch the good name of Ollie brand pet food, a pet food brand with which I have zero personal experience and even less actual knowledge. This article was in fact the first time that I had ever heard of Ollie brand pet food. Based on the glowing testimony of the author I have no reason to question the quality of the food which sounds as if it provides a more nutrionally balanced diet for your pet than I provide for myself.

All that said, I think publishing that piece as a "top story" on Vocal in the premiere upper left quadrant of the home page no less, does provide very good reason to question the committment to quality, creative writing content to which the editors of Vocal.media suppossedly aspire. The story is in point of fact not a story at all, but rather a thinly veiled, or I would say blatantly obvious, advertisment for Ollie brand dog food. While I give Vocal some (minimal) credit for at least marking the story as "supported by Ollie" in the small text bubble in the stories header image, it is barely noticeable and easily overlooked. Vocal has every right of course to choose which stories it will select as top stories and I am sure they recognize that those selections have significant consequences on the page views any particular article may get. By plugging this as a top story and giving it the premier homepage location Vocal is making a bold statement. The statement is not "Vocal is the placer for creative content" but rather "Vocal is just another website where you can spend ad dollars to reach your target audience, whomever that may be."

I am a realist about such things, and I totally get that the authors who publish stories here need not have aspirations to be the next Steinbeck or Melville or Hemingway. One need look no further than myself for a fine example of a terrible author, with zero talent, masquerading as a somebody with something interesting to say. In fact one can view just about anything I have ever published here to see example after example of terrible writing masquerading as creative content. However, terrible creative content is not the same thing as advertising or marketing content no matter how horrible or excellent it may be. I am bombarded with advertisements on just about every other platform with which I interface, please do not make this one yet another. Please.