When I worked as a Digital Culture Reporter at Business Insider, we had an expression for how we’d cover the buzziest new stories: Flood the zone . Like a faulty fire hydrant, or a vacuum cleaner whizzing up and down with the uncontrollable hysteria of a feral raccoon, our directive was to suck up as many clicks as possible through every angle imaginable. I recall this happening during the early days of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the Titan submersible implosion in 2023, when social media